It was really very hot today. Hot = swimming! We took the dogs up to Digley just so they could spend all afternoon cooling off.

Well. Dylan and Mollie swam. Kim didn’t. She was bossy and neurotic and demanding about the ball being thrown, but then declined to go in and fetch it.

I’m hoping this weather breaks before the weekend, both Kim and Mollie are scheduled to do some agility at Midland Counties and I’d like to let them both run. If it’s too hot, they’re going to have to stay cool and bored in the car!

I shouldn’t have even bothered taking my camera; the lighting was awful! Overcast skies + twilight = not good for photos of moving dogs.

Still, look at Mollie’s smiley face!

Dylan is getting really irritating on walks, I keep wanting to smack him round the head! He is generally pretty independent when we’re out and about, not so much as the girls’ but happy to go off and do his own thing. But as soon as I take off the lens cap, he’s right there in front of me. Almost touching.

Ever played that “not touching” game when you’re a kid? That’s what it’s like.

You can’t tell, but in all these photos, he’s about 2 inches away from the lens, giving me the Eye. Incidentally, this is why I’m never getting another Border Collie. They drive you insane, like they are.

Kim is thoroughly enjoying being out and about again, she’s off-lead 95% of the time at the moment. We’re slowly starting to put some real muscle back onto her, but it’s taking time. I’d like to do some hydrotherapy with her but the pool we used to go to isn’t available at the moment, and she hates swimming. Maybe I can throw her in the sea at Redcar?

We set off on Sunday morning for Hare’n'Hounds, Dylan and I are competing all week and the girls are coming up for Waldridge Fell. Kim is running with Cat, which should be fun!

It seemed like a good idea at the time. However. Walking through waist high banks of heather in spring? BEES. Bees everywhere. I got all of four pictures in the heather, before the hoards of angry bees began circling my head and we fled.

So we spent a lot of time at the river, avoiding the bees.

There were very few complaints, except perhaps by Kim. Kim spent the whole walk on lead, as she’s still supposed to be taking it easy after her chiro treatment at the weekend. We only argued two or three hundred times, it’s ok. She was not happy with the bees either, but I’m actually glad she was on the lead as she does try and eat them. Bees are not so down with that.

The dogs were actually very well behaved; there is a lot of livestock at the edges of the valley, but all well protected by walls and solid gates, and we avoided almost all of it. Dylan did spend a while desperately trying to herd chickens through a fence (chickens are the only think he will actually try to herd anyway. Anything bigger than a chicken in worrying). We also avoided unexpected horses, even Mollie! Mollie doesn’t do livestock, she barks too much, but she just trotted alongside the horses for a while and then came back.*

*I should probably mention that the horses didn’t care, the riders didn’t care, and I didn’t let her do this. But Mollie apparently has some horse sense … who knew?!

We had a lovely walk around Digley Resevoir on Sunday, couldn’t believe it was March, I was walking in my t-shirt!

The dogs ambled (and sprinted, and swum!) their way around, they’ve been so many times they know the path just as well as me. This is another resevoir my parents used to take us walking around as children, and all of it is filled with those wonderful childhood memories; there’s a section involved very steep stepping stone stairs, only for about 60m but when the stair is as tall as your leg, it becomes traumatic pretty quick. It becomes even more traumatic when your sister slams your fingers in an iron gate and chops three fingernails off in the middle of nowhere, and has never yet apologised … I’m not bitter, no, why do you ask?

Kim really enjoyed herself, it’s her first real run since she had the paw injury. It’s been healing well, but it’s not yet perfect and I daren’t risk letting her play in the res itself, so she had a minor tantrum whilst Mollie and Dylan went swimming. I got back in her good books by letting her pose for a while in various spots. It’s hard to be angry when you’re this beautiful.

She even matches the landscape!

Not many photos of Dylan, sadly, because he spent most of the walk with his head in a bush, or herding the 300 other people who thought it would be a nice day to walk around Digley. He was very well behaved though, and only did the stiff-legged barking thing at one dog. He has impeccable manners with on-lead dogs (ie. ignores them completely), even the disruptive and out-of-control ones who lunge at him. He looked mildly concerned about a few of the off-lead dogs, but checked in with me and then continued. He was also flattened by two extremely exuberant Boxers (possibly Boxer/Staffie crosses?!), but didn’t bother a bit. So … interesting. Still thinking about this one, will get back to it at a later date.

(I actually remembered for this blog post that you are, sometimes, allowed to edit photos using this magical program called Photoshop! I’ve been so focussed on the 52 Weeks project that I keep forgetting it’s ok to edit the rest of the shots.)

Another section of the Kirklees Way walked … or so I thought, until I went and looked it up and realised it’s just kind of the same section as the last section we walked. Walking is apparently harder than I thought.

The dogs had a good Christmas. The dogs always have a good Christmas, but they had an especially good one this year. They got some lovely new toys, lots of chews, and Kim got some ultra fashionable leg warmers from Accessorize. Unfortunately she has skinny hind legs so they only fit on her front paws, but they are unbelievably awesome¹. They also got snow, which is the best Christmas present any dog could want.

We walked in said snow a lot, had a tasty Christmas dinner, and various other goodies. It’s been a bit of a strange Christmas this year for various reasons, but the dogs are always constant and always cheerful. Especially Mollie; she’s like a little kid at Christmas, she gets far too excited and overdoes everything, and has to go and have a time out when she gets too silly.

I know the blog is becoming a bit of a boring photo journal at the moment, which I promise won’t continue. However, I wanted to post for every one of the twelve days of Christmas, and it would take too long to write, so you’ll all have to put up with a few photo posts.

All the photos on this post were taken on Christmas Day. They all came out a bit dark because it was 3:30 and the sun was disappearing behind the hills, but the dogs had such a lovely time; Kim even tried to play with Mollie, but that’s a post in it’s own right.

¹No, I can’t think of any time when Kim might be able to wear any leg warmers either.