Having the dog has forced us into some sort of routine. I get up at 7.00 or thereabouts and take him for a walk; I then give him breakfast and put him in his outside shelter while we get up. Mid-morning he has another play or walk, or comes out with us if we are going shopping, mid afternoon we do the same, followed by a longer walk in the evening and some training if we can. By this time, with any luck Gremlin is asleep in his box and sleeps through until morning whilst we are exhausted! He is growing fast and loves food, treats and play in that order. Everything else has little interest for him! I soon realised that you can read as many dog behaviour books as you like but nothing prepares you for those moments when it's just you and the dog and the dog has one idea and you have another! Before we got a cattle dog all the books said don't get a dog like this as your first dog, but we did anyway! I am not so sure that it would have helped having owned a dog before as if we were used to a nice laid back puppy we would never have been able to cope with this hyperactive over stimulated beast with ADHD! As it is, we are managing with what we have and enjoying his antics and behaviour. He seems to be thriving quite well on it!
Here he is at 13 weeks old but still a baby!
We have also had two jobs on the go to fit in around dog ownership. The first one has been to lay the base for the garage, as until the garage is built and we can move our possessions and tools into it, we can't finish off inside the house. The soil was scraped level by the builder but we have had to infill with gravel, put the shuttering in for the concrete, lay the damp proof membrane and put in the steel reinforcing. We have been fitting this in around the weather and other jobs but think we can get this done next week in preparation for the concrete, which will arrive in two lorries, ready mixed. Then we can take a small break until the autumn!
The other job has been to finish off the sofits around the tower and so prevent Renata redstart from making her third nest of the summer in our house. We had to wait to do this until the builder went on holiday and was able to lend us his heavy duty machine for getting up to the roof. He did this last week and although it was not fully operational (as with most of his machines) it did the job and we now do not have a gale blowing through the house everytime the wind blows
Ian on the machine!
I mentioned that we have been fitting in these jobs around the weather. After a hot spring and early summer we have now had a really wet July, with storms and a fair bit of rain. Yesterday we had the most amazing double rainbow ending at our pot of gold!
Pot of gold in front of the field shelter
