Chicken Run

L has Monday off to recover from the Thunder Run but I’m at work. She gives the impression she spends the majority of her day off looking for lost balls on the park.

The diagnosis is that we have a puppy who likes to run off with a ball, then to sit and chew it. Whilst we also have a plonker (I assume she means our Crufts silver medalist) who likes very much to drop his ball in the longest grass he can find. As I well know, it’s difficult trying to keep an eye on both dogs at the same time but then she bigs up a chap with an allegedly sensible dog choice aka two spaniels but apparently he too was shuffling through the long grass searching for a ball. So spaniels can’t find balls either. 

I suppose the weekend must have gone ok because I’m not in an ankle cast, I even manage to fake looking mobile at dog training on Monday evening although any hobbling is down more to my blisters rather than my ankle.

That said I don’t cycle on Tuesday or any other day this week. I just couldn’t swing my leg over. L manages to swim, which she says is very therapeutic on the legs. I think I would have drowned if I’d attempted to swim but then I probably always say that.

Wednesday we take L’s Dad to The Yard on Pride Park for his 80^th birthday and then the rest of the week is spent camping at my club’s dog show or Chicken Run as L calls it.

Oddly as we are camping both kids are camping too at almost the same time. Perhaps we haven't scarred them for life after all.

Thursday is set up day for our show and after that I meet L in Burton where we try the new

Weighbridge Bar which is in a weighbridge office. These are the types of places I deal with in my job but none of them have bars inside them. I think they should.

After that we stay on site as we have a bar there for the whole weekend although it frustratingly insists on closing at around 5pm every day.

The show itself goes well although the weather is terribly changeable. The heatwave continues throughout Friday but then decides to end in the middle of our show. Saturday brings 40mph winds and we have to suspend the show mid afternoon until things die down. I am tasked at 7am to help pull one of the show tents out of the hedge where it had come to rest. Sunday is pretty much all rain.

MD does ok in his runs, fourteen of them over three days. We don’t get any rosettes but he does enough that I am no longer considering his imminent retirement. He probably doesn’t want to hear that as I bet he was looking forward to it. 

(Sunday 29^th July)