Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas everybody. Wishing you all a lovely day and a happy and prosperous new year from our lovely second hand dog Leelu who has changed our world for the better xxx

Turning into winter

Sometimes the days just pass in a blur, work makes you busy and the darker nights just make it feel like there is less time in the day and that actually everything would look much better from under the duvet.

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......

Canal Restoration & a sponsored walk

For many, many years, I have been a member of the Waterway Recovery Group which involves a bunch of volunteers roaming around the country restoring canals, repairing / making towpaths, nature reserves etc. and generally making more stretches of canals navigable and pretty.  A few members of WRG have dogs and they can occasionally be found on 'canal camps'  and some even have their own hi viz jacket!

 In July, Leelu & I spent a few days in the very north of Yorkshire with a group of volunteers that were a mix of ages ranging from 18 year old students completing the residential part of their Gold Duke of Edinburgh award through a few 'Middle Agies ' to slightly older. It's fantastic how you can put a bunch of people that have not always met before, from different backgrounds and of different ages together and they all muck in and get along.  On camp we tend to stay in village halls and take it in turn to cook (unless we are lucky enough to have our own cook). Because Leelu was with me, I took our VW camper and the pair of us slept in that, which in hindsight is a great way of getting away from the snorers!

We had suburb weather andLeelu was loved by everyone (except one person who didn't like dogs but I did catch even him throwing the tennis ball at one point!). We did weed clearance from the canal, shrub clearance from the banks, put in some new mooring pins and made a new water point and because we weren't using heavy machinery there was lots of opportunity for the frisbee to be thrown for Leelu, to be honest I didn't really get a look in as everyone else was looking after him!

One day we went to the beach, yes it rained but we loved it, despite nearly falling foul of the 'don't bring your dogs into this area of the beach' rule...oops!

We even had a bit of a look at the mini digger although he struggled to work out the controls

It was a cracking hot sunny camp with some lovely people. Here is his new fan club!

To bring it right up to date, the vans we use to transport the kit and volunteers all over the country really need replacing.  Leelu and I are part of a team doing a sponsored walk along 22 miles of towpath starting and ending at Droitwich in the Midlands.  Flat walking is much more difficult than mountain walking, in my opinion but we did a practice walk of 14.7 miles last Sunday. I was quite tired after it, Leelu of course just wanted me to throw the tennis ball when we got back! We have already reached enough sponsorship that we now have to go do it in fancy dress.  Our theme is 'Snow White and the Seven Wharves' yes wharves not dwarves, we had to make it canal themed somehow. I am going to be 'Buckby wharf.' For those that don't know, a Buckby can is a metal can that sits on top of traditional canal boats and stores water, when you want a drink your pour water out of it.  Leelu will be wearing a 'Waterway Recovery Group' bandana (& my husband is doing first aid cover for the event, phew!).

We would therefore love any sponsorship that you can find.  Please go to http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/rfb where you will see a lovely picture of Jude in her Snow White outfit.  However it looks like her husband, who is also the chairman of WRG and has an MBE will be wearing it if we can get enough money!!

I will be doing updates!

Be more dog...

Summer time in the UK and longer evenings mean that more time is filled playing outdoors and going on holiday and, in my case, getting a new job (hooray) and so technology doesn't seem as important.  This does mean that I have 2 months worth of stories to catch up on in "Leelu world" but I am going to start with today which started with "when technology goes bad" and ends with #tummytickles....

After a cracking couple of weeks canal boating, we had issues with our wifi modem. Why is technology so could when it works and so stressful to sort out when it doesn't?  2 long and expensive calls to the EE help desk came to the conclusion that the dongle was probably dead but needed sending off and please could we take it to the EE store in Chester.....nooo...not town...curses... We hate going into town so in order to make it more pleasant Leelu came with us as we really weren't going to be long, our list of jobs was going to be done quickly and efficiently - drop off the laundry at the launderette, drop off the modem at the shop for repair, doing a quick bit of mobile phone research, finding a coffee shop with wifi so we could at least download our emails, then a walk on the racecourse or in the park with the frisbee was the plan. 

The actual chain of events was:

- drive into town and drop off the laundry, sorted, easy.

- park and walk to the EE shop, realise that it is the Chester races today which means that it is really busy and there are lots of overdressed people tottering down the street and we won't be able to go for a nice play with the frisbee on the racecourse, not without getting under some thundering hooves.....aagghhh....

