Holiday

We went on our first holiday with the family recently.  Normally when we see the bags being packed, we sulk!  We realise that we are about to be packed off to the kennels.  The kennels are not our favourite place to go as we can not take our own beds and we have to mix with a whole load of other dogs that are not as well behaved as us!

Last Friday it was the same thing, suitcases being packed and bags piled by the door, but the big difference was that our coats, blankets and beds were in the pile too!  We went to this great place and had a great time.  You can see others like us who have enjoyed it too.  There were sheep in the field, but we were not allowed to play, so we went to the beach lots and found all sorts of interesting things to do.

In short it was great and we overheard on the way back that it was so successful we will all be going back again.  We can't wait!

Exhaustion!

Once we got home from Animates and the GAP fun, Jess and I crashed and my family took this unfair photo!

GAP Aimates Sylvia Park

It has been a while since we wrote.  My family have spent most of this year moving and once they moved it was all painting, carpeting (which in our stress we have christened :)  luckily they purchased eco strand carpet!)  It has taken us a while to adapt to our new surroundings, we do not get out into the new garden too much, it is very different terrain from our last garden and this one has yet to have a fence put all the way around it.  My family have started to work on this garden and they are sharing their efforts on this new blog, the Garden Tamers Diary, you should go and check it out.

We have slowly settled in and our new walks are wonderful, lots of cats to keep us entertained!  This winter has been so cold and wet that we have not had many opportunities to go for a run, Jess' hip still plays up, the vet thinks that it might be early onset of arthritis and so she is affected by damp and cold.  This means that this winter we have run once and nearly always have our "Stan" and "Jess" fleeces on.  Real eye catchers, lots of new people stop us and want to talk to us in our new neighbourhood.  We watch the ducks and the Pukeko, one duck has just had 11 ducklings and Jess really wants to make friends with those little fellows.  I must get the family to post some images of us on our new walks and with us in our named fleeces.

You can double click on any of the images below to see them as a slideshow - much better!

Jess's First Christmas

Today is Christmas day and it is also Jess's first Christmas day with our family. So I took her under my wing and showed her the ropes. I am a bit of a veteran with this Christmas thing now. Mind you my first year with my family at Christmas ended up with me in hospital as I ate too much... but that it another story!

Christmas seems to be all about eating and lazing around, something we hounds are good at! But there is something different about Christmas day, pressents! Both Jess and I got presents. I find ripping paper and extracting the gift inside easy, Jess has still to learn the fine art of avarice and greed! But she is getting there.

Once my family sat down to share their presents, it was our turn to remind them that the focus of attention should be us at all times. Therefore, Jess and I strategically arranged ourselves to ensure that we were both appropriately in the way at all times. You can see our day in the images below.

Christmas Eve run

It was hot today, summer finally seems to have arrived and so what do my family do? They decide that what Jess and I really want to do is have a run. Not just one run, but several. The other morning one of my family got up nice and early and took us out for our regular walk, but this time he just took us to the reserve behind our home and let us go, with muzzles on.

So in the cool of the morning, we went! In no time at all Jess was eating my dust and we were a mere speck in the distance to our owner. He started to have palpitations, but we were just playing with him! We hooned off to the end of the field, right down by the skate park and near to the road. Once there we wandered around a bit and then decided to blast back to him. (He still thinks that he has recall sorted with us....!) It was great to run again. Jess is so slow! She keeps going on about all the races that she won, the prize money she earned and rubbing it in about how that is the exact opposite of my racing career! But as Keith my trainer said, there is no one faster on grass than me! And Jess has still yet to overtake me...

So today is Christmas Eve and for our afternoon walk we were allowed to run again, but this time no cool of the morning, it was hot! Mind you, I am pretty hot so I blasted off again and Jess, yet again, was literally eating my dust as the field we run in has just been sanded this week for drainage and I was flicking the sand up as I ran. In no time flat we were at the end of the field, as far away as we could get from our family, without straying onto the road.

Once again I could hear the call to return, but I decided to walk back, it was too hot and Jess decided to blast back. She is now counting this as a victory, she claims the sand sapped my speed. Yeah, Yeah Delilah! I know however that I simply decided that it was too hot and walking was a better option.... That is my story and I am sticking to it!

Merry Christmas everyone

Animates Sylvia Park Grand Opening

It has been a while since I have done any dictation for my family to write up on our behalf. We seem to have dropped off of the GAP radar. Apparently the GAP Facebook pages are quite active, but as my family use Facebook for business, they are reluctant to mix business and pleasure on that particular forum so are missing out. Anyway, we heard through the e-mail chain that Animates at Sylvia Park were having a big opening and that us hounds would be most welcome to be ambassadors for pet ownership through adoption.

At 10:00 this morning our family bundled Jess and I into the car, we love going out exploring. The car always takes us to great places, with the exception of the vets and the kennels, but we can never really tell when that is going to happen, so we get excited anyway! Off we went to Animates at Sylvia Park for their grand opening weekend.

When we got there the place was awash with hounds we had not met before, with the exception of Reba and Hoss, who we know of old. Jess has taken a while to settle into meeting new dogs and often finds meeting new dogs, even hounds, stressful and will growl to encourage others to keep away. As for me, I love the attention and just lap it up, I take as much as I can get from all the willing hands that want to pat me and I just love meeting new dogs of every variety.

Apart from the attention, the best bit today was the furry creatures. I found the mice and best of all I found the rabbits! I really wanted to play with those guys, but for some reason, my family seemed really reluctant to let me do so! I kept pointing them out and I kept pulling them towards what I wanted to play with, but no dice, the nearest I got to playing with my buddies can be seen in the slideshow below. Ah well maybe next time they will let me play with the rabbits? Strangely, Jess and the other hounds showed little or no interest in the rabbits. Not sure why!

PetExpo - 2011

Today my family took Jess and I out. We were up early and went for a walk on the beach at St Heliers, I am not a great fan of the beach, too much sand, but my family make me walk on it as it cleans up my paws a real treat! Jess loves the beach, she just trots along looking around at all the sights and sounds of the beach. Last time we were at the beach in St Heliers we met another hound but she was not there today.

Anyway after breakfast and a short rest, we were off in the car again, this time we went to the Pet Expo over at the North Shore Events Centre. The place was packed, and just like the great Led Zepplin album, we went in through the out door. Once in side we were both assaulted by the sights, sounds and smells of the expo. There were pets of all sizes and their owners everyhwere!

We did a three hour stint on the GAP stand. We hussled hard to encourage others to adopt our brothers and sisters in the kennels. It was stimulation overload. Jess was not so keen on all the attention and kept hiding, but after a while she decided to give it a go and cheered up. I, however was in my element, seeking out every face to lick and every hand to be patted, stroked and scratched with. After a while though, even I had to have a lie down. But I made sure I had a nice lap to lie on when I did!

You can see some images of us that attended today below. There were some new hounds that we had not met before and others who we had. Some of the names that I remember from today were: Lily, Eddie, Kylie, Bella, Gizmo.