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.

No flyball training, no competitions, but we have to do something on a weekend. So we hit a section of the Kirklees Way which is very familiar to me and dad, but not so much to the dogs. We used to walk it a lot with the extended family when I was little; it’s nice and leisurely these days but I’m not sure how I managed it when I was 8!

We started off at Butterley Reservoir, headed up past Blakeley Res and on to Wessenden Res. We didn’t go all the way back into Meltham, but turned around at Wessenden Res because it was starting to get dark. It’s an easy walk anyway, nice well maintained single car road for us to follow up, but that’s a bit boring for the dogs.

Kim had a whale of a time digging up molehills, which is one of her favourite things in the world.

Mollie, being an independent soul, spent most of her time crashing though the undergrowth, occasionally emerging to look pleased with herself. She had a general anesthetic and three teeth removed on Thursday, but I think it’s safe to say she’s bounced right back from that.

It was getting quite dark by the time we turned back, but there were some idiots people just setting off for a stroll. Can’t imagine they got very far!

This was the first time the K-x went on a proper expedition with us, I was a bit worried about the weight since I’m used to my super light Kodak point+shoot, but it wasn’t bad at all, especially considering I carried it around my neck most of the way! It seemed to handle the low light quite well too, although it did start getting very insistent towards the end about using the flash. Original Energizer Lithium batteries are still going strong, I charged up the Eneloops on Wednesday but haven’t needed to use them yet. It does start blinking the “no battery” light at me after about 40mins of on/off shooting, but I’m holding on for as long as possible before I switch. So far I’ve taken around 500-600 shots with these batteries, with some play back but no live view or video. Flash seems to be the major drain.

Dylan and I had a really lazy training session this week, which was a very bad of me considering we have Wilmslow this weekend, which is our first competition in 6 weeks and we probably should have done some more serious training. I had intended to be good and work on wing wraps and proofing Aframe contacts. It didn’t happen! We did some lovely wraps on Medium to warm up, did a little bit of contact proofing, but then just had 30 minutes of blasting courses and being spontaneous.

I do feel a little bit guilty about doing that, but not too much. We have worked very hard over the past month or so on improving Dyl’s turns, and speeding up his contacts. Sometimes it’s nice to have a night off; besides, Dylan makes me laugh and he is so very enthusiastic about it all, so we never have a “wasted” session.

Kim is running brilliantly at training, although she only does 5-10 minutes at the start of the session. She’s sassy and stroppy and just blitzing everything in sight. We are entered at Wyre in December, but Kim may just come to run around the field and bark a lot. I miss her, but I miss her more when we’re on course and hating it.

I find it very hard switching between the two dogs, but it’s getting easier. Kim can turn on a sixpence, even in midair, and she just looks like one of those wick youngsters at the moment, super streamlined and fast. Dylan isn’t quite like that! He can’t turn anywhere near as sharply and he just doesn’t jump as fast as Kim (he can however outrun her on the flat!). But I can cue Dylan a lot earlier, for example for a tight turn or push/pull. Kim shuts down on early cues.

Wilmslow Saturday, Stocksbridge Sunday, and I would like results but would be happy with enthusiasm and effort even if it goes wrong. Remind me I said that on Monday …