Linzi's blog

With gifts for the Dog's home this Christmas. It may only be a slight miscalculation on my part, and I'm sure that everything will have a use.
I have been putting a doggie hamper together over the past month for all the doglets at Manchester Dogs Home. I didn't mean to get too much, some treats, a small bag of dry food, a couple of toys, and maybe a smallish doggie cushion, all in a box. This has grown into the following:
1xbag dry dog food
1x6-pack foil containers dog food for small dogs
1x4-pack foil trays puppy food
1x1.2 kilo box of Bonios
1xbox of Puppy Markies
1xmedium-sized knotted rope toy
1xsmall-sized rope toy
1xrubber tug toy
1xmedium extreme Kong
1xKong paste
1xbag of doggie treats
1x18" doggie cushion
1x24" doggie cushion
all enclosed in a willow, cotton lined laundry basket
That's just the dogs.
I got the volunteers some mince pies and I might buy some more volunteer goodies while out shopping tomorrow, before dropping the hamper off.
I would urge all people to think about their local animal rescue centre next year and consider a small hamper or donation. At Manchester Dogs Home, £1 will buy a dog it's dinner on Christmas day. It doesn't cost much to add a couple of tins of dog/cat food or a small pack of treats to your weekly shopping, and the rescues really are gratefull for any donation, no matter how small.
Maybe I did go over the top, but it's only the same amount as I'd have spent on Tess over a couple of months, so, to me it's worth every penny to help the Rescue that we got Tess from.

Me and Gypsy had a breakthrough! I am not kidding you, Gypsy has still not changed in the slightest, he still wants to go 100MPH in everything, that's never going to change in the slightest, and is still excitable, but in the last 2 weeks something has changed.
Gypsy will do collected work willingly! I am seriously worried about his health. Gypsy shuns all collected work, lateral work, anything that stops him going 100MPH is evil in his mind and to be avoided.

That changed last Saturday. Towards the end of the lesson, where we hadn't done too much work, but some recent canter work had got Gypsy up on his toes, we were given the all-clear to do lateral work with the horses we were riding. This normally results in a 10 minute battle to get Gypsy to do a leg-yield, not last Saturday. He willingly performed leg-yield, and then, deciding that this lateral work malarkey was getting him lots of praise from yours truely, did 2 very nice shoulder-ins and even gave me a couple of steps of half-pass, which I asked for not really expecting anything. OK his half-pass wouldn't exactly set the Dressage world alight, but it's a start.

This Saturday, we were doing quarter turns to prepare for shoulder-in. Again, Gypsy was worryingly willing to do this work all nice and collected.

There is a catch to this though - once he discovered the joys of collection, he decided that he liked it so much, he didn't really want to go forward again!

For the time being anyway. It's been one of those months since September started. I'm bored, fed up with doing the same old boring things like work, go out, watch TV, read, surf internet (oh, actually, scrap that last one, just seen something interesting), eat, drink, go to bed, have tooth removed, have jaw bone cracked by dentist while removing tooth, get some weird cold/flu mutation, sleep, force 6 pints of home-made lemonade down throat, gaze dreamily at new PSI collection and KA. As you can see, it's been boring. And then, just as I thought it couldn't get worse, it got better.
JMJ music god returns to Manchester next year!
Going to Germany next Week!
Christmas Party!
Ok, I accept the first one is worth the excitement and maybe the second one as well. But you can tell how bored I have been.
This is because Tess is no longer here, Tess was my ideas bouncer. OK, the feedback wasn't exactly there, but, she listened (at least I think she did) to my ideas, put up with suddenly and unexpectedly being whisked off to new places for a walk.
In short, since we lost Tess, I have been lost. Maybe I was lost before, like at the start of the year, but didn't really realise it until Tess went.
Maybe we'll get a new dog next year, and I can find my spark again.
Or maybe not.