- have argument with the most unhelpful staff ever in the EE shop who won't believe that we are capable of having a phone conversation with EE technical support and that were doing what they had instructed us to do, go 2 shops down to the car phone warehouse shop where a very helpful lady said that she couldn't help us but there was another EE shop nearby....

- Go to other EE shop, lovely kind helpful and calm staff dealt with our dead wifi dongle, packaged it up ready to go back for repair, as requested by the helpline, why they could do it and other shop couldn't we don't know but it wasn't  helpful in customer experience or stress level terms.

- went and had coffee and paninis sat in the cathedral gardens in the sunshine, We were all much happier there!

- had a quick run around the Roman gardens amongst all of the ruins (it really is a lovely place to visit if you haven't been there!)

- decided to bail and go home but called in the O2 shop as husband really needs a new phone and from there it all went a bit crazy but happy...

Whilst husband was being all grown up, and choosing a phone, the staff got a bit out of hand, Leelu started it and before you know it there was much rolling around on the floor begging for more tummy tickles, so the dog joined in....

I don't know if you are aware of the O2 adverts but they involve an animated real cat strutting its stuff with the tag line 'be more dog' I don't get the tag line in this context and to be honest I don't really care either but as a dog person I do think they should at least have the courtesy to have a real dog in there not some cat with a bit of a complex. We had this debate in the shop and agreed that there should be a shop dog, so Leelu is honorary, temporary shop dog 

As you can see he had a terrible time and to top it off we came away with a new phone and a happy husband too.....

Live life in the moment

Be more dog because dogs are better.🐾

Dinner, Bed & Breakfast

The past 2 weekends have involved husband and I driving great distances over the UK involving both socialising and work.  Leelu would not have liked it - 4-5 hours in the van each way on each trip.  As a dog, it must feel like a bit of a travelling / time machine - you get in and have no idea what view the door will open onto - will it be friendly, like my parents? Or will it be scary - will there be other dogs there, or will it be a great new place to explore?



Leelu has been treated to 2 weekends at my parents - a great big garden lots of fuss, a cat that he ignores but who gingerly steps past him (she is as antisocial as he is!), lovely walks through the woods with my Dad, rabbits to chase in the field and - if he's lucky - double dinner (because both I and my mum have fed him!), or double breakfast when the cat doesn't eat it quick enough and the door might have been left open a crack!


Pets at Home have started sending Leelu mail which made me laugh a lot.  Even better than that, as he turns 8 sometime around now, they have sent a voucher for free birthday dog treats, which is brilliant (although I hope they do cake for the owners too!).



In the photo below you can see that Leelu has discovered sitting on the step on the boat - it makes him almost as tall as us although he was sitting up looking very handsome until i took the photo so now it looks like he is sitting on the naughty step (there is no naughty step)!

In the garden at my parents having a lovely game of catch

Happy walking everyone, I hope you are enjoying the sunshine.

V & L

Spring turning into Summer

Well I say Spring turning into Summer...Summer is definitely here, you can tell.  It's the first of June and hammering down with rain outside,the fire is lit and we are expecting 42mph gusts of winds later - great fun on a canal boat, I think not!

In complete contrast to that, a local walk I did on Saturday was so beautiful and full of nature that this blog is just dedicated to the photos I took.  Enjoy!

 Bee collecting nectar:

 Lots of damsel flies were around, presumably just hatched and drying in the sun;

 Ferns uncurling:

 Dog with frisbee amongst ferns....

 Hawthorn blossom:

 Ferns unfurling:

 Oh and we have some new baby calves in the field.  They are grouping together whilst they learn their place amongst the other heifers in the field:

Well, that's a bit of sunshine - I'm off to walk the dog in the rain...!

Canal walks, Camping and Mountains

We’ve been on a few walking adventures over the past few months – with varied rates of success.  It’s been an exercise in pushing myself and trying to get some walking fitness back into my life, plus seeing how Leelu copes with the different types of walking …oh hang on…dog…walk….!

The first decent sized walk we did was Long Mynd in Shropshire – 11 miles of up, along, down, then up then down again (the last down hurt!!).  It was a beautiful hot and sunny day but I made the mistake of letting Leelu  have the ball to carry and to be fair to him he did – the whole way!!  He was also brave enough to get into some small streams to drink, not into fast flowing ones though, but I felt like it was some kind of breakthrough as he generally doesn’t drink much water, let alone go near any moving water.

