Enjoying a quieter time

Phoenix left us last Friday, always so much harder letting the last one go. Eliza was subdued for 24hrs after his departure but has fully regained her bounce now!

I am not a fan of early vaccination so she will have one vaccination when she is over 13 weeks old, she will not be vaccinated against Lepto as I believe that the vaccine is a far greater risk to her well being than the chance of her contracting the disease (added to the fact that it only covers 4 strains of about 200 and that it can last as little as 3 months and almost certainly no longer than 9 months). She will almost certainly still have some circulating maternal antibodies at the moment so she is going out to be socialised.

She has started on a few outings, these include our local park, the beach, the bus station a walk through the town centre and a walk alongside a main road. She has been through a subway and had several trips in the car. None of this has phased her, she has had a few moments of uncertainty in some situations, but completely regained her composure almost instantly. She is like her mum in that she has a non stop wagging tail :-)

She and Fawlty continue to be good buddies.

Miss Tibbs and Bob have both visited Manuel in the last couple of weeks, so hopefully we will have kittens in March.

The big dogs have enjoyed some lovely walks this week, couple of pics here, more, as always, on Flickr.com

Ready for his long trip

Phoenix is due to leave us on Thursday, poor boy has a long journey and a trip on the ferry as he is off to Ireland. Normally I get the pups ready to go within 24hrs of departure, but felt it was better to allow a bit of time between bath and journey. Always so much harder to say goodbye when they have stayed that bit longer :-(

And then there were two

Most of the pups have flown the nest over the last few days and so far reports are encouraging, all seem to be confident happy pups, a few teething problems here and there with one or two, but on the whole I believe we have 7 happy families.

Phoenix is staying with us just another week or so, this lad has got a very long journey ahead of him as he is off to Ireland.

I suspect that Fawlty is going to miss the pups even more than I do, he has been obsessed with them right from birth and has consistently wanted to interact with them, in fact I think the pups are starting to think they may be cats as I have caught Eliza on the cat wheel and climbing onto the cat scratch post!

Really fed up with the wet weather now, it's no joke having to walk 9 dogs on flooded/very muddy fields and woodlands, not that they seem to care as the pictures show. We will be going to the beach tomorrow as although they will still get wet we won't have to worry about the mud!

Update - We visited the beach today, here are a couple of pics from our visit (including dogs belonging to a friend).