Paws in the Park

The season is over!! Now I can go out socialising again - so on Sunday we all set off to Nostell Priory which is a big National Trust property about 20 miles from our home:

There was a Paws in the Park event there raising money for Hearing Dogs for the Deaf - that's a charity that trains dogs to assist deaf people around the home and when they go out shopping and things like that

There was a little display for everyone to see how the dogs work at their tasks:

This dog was showing how to wake his owner up when the alarm goes off in the morning. Haha - we're a lot cleverer than that - we can wake our humans up even before the alarm goes off!
Anyway - Judith & Leigh bought some tombola tickets and they both won a soft toy dog - which was good news for us:



 The only trouble was - 2 toys and 4 dogs!  As you can see I didn't get a look in once Kaska and Aoife had claimed theirs! Kaska really liked the St Bernard dog toy and he lay down on the grass guarding it:

It was VERY HOT  and we had to keep having a rest in the shade of the trees with our bowl of water:

 And Judith & Leigh had ice creams to keep cool - we all had a taste of the ice cream too before we got in the car to come home - it was lovely and cold! A good first day out even if it was hot.

Photo Scavenger Hunt - June

As I have not been able to go out and about as usual this week I decided to send Leigh and Judith off to do some scavenging for the Photo Scavenger Hunt and here is what they came up with :

Childhood Memory - this book was a present for Leigh on her 6th birthday a long long time ago but it has been her favourite book ever since. She especially liked the wise fox (not a schnauzer?) who tells the little prince 'You become responsible forever for what you have tamed' and 'It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is is invisible to the eye.'

 Something with your town's name on it. We don't live in a town but here is a local sign with our village name. There are quite a lot of owls round here - we hear them hooting at night outside the window.

An elephant - or 4 wooden elephants which Judith brought back from a holiday in India.

Wheel Trim - on Leigh's Corsa.

Architectural detail - this is the emblem of Selby Abbey and is set in one of the walls. Selby is about 5 miles from our village - it is a very ancient town and the abbey was founded in 1069 by Benedict of Auxerre after he saw 3 swans on Selby Lake and thought they represented the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Cheese - some of Judith's favourite cheeses.

Cutlery - the 'best silver cutlery' for special occasions!

A Night Shot - taken in the back garden last night. A scary stone owl by the solar lamp in the lavender.

Something beginning with Z - it had to be Zeta ( also called Little Z) - she crossed the Rainbow Bridge two years ago this week but is always remembered with love.

 Tree branches - these are in one of our silver birch trees in the back garden.

 A farm animal - a sheep in the field by Castle Howard, Yorkshire.

 View from outside the door - at the back of our house. This is probably the best picture because you can see me and Aoife (well just about).

Here's one last picture of me too - I hope to blogging about more of my adventures soon!

Garden Bugs and Tadpoles

I'm still not over this season thing but the weather's been good and I can go out and explore the garden every so often. There are so many little creatures visiting the flowers now - like the bees:

and a Gatekeeper butterfly:

and this red and black froghopper on the lavender:

I think he may be too early to hop over any frogs though because when I looked in the pond I could only see tadpoles!

and this one looks as if he's looking out for the frog hopper:

When I was little and the pond was very new Alfie Crybbe persuaded me to try and walk on water - well that was a mean thing to do but luckily Leigh was on hand to fish me out quick and give me lots of cuddles and sympathy. Affenpinschers have a wicked sense of humour. Here's Aoife looking sweet but thinking up another little scheme I'm sure:

Still counting the days for my season to finish...

'Tis the Season..not so jolly!

Sad to say there are no great adventures this weekend as I've been told it is my season. I don't really know what that means but they tell me it's a girl thing - I don't feel very wonderful and I can't play with Alfie Crybbe even though he really really wants to. In fact, worse than that even, me and Alfie have to take turns being shut in the show crate. When Alfie's in I can run about and play but when I'm in it Alfie sits outside the crate and guards me so no other animals - dogs or cats - can come near. Last time I had to go in Aoife thought she would come and join me - I think she reckons it's a bit of a game!

Do we look like sad abandoned creatures - I'm doing my best to look as if nobody loves me - although they do give me titbits sometimes when I'm in here and extra cuddles when I'm out.
Anyway to make this more interesting I thought I could show you some pictures of the garden - the vegetables are coming up now and the flowers round the pond are blooming:

The potatoes are getting nearly ready to take up - they are growing in big black bags on the patio:

And down in the vegetable plot there are raspberries:

And peas and beans and carrots coming up in the raised bed:

The vegetable plot is the favourite place for Lace, one of our cats, to spend the day. I think she likes it because we dogs can't get in there and she can have the garden bench to lie on in the sun. Here she is guarding the onions:

The hens are enjoying themselves too in their run - they like digging everything up - as much as us dogs so they are locked out of the vegetable plot too. Here they are looking for seeds that have fallen from the bird feeder:

And here is a couple of the eggs they left for us in their nest box:

We dogs all get a morsel of scrambled egg and a bit of bacon after Judith & Leigh have had their breakfast and I can say the eggs are very tasty. Well I'm hoping this season thing doesn't last much longer and I can start having days out and about again..maybe next weekend.

Girls' Day out in York

Yesterday Judith & Leigh took me and Aoife on a girls' day out in the city of York which is about 14 miles from the village where we live. It was part of Aoife's socialisation programme to meet more new sights and sounds and things and turned out to be a bit of a 'school trip' as York has many historic sites.

This is Judith holding me and Aoife just as we started our tour of the city. You can see the river behind us so Judith had to hold us tight so we didn't fall over the battlements. We were on the city walls and people are allowed to walk all round them but not dogs! - the path is very narrow and they think we would fall off. The river is the River Ouse and when I was a little puppy I was taken on a boat trip on it which was great fun.

This is the river from the bridge. You can see some of the boats along the bank. Last winter it froze over and the ducks and swans had to walk on the ice.

This is a picture of York Minster which is the largest gothic cathedral in northern Europe - they started building it in the 1220s and it took 250 years to finish! It is huge - and they don't let dogs in there either so we had to just look at it from outside. We did get to walk round the food market though which was really much more interesting anyway. There were stalls from all over the world there cooking and selling food - curries and paella and meat and cakes and ...just every yummy thing you could think of. The best stall of all was the sausage stall - it had so-o many different kinds and huge great big sausages hanging up:

I thought we could have bought a large goody bag from there but sadly the only thing we came back with was some cakes for Judith & Leigh and some flowers for the garden. I think on the next girls' day out I should do the buying! After we toured the market and stopped and talked to many people on the way, we went to see Clifford's Tower which is a stone castle keep on a high hill which was built in the 13th century after the old wooden one which William the Conqueror built 200 years before was burned down.

 It also seemed to be a place where geese lived with their babies:

The geese kept wandering into the road and the cars had to stop for them. They seemed quite at home there:

We were getting really tired by this time and so we headed back home on the bus. It was the first time on a bus for me too this visit as last time I went to York with Judith & Leigh we went on the train:

Hope you liked our little historical tour of York - it was fun and we did get a lovely special lunch when we got home so we didn't really miss out on the goodies.

Visit to Hartlepool

Yesterday we all travelled north to Hartlepool to visit Pat's house. This was where Kaska was born and his younger sister Teasel still lives there with Tulle and Harris (all mini schnauzers). They didn't know what to make of Aoife leaping about like a black furry jumping bean. Alfie Crybbe was very happy to go though because when he first visited he fell in love with Teasel and he loves to go and see her. She's not bothered with him at all though - poor Alfie:

Here she is pretending not to know he's there.
Here are some other pictures of the Hartlepool schnauzers:

Another picture of Teasel. Can you see she looks a bit like our Kaska. Here's Kaska at the back door - he couldn't get up the step with his weak legs:

 This is Tulle - she's looking a bit grumpy. I don't think she was too happy when we all turned up to play in their back garden:

And this is Harris who is a handsome boy and was very interested in meeting me - I had to climb on Leigh's lap when he got too friendly!

And this is me trying to stop everyone from coming in the patio door:

We had a fun day in Hartlepool and were very tired when we got back but we enjoyed meeting our schnauzer friends there - and playing with their toys!

Friends and Visitors

As well as going out and about, we have had quite a lot of people visiting us recently - friends and fanily:

This is one of my human friends called Euan - he likes to play with me in the garden when he comes to visit and his favourite game is to do high fives with Kaska. Kaska could do that all day but I'm not a high five sort of dog. I prefer running around on the lawn and playing chasing games.Tomorrow we are going to visit our human and doggy friends in Hartlepool when we go back to where Kaska was born. We go quite often to see the lady who had Kaska's mother, Match ( and her sister Maisie) and we get to play with her mini schnauzers. I will put some pictures of them in my next blog.
Also I wanted to say a special thank you to Oscar and Rubie for your messages because I've not been able to leave any comments back ! I do follow your blog and love to hear all your adventures but something doesn't work when I try to leave a comment. So until we can get it sorted - just know I am following your blog and I'm glad to know you're enjoying mine.

Hi to Dexter & Louis, Momo & Pinot and Santa's little gang too - I love all your tales too and luckily I can leave you some comments! And hello Jana - my schnauzer friend from Newcastle who doesn't have a blog yet but does follow mine. Wow I feel like I've just won an Oscar with this little speech! Happy blogging :-)