Zap had a busy day

Zap had a busy day today. We had a bit of lie-in this morning, the little monster didn't wake me up by screaming but I got up at 7am just to make sure he and Gem is alright. He spent quite a long time in the garden this morning, exploring further and getting braver, he actually went away from me and go all they way down in the end of the garden on his own. We had a good play in the garden and he did tried to climb the A Frame, unfortunately he is too fat and roll down on the A Frame, luckily he wasn't too far up!

too fat to climb the A Frame!

exploring the jumps in the garden

found a stick to kill the time

what was he targeted?

ready ... steady ... get set ... GO!

Zap: I am gonna get you!

Sizzle: I WARN you, do not disturb me while I am weaving!

can you imagine he was a dog that do not know how to tug before?

always a happy boy!

Zap: that looks fun, can I join in Sizz?

my handsome young man all grown up now!

This afternoon we took Zap out to Wimbledon to have a coffee. We wander in a camping shop, a book store, a charity shop then sat outside Morrison for a nice cup of coffee and some cakes! There were a lot of people coming up for a fuss and good little Zap took everything in his stride. Thanks to him, I got some opportunity to eat more cakes! Yeah!

watching the world goes by ...

he is so little and he gets tired easily.

more Zap photos

The weather is awful today, rain, rain and rain ... I can only spent 5 minutes standing at the main road with Zap to learn the traffic and noises. I am lucky to live so close to the main road and also we have a spacy drive way which I can easily park two small cars, so I can put out a camping chair when the weather is good. This is how I normally train my puppies to get use to traffic when they first come home. Zap has been very good, the noise from the cars didn't bother him at all, he was busy chewing my finger and shirt but he will look at the cars that sped passed. He also met a couple of people that made a fuss of him.

he is just way too cute! Still won't leave his yellow duckie though!

see what I means? I put the skateboard out, he is exploring the skateboard but still have the yellow duckie in his mouth. He has been carrying that little toy a lot today!

is this the way to skate?

or, I rather look cute in the photo?

maybe 4 feet on is the best way?

I can smell something on that skateboard?

... and it is tasty!

why is my back leg moving?

Sizzle: hey little man, wanna play with me?

my lounge is getting so crowded now, it hardly has any room for us to move around!

I think this is a silly photo of him but he was so happy rushing through the tunnel and this is probably the best quality photo when he is moving

still can't leave the yellow duckie alone!

have a little stroll on the patio

let's kill the grass! Sizzle is watching just in case he fell in the pond

Sing: what are you doing, kid?

a wobble meal on the wobble board

and finally ... please stop taking anymore photos of me!!!

this and that

I was so much looking forward to go to Caerphilly this weekend, I have the caravan set up, ready to go but Colin fell ill on Wednesday, he came back very poorly and didn't go to work yesterday, he was in bed all day but he is better today and went to work this morning happily. He probably caught the 24 hours bug or something.

I think he needed more rest, so I decided not to go to Caerphilly. After all, family always come first! Life is not just agility! I knew I was hook to agility last year and the year before but since my brother had cancer and I went to visit him three time last year, I suddenly realised nothing is more important than the time you spend with your love ones, that including my shelties. We now spend more times going for long walks, playing, swimming together then doing agility and flyball. This is why some agility friends said to me: I haven't seen you for ages or I didn't see you at xxx shows ...

Caerphilly is a very nice show, lovely big ground, lovely walk, it is a relaxing show and they give away the best Dragon trophies! We went there first time 3 years ago and Saturn won me a lovely dragon trophy!

I was so impressed by him and the dragon trophy and vow to go back to do Caerphilly every year. We were there last year but both boys weren't working well; Saturn just finished his biopsy opearation three weeks before, basically he was still resting; Sing were not himself and we then found out by our chiropractor that he twisted his back, so no trophy last year. I am hoping we will try to get a trophy this year but apparently not again! Oh well, maybe one is good enough and I will treasure that dragon trophy more than ever!

Since we are staying at home this weekend, I will spend more time to take Zap out for some short trips. He has his first long car journey yesterday. I went to Bernadette to have a lesson with Sizzle and Saturn, guess what? He screamed the first 20 minutes!! Luckily he settled down after that, look at this:

Zap in his hamster cage!

