Just one more

I wasn't planning on posting again this year, but just thought I would show you that although we had a houseful of guests over Christmas (15!) the dogs were not forgotten, they have had some super walks, including a very hilly 8 miler over Dartmoor yesterday (forgot my camera). I have included pics of a boxing day visit to Dartmoor, some of our trip to the beach today, in glorious sunshine and a couple of Cash at our agility Christmas fun show. Spirit is still keeping us waiting.

Christmas Cheer

A week before Christmas and Eliza has had most of her health testing done now, she has been DNA tested clear for DM, NE and vWD, she has also tested negative for SA. She carries the phantom gene and she is hip scored 3:5. This may be of interest to those who panic about exercise levels in young dogs, I have never adhered to the 5 mins of exercise for every month of age and to date none of my poodles have experienced any joint problems. Care was taken as a pup that she did not slide around on slippery floors and I never played ball games with her, but Eliza was allowed to do regular hour long walks from about 4 months old, the length and intensity of her walks was built up from then and now at 13 months old she has no exercise restrictions. There is a growing argument for young dogs to have enough steady exercise to enable them to build muscle which will help keep joints in place, obviously this does not mean running them to the point of exhaustion or asking them to do things that will put pressure on the joints such as jumping or chasing a ball. I feel that it is so much better for them, both physically and mentally, to have a good outlet for their energy on a walk rather than going loopy in a tight space (indoors) often on slippery floors.

We are very quiet at the moment with regard to puppies and kittens, still waiting for the standard girls to come into season so that Spirit can be mated, hopefully sooner rather than later. This is the only litter of puppies I have planned for 2017, though we should hopefully have a couple of litters of kittens at some point in the year so that should be enough to keep us busy :)

This will probably be the last post for 2016 so from all the Itzapromise crew, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

After a day full of activity there is nothing better than relaxing in front of a fire :)

2017 Itzapromise Calendar

Once again one of the fabulous families with Itzapromise poodles have very generously produced an Itzapromise calendar, as with last years calendar ALL money raised through the sale of these wonderful calendars (apart from p&p costs) will go to one of 2 rescue groups, either Poodle Network UK or Many Tears who take in a large number of ex puppy farm poodles and poodle crosses. They are priced at £10 each and UK postage is £3. These are large calendars, approx 12" x 16" and are good quality, pictures below are a few of the pages to give you an idea of what to expect.

If you are interested please contact me.

Waiting!

Spirit should have come in season last month, but, as are all the girls, she is keeping us waiting. This is almost certainly because Audrey, who is top dog, was spayed after their last season and as the girls all tend to take their lead from the top dog, they are all holding off, the did exactly the same when we had Audrey's Mum, Rhonda as top dog and she was spayed. Hopefully she won't keep us waiting much longer.

Tonight is the last night we have with the kittens, I hope their new families are ready for the little monsters, so far today they have almost dragged my camera off the table,  mugged me for my lunch and generally used the house as a racetrack :)

A bit of training

Cash started agility training last year, we both really enjoyed it but unfortunately, after just a few weeks, the club closed and we failed to find another club. A couple of months ago we managed to resume our lessons at a new club and Cash is doing very well. One of the hardest obstacles to train are the weave poles, especially if you are limited to only training once a week at club. Thankfully our newly turfed chicken garden is now well enough established for me to put some poles up for practice, so, assuming the weather holds, the plan is to train for 5 minutes every day and with a bit of luck we should have this sussed in a couple of months :)
The first 2 videos show us training, the 3rd shows the distractions he is having to deal with :)

Now that Eliza is just about a year old I have started to introduce her to the poles too (no video yet) so that will be one less thing she has to learn when a space becomes available for her to join the agility classes.

The kittens are just fabulous, little monkeys are into everything!