Of course there are no more duvet days or lie ins with a border collie who does an excited 'it's morning, let's go OUT' type squeak that you can hear all the way from the other end of the boat (about 40 feet away).
Leelu has has both learnt and taught himself some new tricks: rolling onto his back and waving his legs in the air is much easier for us to dry his undercarriage after the wet and sometimes muddy walks we go on; if he picks his frisbee up on the way out of the door then we have to throw it for him because, after all, us mere humans can't always be trusted to remember to bring it out; and a recent one learnt after he hurt his paw (doing his dramatic superhero style catches of said frisbee), that if he waves a front paw in the air, he will get cuddles, yes pathetic I know, am trying to stop falling for that!
We have been on many adventures in the mountains of north Wales as I have built up to finally doing my Mountain Leader assessment (which I passed last week, hooray!). The advantage to this time of year for Leelu is that , in the main, the sheep have been brought down from the mountains for tupping (mating) and so I have been able to let him off the lead as there are no sheep about. We have dealt with paths that are not there, walking in the cloud with poor visibility, our first tick removal (eww) and first night that he has slept in a tent. To be honest, neither of us slept that much, he was fine in the tent as I had put his bed in there but decided that me being right next to him was the best thing ever and that I was just there to fuss him, all night... When I got up at 4am to use the 'facilities' (field), the moon was really bright and the stars were out, so was Leelu with his frisbee so off we went around the field for 15 minutes!
It's brilliant having him in our lives, we are so lucky, no really we are, even on those dark, wet and windy mornings......