Now, let's have a little update on Sizzle.

Firstly, his diet:

I have changed his diet again. After the 3rd trip to the vet, I have changed his diet to Adult's Nature Diet and he has been very good until I gave him half a liver cake, that set it all up again, diarrhoea and vomit, so off we back to the vet again. He didn't need a drip this time, just some jabs and anti-biotic. We also have the blood result back saying he is low in protein. Sizzle weighs 4.2kg, he is on the VERY LEAN size, so we needed some high protein to fatten him up. We go back to Burns tin food, Lamb & Rice which contains higher protein. He has been on that for a week, touch wood, he has been good so far but he did tried to steal Zap's mini bite so he has a couple off days.

Secondly, his training:

We didn't practice in the garden much, don't know why, maybe I am lazy and maybe the weather ... there is always some excuses. This week, we went to our usual club training on Tuesday noon time. I have to say he was very good, focus, enthusiatic, fast and no food involved at all. Other than he ping off the dog walk time after time, he was perfect on all the sequences we were doing. We trained more than 1.5 hours that day and at the end of the day, he was still very keen. Yesterday, we went to Bernadette for a lesson, he wasn't keen. I don't think it was too hot but he seems to find the cool spot to lie down. We have Saturn out to let him have a rest, normally he will bark and bark when I ran Saturn but yesterday he was quiet. Maybe his stomach is not right again?

The problem we keep facing at the moment is he keeps popping out the 11th pole. I tried different ways when I train him, run slower (stay behind while he weaves ahead), run faster so I am ahead of him, run wider or layer ... etc. I knew I am not good when I am ahead of him as I forgot to look back and I reward him everytime, so I guess I building up the bad habit by rewarding the 11th pole. I need to work harder on that. His weave entries are better. His running dog walk is not good this week, so more hardwork on that!!

and here is a little video taken last Sunday at Billinghurst, we didn't do well at agility but we had some lovely time playing frisbee:

Bless oh bless!

Sorry folks, I need to post more photos of Zap. As usual, he woke me up at 6am by screaming the house down! I have noticed that from the last two days, he gets very excited, like a lunatic in the morning when he first woken up. After he has his toilet, he will run around and round and no one can stop him! It probably last for 2 minutes, I can't get that on the video because he was too fast and our lounge hasn't got enough space for me to stand to film it. Shamed!

This morning, he asked to go in the garden again after his lunactic run:

I think he saw the fish in the pond

let's have a closer look

I think I better destroy the pansies, that is more fun!

After 10 minutes in the garden, he asked to come in and I thought I will have my breakfast while watching him, so I picked him up on the settee with me. He started like this:


... then like this:

... more closer look:
David, his new dad brought him the yellow duckie, he loves it so much and has been carrying and playing with it yesterday and today

Bless 5 weeks

Bless, will be called ZAP when he joins his new family is 5 weeks old today. He is getting more active and is more responsive to my call now. He likes to explore the house when he wakes up, so you can guess I sometimes struggle to find him. Once I blink, he is gone!

I didn't realise he can now chew!!

still very much a tugger!

... and still a PAW up boy!

and tried to destroy the play tunnel!!!

crate?

I bought a tiny crate (measuring 51 x 30 x 36cm = 1 ft 8 long x 1 ft high x 1 ft 2 wide) from ebay to travel with Zap (aka Bless) in the car. It arrived this morning. I set the crate up and walked away, when I returned, I saw this:

I can't imagine how Samber gets in the crate so comfortably?

after Samber left, Sizzle wanted to try the crate out!!!

