Harvest Festival Time

Here are some of the tomatoes Leigh & Judith have grown this year. Some are huge and some really tiny and it's the tiny ones we like to pick off the vine!

Caoimhe trying her first!

Aoife getting into her second!

Licking the juicy bits out of the middle...and then a bit of sweetcorn for afters:

Tastes good:

Sadly while they were all tucking in I was so tired I had taken a nap in the house...and fallen out of the bed..and had my picture snapped when I didn't know anything about it!

Can't a girl have any privacy?

Thorp Perrow Arboretum

Today the weather has become very sunny again and we all went out for a family outing to Thorp Perrow Arboretum. Dogs are allowed in on leads so we were very excited to look round. But first we had to pose for a photo opportunity by one of the wooden carvings:

From left to right that's Alfie Crybbe, Kaska, Aoife, Caoimhe and me!
The arboretum is huge and there are lots of paths to explore and smells to investigate. There are pretty views:

With topiary gardens:

And bright maples:

As it is autumn here there are also fungi appearing everywhere like this collection on a tree trunk:

But also pretty autumn woodland plants like this cyclamen:

As well as the plants there were statues all through the woods - just when we were busy sniffing rabbits - whoah - there's a stone king!

And in the stream there was a carved heron:

We walked and walked and even Kaska climbed out of his stroller to have a wander. I tried to keep a look-out for likely furtling areas:

And then when we sat down for a rest I found a tasty chewing stick to share with Caoimhe:

All in all a good day out. We would be happy to visit Thorp Perrow again one day.

To show or not to show?

Well I thought I'd better come clean about my last show. Bad news all round - I came 6th out of 6. It couldn't have been any worse. I was so ashamed of my scrappy little beard I hated everyone looking at me when I had all these smart schnauzers with their long beards showing off and ..well that was it really.

Worse still was that my little sister Aoife the affenpinscher has been sweeping the board at the shows she's gone too even though she's only a baby. In her first show at the Scottish Kennel Club in Edinburgh she got Best Puppy in breed:

Then she came second in the puppy class at Darlington show and she qualified for Crufts at the Birmingham Championship show - all when she's only just over 6 months old.

She just has that kind of face that people love and she does strut her stuff in the show ring better than me. There's been talk of me not going to shows any more. My sister Caoimhe thinks she'll make a better show girl than me and says I can just blog about her when she starts winning prizes like Aoife. So maybe I will just become a social networking kind of schnauzer and write about things that we do here at the doghouse. Leigh says I don't need to win rosettes to be special  and I should just enjoy life and not worry about that scene any more. So to show there's no hard feelings - I do love them both really - here's a picture of my two little sisters sharing a seat in the conservatory:

Visit to Fountains Abbey

Today I went to visit Fountains Abbey with Alfie Crybbe as Judith was on holiday from work. Sadly as you will see from our pictures it was pouring with rain - but it was still a good day out - there aren't many good places like this that will let us dogs come in. Plenty of furtling opportunities here as there had been rabbits and pheasants about for sure.

Fountains Abbey was founded in 1132 and these are the largest monastic ruins in Britain. They are huge!

Here we are exploring inside - there are lots of passageways and huge windows and cloisters and altars all broken down but great to explore.

After we had walked round the abbey we set off to Studley Royal Park which is alongside the abbey. We had to go over this narrow little bridge as there are lots of man-made lakes in the Park and it is very beautiful with statues and lots of water birds - Canada geese and swans and ducks:

We had a stop for lunch and had to sit out in the rain as dogs weren't allowed in the cafe - but Judith & Leigh sat out with us and we got little snacks of cheese and ham to keep us going. On the way back Leigh took some pictures of 2 swans on one of the lakes:

 and a view of the lake up to the bridge with little waterfalls:

We were out for 3 hours and this is me when we got back to the car - just to make it worse they had been cutting the grass so I got lovely green socks too!

 I had to travel back in the crate with Alfie Crybbe so I didn't get the car seat to dirty. We had already decorated Judth & Leigh's trousers with lovely pawprints in mud. Happy days!

More scarecrows!

Hello fellow bloggers - this blog is by me Caoimhe (Magic's younger sister). Magic is being groomed ready for a big show on Friday so she let me put some pictures up today. This is another scarecrow blog as I had a trip out to Monk Fryston village yesterday with Judith & Leigh and we checked out their scarecrow festival.

 They said it was to try and socialise me too - I still like barking at other dogs and sometimes at people if I don't like the look of them! Anyway my treats for being good had been left at home by mistake so Leigh tried to get some at the local shop but no luck - except when they knew what was needed they said 'Have a bag of off-cuts'. Well 'off-cuts' means bits of lovely meat left over from when they were slicing it for sandwiches so I was kind of glad my other treats got left behind. See the size of the bag:

Well the sight of all that yummy meat kept me pretty quiet even when I was threatened by Darth Vader:

and watched by a scary sheep:

A pilot from Thunderbirds dropped by:

And in one street there were scarecrow Olympics!

Hurdlers and cyclists:

and even swimmers!

Well I hope you enjoyed the scarecrow pictures. I expect Magic will be back to blog after her trip to the big show. Magic doesn't think she'll do very well 'cos I've pulled all her beard out but she does have a tasty beard - even if there's not much left of it now. I can see I'm going to be in trouble again if she does badly!

Girls just wanna have fun

A little while ago I mentioned that Leigh & Judith had taken over running the Northern Schnauzer Club shop and that has been taken up more of Leigh's time this week. I have had a few walks up to Hambleton Hough which is a woodland near our home but nothing very exciting. So us girls decided to have a bit of fun among ourselves:

Me and Caoimhe had a tug of war with a flowerpot and guess who won..not me! Then Caoimhe had a good roll in the grass and a game of bitey face with Aoife:

And when Leigh gave us some rawhide chews to keep us quiet, Caoimhe decided after a good chew she would bury the rest in the patio sweetcorn bag:

Just as well the sweetcorn didn't really grow this year after the drought we had here. So then we all went indoors and thought we would try and help with the housework. No need to be wasting energy putting on the dishwasher, we can get those plates sparkling clean. In fact are those our dinner bowls in there when we could have been licking them some more!

And after all that we upturned the toy box and had another play before falling asleep:

Not a bad day really - and if you want to see Leigh & Judith's shop they've got it online now too and on Facebook. The website address is:
http://www.freewebstore.org/Northern-Schnauzer-Club-Shop

Morris Dancers and Riverboats

Today I took Caoimhe with me to show her the sights of York City and what sights there were! We saw Morris dancers from all over :

There were these ladies in green and these wild men, women and children with strange costumes:

This scary looking man:

and these happy dancers.Can you see the man with flowers in his hat at the back?

They were all making such a noise. After we watched them for a while Judith & Leigh decided it was time for a river boat trip so we set off down to the boat landing but - we had just missed one so we had to sit on the river bank for a while and have some lunch. There is a riverboat cafe there:

And we could keep an eye out for the boat coming. Caoimhe even thought she might get a better view from my back!

And then - there it was coming towards us:

The boat was called the Captain James Cook and the Captain himself came to welcome us aboard. I had to check out the best seats:

And decided we should sit right in the front at the top so we could get the best views. Here is a picture of Caoimhe on Judith's lap and me by the rail:

Once we got started I checked out what was going on along the river:

We travelled up the river and then back down the other side under big bridges and past lots of old buildings. On one of the bridges there is an angel:

She looks down on you as you pass under the old bridge:

All in all it was a good day out and Caoimhe and me fell asleep in the car on the way home!

I thought I would finish with a last shot of me on the boat sniffing the breeze for ducks and dogs along the riverbank.