We then went to the Lake District for my second mountain since my back op.  We were aiming to go up Bowfell  through Eskdale.  It was the first time we had been camping in the Yellow Bus of Fun (ex-AA VW T4 camper / multipurpose van).  Oh Leelu thought it was great that he was so close to us and he could sit up and put his head on the bed in the morning ‘Are we going out yet…?’  The disadvantage to The Lake District in April is lambing season.  Having been non-dog owners for a while and therefore able to go where we want, the lambing season hadn’t affected us before.  So on the lead he went although husband cunningly secured him via a karabiner to his rucksack so he could still go a little way on the retractable lead. 

All in all it wasn’t the most successful day ever.  Despite lots of flat walking, you need different muscles for mountains and mine had deserted me that day.  On top of that, higher up was rain, then sleet.  The dog was also not having the best time either – cold, wet, sleet, wind, on the lead - so we bailed…to the pub for restorative tea and nachos.  We then went and parked ourselves in the Old Dungeon Ghyll carpark and had a fine evening of great food, beer and chatting (with much admiring of dog by fellow pub goers) and retired to the campervan and listened to the beat of the rain on the roof.  As predicted the next day was a complete washout – Leelu’s face was a picture when we opened the door in the morning and we were in one enormous puddle of water.  We went home.

Two weekends ago, whilst husband was on a course in Audlem, Leelu and I did an 11.5 mile walk down the towpath and back from Audlem to just short of Market Drayton.  Another flat walk but good to get the miles in.  We had a bonus on the way too as we bumped into a volunteer lock keeper that we know and he bought me cake (it’s ok I had treats with me for Leelu, he didn’t miss out!).

Last week was half term so we had a few days in Wales based out of Llanberis.  Unfortunately our plans went awry a little when husband got very poorly sick so I took Leelu and Step-daughter no. 2 , who was staying with us for the week, up to the top of Snowdon via the Llanberis path as neither of them had done it before. 

They were both excellent, despite the steepness (s/d), the boring path, the people and the other dogs (Leelu) and slept lots afterwards.  Actually both s/d and I slept lots because we then went to Bounce Below as a half term treat – its’ a series of big nets in a huge cave that you bound around on and climb up and slide down, great fun and completely exhausting – like a human size version of a snakes and ladders board!  Thursday was a more gentle day.  Fortunately husband got better and took daughter climbing on Idwal Slabs whilst I introduced Leelu to the concept of steep steps with a bit of scrambling.  He didn’t like it.  To make it up to him I then had to stand and play ball with him for ages!

Next on the list of Leelu’s adventures – spending the weekend away at my parents (He won’t like the drive to Wiltshire!). 

Pooey.....

He slunk past the window looking very guilty...and quite dark in colour. 'Oh poor dog,' thought my husband, 'he must have fallen in the canal (again).'

Did I mention that since the 1st April the young stock (cows) are back in the field next to us and all that is separating us from them is a thin 12 volt fence, so it is easy for a collie dog to get underneath it and roll in the fresh green cow pats, though to be honest he could have actually been stood under the back end of said cow:

I have also previously mentioned that Leelu doesn't like water.  he especially doesn't like being bathed and he had cold water as punishment, rather than the tepid water of previously.  Oh he was not happy, but he was cleaner, with only a slight whiff of countryside (cow!) and he was very fluffy when he was dry!

He hasn't been back near any fresh cow pats!!

Spring has sprung

I can't believe it's a month since my last blog...how does that happen?!  It's been a whirl of early morning walks watching the mornings get lighter, and for a few days very frosty with some early morning field fog, followed by breakfast and then a morning snooze for Leelu whilst one or both of us go to work.  Then an afternoon walk / frisbee throw then I come home and it's teatime, playtime and then an evening / moonlight bedtime wander... that is when we could get him out of his bed, he really likes the new bed!

We completely upset this nice routine - oh I forgot the hangdog eyes just before we go out to work, except that now I realise that it was 'great, are you going? I need my morning nap' eyes!  We were both doing a long working day one day and so our neighbours offered to have him, well practically begged to be honest - so after breakfast I took him up to their boat and he had a marvellous day, complete with photos of walking, tennis ball throwing and sleeping in front of their fire - completely spoilt rotten and loving it :-)  He was exhausted by the time we came home, a sign of a great day!

He loves the frisbee and tennis ball and makes us laugh with his acrobatics and stunt man rolls, although he managed to sprain his paw doing one of his catches one day and, although he struggled on dogfully, we had to go and get him some anti-inflammatories and painkillers from the vet.  It was so difficult confining a bouncy border collie to 2 half hour walks on a lead a day - can you imagine?!