These shelties are just amazing!!

pupdate

Bless is a wonderful puppy to raise, other than he is missing a playmate or two, he loves to play all the time while he is awake. For me, this is a great thing for a sheltie puppy. I have owned so many shelties and I know how hard to teach them to play. Bless is very much like his daddy Sing, very bright and is a real tugger and he wants to win all the time! He is also an easy pup for toilet train. When he was about 2.5 weeks old (after his eyes were open), I started to put some newspaper down in the pen for him but Gem shredded them all up. I don't know why she has such habit. I remembered just before she whelped, I put a lot of newspaper at the bottom of the whelping box then cover them up with vet bed but she shredded them all up and I sometimes can't find her in the box!!! Unfortunately she carries on after giving birth to Bless. This sometimes drove me mad as everytime I put some newspaper down, I will find whole lots of shredded newspaper in half an hour and the worst thing was Bless was underneath the pile of shredded papers. He was so tiny then and I have to dig him out each time! This also worry me how to toilet train Bless. I had to put some newspaper outside the pen, so everytime when Bless wakes up, I open the pen door, he rush out and walk straight onto the newspaper and do his toilet, I've also put some newspaper down in the pen just in case but Gem hasn't been too bad lately. The weather has been good and bad but I've got Bless to go in the garden to do his toilet too.

Bless loves the garden, everytime when he wakes up, he will walk up to the french window, I think he is asking me to let him out

... helping grand to do some gardening

... or to pounce on my daddy!

me and my grumpy daddy, he is not impress of my pouncing skill!

maybe I can learn to dash like a panther?

... or have a go at that ball in Sizzle's mouth?

Bless: Hey, Sizz, can I have the ball?

Sizzle: You better not!

Sizzle: grrrrr ...

Bless: Sorry, brother!

mama! Rescue me!! Sizzle is going to eat me!!!!!

Grand! Pick me up before Sizzle gets me!!

I think I saw something there ...

... it was the ball! HooRay! Let's grab it before Sizzle comes again.

We had a lazy morning yesterday and I've got Bless up in our bedroom:

grandpa! Wake up!!

Lucky boy joins the others to sleep on our bed!!

this is so comfy

My youngest nephew is visiting from Malaysia, he is so gentle with the pup and he spends lots of time sitting on the floor playing with him

you can see how much Bless loves him

step 1 of the circus elephant trick!

4 weeks today and I want a playmate!

Little Bless is 4 weeks old today, had his 2nd worming this afternoon. It was much easier to give him his 1st worming two weeks ago, less figitive! He is getting very active and he likes to "fight" with me! I like to disturb him when he is playing or tickle him and he always make some "arrrggghhh ..." or "grrrrr ..." noises, very cute!

4 weeks old today, such a sweet little face

learning "target" already?

I was doing something a couple of days ago, my mum called me into the lounge to look at the pup:

it wasn't a set up. I had left the french window open for some air, I guess it was a little windy that day. Bless was asleep on the newspaper, I don't know how the wind blow and wrap him up. I thought he looked so cute and quickly grab the camera and took these photos!

mama Gem came to rescue her poor little baby

motherly kiss

some friends asked me if I keep the bitch because they haven't seen any picture of Gem but a lot of Sing. Yes, I have Bless's mama and here is the photo of mother and son.

hey mama! I want to go out there with you!

Bless is starting to get very lonely, he always looking for a playmate. The big boys totally ignored him. Luckily Sizzle and Samber are quite happy to tolerate with him and let him bullied them!

a series of photos from pup attack!!

I am very pleased with Samber, the way she plays with the pup. She herself is a big baby, very boisterous and bouncy. I remembered taking her to Bernadette a few months ago and she was a little rough playing with Itzy and Zazzer. I was worried she will be rough with Bless but she turned out to be ever so gentle, nothing like her usual self at all but when she is not with him, she is bouncy and playful with the big boys. It is good to know she is being careful with the little one.

another not so successful agility weekend

As both Sing and Saturn are not 100% fit, Sing still have a little ache on his back from the tumbled tunnels at Axstane and Landsdown and Saturn's dewclaw is still raw. I was thinking NOT TO go to Wellingborough. Matt had told me in advance that he is not available to do the Eukanuba pairs due to office moving, that gave me more reason not wanted to go but Sing was supposed to pair with Kodak and I can't let Amanda and Kodak down, so we decided to go anyway. Wellingborough is about 2.5 hours drive for us, this means we have to wake up at 4:45 to get ready to leave at 5:30am.

