Kristal's here - seven weeks old.

Guide Dog pup Kristal's arrived... and don't we know it! Two nights of constant barking, objecting to having the door closed on her indoor kennel. But hey, I have my kitchen cupboard knobs to protect. Don't let HER call the shots was the advice from my supervisor. Okay, so husband and I shared what turned out to be our last pair of ear-plugs. One each. It sort of worked. Then last night, night 3, she was fine. No crying no mess. She just needed to establish that when we go out of sight, we do turn up again.

As it happens, Sparky, our 3 year old ex pup, is still with us on his holidays and Kristal has immediately fallen in love, spurning the re-cycled mattress (pillow slip stuffed with old jumpers) I'd prepared for her in favour of snuggling down with him. He is so gentle that he just moves over to make room for her. This arrangement is alright while under supervision, but trustworthy and patient as he is, I'd never leave them unattended. Every dog has its limits, and Kristal's persistant searching for nipples in all Sparky's warm crevices might soon become too much for him. I won't take the risk.

I lost her at one stage on her first day. There she was out in the garden playing football with Sparky and giving him a good run for his money. It was when she started chasing him and hanging onto his tail that I had to step in and stop the game. Bold? Oh yes. I can see we have a little madam here with a mind of her own.

By coincidence, Kristal's sister, Kenna, is being puppy walked in the next village. I'm sure we'll meet up for outings together. It will be fascinating to compare progress and problems.

Kristal's already been out for her first coffee. And husband is confident that she will be a star attraction when I leave him standing outside a shop with her. (I usually emerge to find him surrounded by young women... he loves it.).

So, watch this space. Take note of the new spelling... she arrived minus the Y and with an I in her name... and don't for one minute be fooled by that put-upon expression.

New puppy - old house.

When selling a house and welcoming a new Guide Dog puppy coincide, life can get a bit hectic. Our new pup, Krystal, is due tomorrow and her arrival is coinciding with the first viewing weekend of our house sale. Mmmm! Two ways to look at this. Do you think of the pup as a selling point... to draw people in and make the place memorable... a bit like the Andrex puppies? Or do you take the advice of the agents and hide all evidence of dogs completely, especially their smell. But that seems crazy in a semi-rural property. Surely people coming here will want a dog, won't they?  Can we have a dog now, Mum? I can hear the kids in my head. (I have lots of potential buyers in my head.... just none on the ground, yet.) But no, agents assure me that the smell of coffee or bread baking (are you joking!) is preferable to the smell of dogs or puppy wee. And filling the air with the scent of floor cleaner and air freshener is a dead give-away that you're trying to cover up something.

Anyway, clearly a plan of action is required and husband needs to act quickly on my instructions as soon as the phone goes to inform us of a viewing. All puppy toys, bowls, blankets, 4-hourly feeds measured and bagged up, water, cleaning agents ... oh, and the puppy too.... will be bunged into the indoor kennel (cage) and the whole shebang lifted into the back of the car. Then we'll tootle off to who-knows-where until we get the 'all clear'.

Hang on, we've forgotten Sparky. Sparky is an ex-Guide Dog pup, now a 3 year old, who is having his holidays with us. He's a real gentleman, but boy, does he moult... so while husband is loading puppy et al into the car, I need to whip around with the vacuum cleaner and waft the doors open and shut a few times to encourage a bit of fresh air. Oh, and I mustn't forget a quick poo patrol in the garden. Guide Dogs are trained to use one area... but accidents happen.

Golly, gosh, I'm worn out already. And how many times are we going to have to go through this performance? It doesn't bear thinking about. And I bet husband will forget to put the toilet seat down.

Unwelcome Visitor

...and so I was just about to bend forward to clean my teeth when I noticed this unwelcome visitor! I don't know who got the bigger shock, me or him/her.

I'll assume this is a female, though I've no idea why I should think that. No doubt someone more enlightened will be kind enough to add a comment. Anyway, while she strutted about trying to decide which was her best side, I snuck off to pick up the camera.

I made my setting well away from the the subject, and with my eyes shut (because, had she moved towards me, I'd have jumped and dropped the camera) I held the camera at arms length, held my breath and pressed the shutter. She was a star. She never moved. What a poser!

What I don't understand is why I always encounter one of these intruders, in the bath or the wash basin, when my husband is away. And how do they get there? From the tap? I can't believe they walk the length of the pipes. My water comes from a borehole 200 feet underground. And at the other end, down the plughole, is the cess-pit, and that's a long walk, even for a creature with eight legs, through a pipe underneath the lawn - country plumbing.

It's only in a photograph that I can appreciate the beautiful markings on her back. In real life I daren't look closely enough.

Well, she's gone now. Husband came home and picked her up and put her out the window. But she's probably got a family somewhere all hoping to get in on the next photo-shoot.

PS. Perfectly harmless British house spider so I've always been told. Anyone know its proper name?



Krystal's Coming...

Krystal is my new Guide Dog puppy. She'll be with me on June 2nd. She's a black Labrador bitch and will be six and a half weeks old on arrival. Watch this space!

In the meantime, just like being pregnant, I have to prepare for the arrival. Check my fencing in the garden. Remind myself which plants are likely to cause tummy upsets. Check the bedding I have... do I need to buy any new? Check the toys for damage that may become a hazard... stuffing coming out, stitching weak etc. There's always the temptation when a new pup is due to splash out on new bedding and new toys. But really it's not necessary. Pups don't mind hand-me-downs. In fact they like the comforting scent of another dog on bedding and toys. After all, this is their first time away from their brothers and sisters. To find themselves in a bed for one after sharing with the entire brood must feel very strange.

Guide Dog pups are born in the homes of volunteer brood bitch holders and when they're six weeks old they say 'bye, bye' to Mum and their siblings and move on to the next stage of their development. They are transported to the Guide Dogs Breeding Centre where they undergo early diagnostic aptitude tests and have their first jabs, worming and micro-chipping. A busy time. All their paperwork, which will follow them all through their working lives, will be put in place here.

They will already have been allocated to a puppy walker, and after about 48 hours, they will leave the Guide Dog Breeding Centre and travel to the regional centre in the area of the country where they are to live during their puppy walking stage, which usually lasts until they are around 14 months old. The puppy walker will have been informed several weeks in advance of when to expect the pup and hopefully will have taken the opportunity to have lots of early nights and sleep-ins, because she won't get many more for a long while!

I didn't choose Krystal's name. Guide Dogs staff do that. Each litter is given a letter of the alphabet, so all pups in that litter will have names beginning with the same letter. For example, Krystal's litter will be known as the K litter 2011 and all her brothers and sisters will have names beginning with K. This helps to trace their origins in the future. Naming pups becomes difficult for X Y Z litters, and U is a problem too. Of course if you and your friends raise £5000 you get to name a pup yourself, and this name can begin with any letter. Some companies aim to do this as their annual fund raising challenge, and some people do it in memory of a loved one.

As well as its name, each pup has a computer number which identifies it and links to its records right throughout its life. But the reality of identifying one pup from another, when they're very young and all look alike, causes a few problem for staff members who have to deliver them to their puppy walkers. To get around this, so that puppy walkers are not given the wrong one, each wriggly little pup is marked with a dab of pink or green nail varnish and the whereabouts of this marker recorded next to their names on the list the staff member has when delivering pups. eg. pink, base of tail = Krystal

So Krystal may arrive with a splodge of pink nail varnish on the fur at the base of her tail. She'll bring with her a small piece of blanket or towel that has the scent of her mother and siblings on it... for comfort... although I've never known a pup who really needed it. She'll also have a new lead and collar, her Guide Dog tag engraved with her identifying computer number, a bag of food and a bag of worming and flea treatment. She'll have a health card that will display her computer number, her date of birth, her parents details, and the name of her puppy walker. This card follows her right through her life. It will tell me what food she is to be given and the amount. It will show me that she's been wormed and flea treated and that she's deemed fit and able to cope with the journey to the next stage of her development... meeting her puppy walker and finding her way around her new home. As she gets older, all her innoculations and any health issues or changes of food will be recorded on her health card for subsequent carers and vets to see.

She's bound to want to pee when she arrives. 'Spending' we call it. And I'll introduce her to the area in my garden where she is allowed to do this. She has to learn to spend on all types of surfaces: grass, gravel and concrete. And she has to learn to do it BEFORE we go out anywhere, and to hold on until we get home again. Clean walks are what we aim for. Of course it will take her a while to catch onto this routine. But she will. Eventually, she'll spend to the command 'busy, busy' (all puppy walkers use the same commands), but that's a long way off yet. To start with, she'll go through the usual house training routine that all pups go through.

So, when she arrives, she'll be tired, may be a little fretful, perhaps anxious. But she'll quickly make herself at home in a snuggly, cosy bed with a nice new fluffy toy... yes, I WILL buy her a nice new fluffy toy. Why not.

If you'd like more information about how Guide Dogs, with their 80 years experience, recommend training puppies, the above book tells all. Available through Amazon or http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/


 

Awards

Thanks to Laura for the Versatile Blogger Award! It seems I'm supposed to tell you 7 things about myself now. Mmm... where to start? Well...







1. I live with a foot in two countries.
2. I LOVE my volunteer role with Guide Dogs for the Blind.
3. I allow myself one coffee a day. A good strong one from a proper shop in a proper cup. (I  dislike  paper cups. Woops... that's number 3.5.)
4. I love the Almond Croissants they sell at Cafe Nero.
5. I'm learning to play the ukulele and loving it.
6. My shoe size is 2.5 or 3 so I have a weakness for shoes because they've always been difficult to find.
7. I keep my shoes in boxes.

Now I'm supposed to send an award to someone else... so I'll have to work out how to do that.

Daisy's Last Day

If you drop in to my blog space now and then you may have realized that I'm passionate about Guide Dogs and their training. It's wonderful to be involved in an organization that gives so much, not only to its end clients, but to its 11,000 volunteers.

I'm involved in the capacity of Puppy Walker and also of accredited Speaker, giving awareness-raising talks at schools, rest homes, work places, golf clubs.... you name it and that's where I go.

But the hardest part of all this is giving up the puppy that you've raised from 6 weeks old to 13 or 14 months. Yes, it hurts! And yesterday, Daisy left to start her new life, first at the Guide Dogs training centre, and then training with a potential blind partner with whom she'll live and work until she's about 8 years old.

It's always a painful time for Puppy Walkers. But we're so proud when we're invited to see our pups 'graduate' at the end of their advanced training.

Here's a little montage of Daisy's life as a pup.

All grown up now, at 13 months. Had her little operation. Out for a last fling with her boyfriend Sparky, who is the pup sitting on my lap at the coffee shop in my profile photo.

Relaxing with her Sparky on her last day before working life begins.  I'm sure she'll do well in her training.

Daisy... wishing you a happy life and a kind and thoughtful owner.

(Postscript: When Daisy arrived at the Guide DogsTraining Centre she found herself in kennels with her sister Dolly and brother Dixon. A family reunion. That was nice.)

 

X is for (e)xcuse.

I almost missed out the letter X. Well, I think I can be excused because I was actually up in the air on the X day... somewhere over the Arab countries I think... on a long haul flight from New Zealand to England. Wherever it was I was, my head was not with me and has still not quite caught up.

The first half of the journey was already under the belt. We did that Business Class with the points collected from previous flights. Actually, I don't think I'd ever PAY for Business Class. Not in real money, although points are currency these days, I do realize that. And it annoys me a bit when people get free upgrades when they've not even been collecting points, just because they arrive late at the terminal... when I've been collectiong points for years and can only manage an upgrade for half the journey every second year. Anyway, the seats in Business Class are far too big for me and no matter how I try to change the configuration I always manage to slide off them because I can't reach the floor and my head doesn't reach the head-rest, so I end up curled in a blanket down by the footrest somewhere. And to be honest, I don't need all that food and I certainly don't want all the interruptions to my film viewing. They do fuss over you a lot. Evertime anyone gets up for the loo cabin staff nip in and plump up the cushion and fold up the blanket... so I have difficulty, in the dark, finding my own seat once again. But it's nice to get on and off before the rush... so you can get to the toilets first and avoid the queue.

The second half of the journey we were in economy and those seats are much more suited to my height. It's an altogether jollier place to be and you can have a chat while doing your exercises at the back of the cabin. In Business Class people don't do exercises. And they don't talk. They just sleep.

Anyway, we arrived on time but unfortunately so did three other Jumbos and the Customs Hall was as packed as I've ever seen it. So was the M25. What a culture shock THAT is. If there's anywhere in Britain to avoid at all cost, stick a huge X on the M25 on your map.

So, that's my excuse for almost missing out on letter X. But I did slip it in at the end.