So no it is officially spring, the daffodils are all beautiful and bright, the birds are singing and the field next to us has dried out so the new seasons young cattle (They are usually young cows) are back in the field.  Leelu hasn't quite worked out that these big black and white things are potentially quite threatening to him - he is not bothered in the slightest, even when I told him that he needed to move as they were clearly after his Frisbee!  So the morning walk route has had to change.

A couple of weekends ago we ended up on 'Tea Junction' which is a floating café canal boat that travels around the canals of the UK.  They were over in Nantwich and they serve superb chocolate & Guinness cake and huge hot chocolates and doggy biscuits for Leelu.  It was a rainy day but thoroughly enjoyable.

Happy Spring everyone!

Training session & bonkers springer spaniels

We went to see Mike at Cheshire Canine Services on Sunday afternoon.  The thing with having a second hand dog is that you don't know all of their history and so it is always good to get reassurance from an expert to make sure there are no hidden behaviour patterns

So  after a little bit of looking at how we interact wih Leelu, all he could say was what a great dog he was and it was a shame that we didn't get him when he was 2! All credit must go to his previous owners along with a great big thank you!

Mike got out a succession of immaculately trained dogs as we had expressed our  concern with Leelu's reaction to other dogs.  Some interesting behaviour reactions mainly to the big shouty dominant german shepherd who ignored him but was still big and noisy and the beautiful but crazy Bob who is a young springer and wanted to interact with him.  The verdict? He's just antisocial.  Fair enough, we can relate to that!

When we are out with him and we meet another dog, Leelu generally keeps a short distance away but is always happier if he has the tennis ball of strength or the frisbee of happiness in his mouth or if he can hide behind our legs until the appproaching monster has safely passed by.

We went to stay with a friend last weekend and they also have a young springer who just wanted to play and play and... Needless to say, Leelu didn't. They had a couple of snaps at each other but also had to share the same house.  We managed it by keeping them in separate areas otherwise Dylan constantly wanted to rush over and mither him (read that as hump / play / steal tennis ball) and Leelu got very unsettled and started doing protective snarling , i.e. keep out of my space.  When I took them out walking together they were better because there was space and they could do their own thing although it was exhausting from my point of view throwing 2 tennis balls constantly in oposite directions!  Anyway I did manage to get the pair of them in one photos which was an impressive feat in itself!

Kennels weren't so bad after all!

Exactly 3 weeks after Leelu cam to live with us, it was half term for J, he is a teacher.

We had finally got enough money in the holiday fund pot and had already booked an exciting short adventure to visit Tromso in northern Norway with the hope of seeing the northern lights, adventures in the snow and husky dog sledding (there are pics on my Google+ page if you're interested!).  The original 'plan' of finally realising that we could have a dog now that J was now working locally and part time (rather than in different parts of the UK and Europe) was that we could start looking around with a view to getting one after we had been away.  Well as you know by now that didn't happen and sometimes that is just the way it is and you have to deal with it.

Farndon kennels is a lovely local kennels with the owners also having border collies and one of the guys having 10 dogs of his own, proper dog lovers!  So Leelu and I got in the car and went for a lovely walk down by the river near the kennels:

While I filled in paperwork at the kennels, Sam enticed Leelu away by giving him a doggie treat then picking up the tennis ball and walking off with him.  Beautifully done with no stress to the dog but oh....

We had a fabulous time in Norway but the first evening in Norway we walked past a shop with a reindeer art piece in the window with exactly the same eyes as the dog - oh we felt bad!

Apart from feeling a bit guilty about the dog, Norway was great and apart from the £10 a pint, a fantastic country!

We landed Friday early afternoon and went straight to the kennels.  Sam went to get Leelu who quite happily wandered out sniffing all around.  He didn't see us until we called him and then that was it, he was like glue, he was clearly delighted to see us and wanted lots of cuddles and was happy that we came back!  Because of our concern about Leelu and other dogs (quite terrified!), the people at the kennels had let him out firstly with their border collies and also with some other passive dogs and we think that has helped him although we weren't there to witness it.

So there are some positives to him going in kennels:  He now knows that he definitely lives with us and that we did come back and hadn't abandoned him (if only you could explain to them!).  As a result he is a more confident within himself and started to boss us around a little bit more!  We are doing lots of work on 'no, we go out of the door / gate / over the stile first, you go second.  He's still not great with other dogs and tends to hide / try to get away from any that show any interest in him.  On the up side, he has no problem getting in and out of the car now as he knows it is usually going somewhere exciting, either for a walk or to my parents who have a big garden and where he will get another walk!

On top of all that we finally got out on our first mountain since I had a microdiscectomy operation on my back in November.  Ok only just a mountain and easily accessible but that's not the point, you have to start somewhere.  So here we are (on a very windy day!), well on the way to being a mountain climbing dog:

We also got him a new bed which he seems to love so all is well!

Learning, trusting & finding out

These first few weeks of owning a new dog, when not having had one for years,  have been all about getting into a routine, working out our limitations and gaining trust on both sides.

We've learnt that he is a very trusting dog and, whilst obviously a bit bewildered about his sudden change of surroundings,  is coping well.  Whilst he was part of a pack of 3 dogs, we believe ever since a puppy, it must seem strange to him that the other 2 aren't there anymore, although he does seem to be enjoying the quieter life with 2 humans giving him attention, love, walks and tennis balls!

So what else have we learnt so far?
- He is extremely well trained on most commands except 'find' which he can't work out for the life of him, we lost 2 tennis balls in one day, apparently i should have magically had them back in my hand ready for throwing again!
- He was really obstinate about getting in the car. Doing a bit of dog psychology i think this was possibly down to him arriving in a car to us and then that car leaving without him. However, we have done lots of 'good' car journeys where we have driven somewhere then got out for a nice walk. The one longer journey we did to the Peak District, we had him on the floor in the passenger footwell of the T4 camper (with a doggie harness on!) but it meant he could see us and be fussed.
- He really doesn't like other dogs. Unfortunately I found this out when i was walking him in Marbury country park, just after we had lost a tennis ball!  We met 2 large labradors, the female was fine but the male was really aggressive towards Leelu whilst Leelu  was trying to hide behind me and sink himself into the ground at the same time.  The next couple of dogs we met, he did a big loop around through the undergrowth and then waited on the path ahead until i caught up.  Fortunately since then we have met a couple of other placid dogs who haven't been interested in him sufficiently, just as well as he has been hiding behind our legs.  However, we have found that if he has the tennis ball, he is a bit braver as he can focus on that rather than the other dog.  Again a bit of doggie psychology and i reckon that he has never really been in an 'only dog' situation before as previously he would have been in a pack of 3 or with other dogs he knows so would have been / felt protected. Something to work on.
- Water. He really doesn't like it! He actively goes around puddles, if we are in the field he lies on the high ground. The twice he has fallen in the canal off the boat (fortunately at the mooring!) He was terrified and clung to me like  small child, although he can swim! Sarah did manage to entice him into the sea when we went to Red Rocks beach on  the Wirral - a fantastically huge flat beach with lots of room for running around - only because she too was paddling and was in charge of ball throwing!

The next blog will be about the experience of putting him in kennels.  Yes i feel really bad when he is so new to us!

A new dog

We have a 'new to us' dog! Its great and has been a wonderful first week with him.

My parents had dogs when I was growing up, including a succession of German Shepherd dogs from rescue homes.  My husband also used to have dogs and coincidentally, the last dog we both had was a collie cross shepherd. 

We have both wanted a dog of our own for a few years but working patterns and living on a boat wasn't really conducive to it.  However, now that J works more locally more of the time and has a lot of part time work, most of which is based from home, suddenly the conversation of getting a new dog came up again...  So we started looking at the dog rescue sites...what sort of dog did we want?? 

Not a small dog as we didn't want to trip over it or lose it amongst the rocks or tufts of grass that are found on mountains,  nor did we want to carry it home when its little legs got tired!

Not a large dog either.  We live on a NARROW boat!

So medium sized mountain loving dog....ooh look, a friend has reposted another friend's photo on good old Facebook.  A 7 year old male border collie that needed rehoming due to a change in circumstances of his owners. SOLD!!

So here he is, learning to be with us 2 crazies and completely putting us under his spell! 'Umlilo,' Zulu for 'Fire.'  His previous owners were South African.  So his name is Lilo but for the sake of getting the correct pronunciation we have changed the spelling to be more literal.

This is LEELU our lovely new border collie who is doing fantastically, is good as gold and loves the mountains - hooray!! Periodic adventures of our 'woolly dog' will be posted here. Enjoy.