Eventhough I have entered all the classes for Sing & Saturn but I wasn't going to do all. The Tunnel Vision Jumping and Eukanuba pairs were the two classes to start first. I've walked the two classes and they were both easy flowing classes and I decided I will run Saturn so I went to the secretary tent to look for a last minute partner for Saturn. Luckily I have my mobile number wrote down on the list because they won't annouce the message when someone was looking for me. Anyway, while I was wondering why nobody wanted to pair with me as the class is about to start, I've received a call from Barbara asking me to pair with her, WooHoo!! Just as I say yes to her, I bounced into two other shelties friends who were also looking to pair with me!!! I feel so sorry to turn them down but then later I found out Amanda and Kodak weren't there, so I managed to grab hold of Arley at the very last minute (the class had already started!) and thank God Wendy also found a partner for herself. Everyone is happy!

As the admin made a mistake on the Eukanuba pairs, so they were not running accoding to the numbers, they were going to do all the Small/Large pairs then Small/Medium pairs. I thought I will run Sing and Saturn in the Tunnel Vision first. For some reason, both Sing and Saturn broke their start line stay, arrggghhh ... I never had this problem for a long long time and they did gave me a shocked! Eventhough Saturn showed he was very keen to go but he wasn't really power on, I put it down to his raw dewclaw.

In the Eukanuba pairs, Saturn pairs have to go before Sing's pairs. It was a fast flowing course, I never dream of doing well in this class and for a change, the small dog goes before the Medium/Large dog, this means, I cannot do a wait start. Luckily this is an easy start (4 straight jumps into tunnel but with difficult weave entry). I wasn't worry about Saturn's weave entry as I know I can trust him to find the entry but I was really worry about Sing. These two boys always did me proud, they both went clear in their part, the only downside from them is they both lost a gear!

Saturn's last minute pair partner was Barbara & Tally, Barbara has an apricot poodle Leo but she was running Miranda's Tally, a tiny tri sheltie. Those who knows Tally, he went like a rocket, very scarry speed! We came 10th (out of 90+ pairs) in this pair.

Sing and I managed to grab Arley and Todd for our last minute partner, considering Arley didn't walk the course, they were doing marvelous for coming fast and clear. We came 13th (out of 90+ pairs) in this pairs.

Great thanks to Barbara & Tally and Arley & Todd for pairing with me and Saturn & Sing. It was such great fun running with you guys!

The weather was ok on Saturday, part cloudy, part sunny but still quite humid. I was about to go home after these two runs. Colin and I went for a lunch and they got the Agility class ready for walking. I thought I will run Sing in there to prove he gets his running contacts once again. It was a combined 3-5 class and there were about 50+ dogs. I wasn't aim for anything so I ran Sing casually, I didn't even push him and we came 5th! I was happy that he got his running dog walk once again with perfect two front paws hitting the contact area. That's my aim. The entry to the dog walk was a little dodgy but I managed to do a front cross before the dog walk and turning right at the end, for me it was a good achievement! I know I have to work harder for a sharp turning after the dog walk and different entry to the dog walk. It was quite an ineresting class, a couple of pull throughs!! Colin forgot to turn the camera on, so the start is a jump to weave start.

As we finished the agility, the Jumping was about to start so I stay for that. Unfortunately, Saturn for the first time, he refused to work! I was shocked! I never have a problem with Saturn not wanting to work for me esepcially in the Jumping class. I put it down to the heat plus his dewclaw, so I pull him out straightaway. Sing didn't do well either. I like to go clear with him but for some reason we can't get the snake right! It not like him, he normally take my body language well. Maybe these boys need a good rest!

and here is our weekend runs:

PAW

Little Sing-let, sorry I keep changing his name! Although I call him Bless but Colin & and his brother Russell call him Spock! They must be Star Trek crazy!! His ears are perfect, not even standing up, why did they call him Spock?

Anyway, this little pup is sooooo cute!!! He likes to use his paw A LOT!

Hello friends!

I can't understand why he raised his paw when he eats!!! And it has been a while because by the time I went to get a camera, took this picture and he still has his paw up!!!

Open Sesame!


I thought I would include a couple of video clips of him playing: