Afternoon Tea With Gracie

Hello bloggy friends - this is Trilby taking over from my Mum Magic today as I had an exciting afternoon on Saturday visiting my little sister Gracie. This is me lounging in the garden of her new family :-) Gracie was my youngest sister and this is a photo of just before she left us for her new home:

Well she has grown up a bit now and I was so excited to see her again and to meet her new peeps:

We had a bit of getting to know each other again:

And then it was PLAYTIME!

At first we had lots of zoomies round Gracie's huge garden and games of tug with her stuffies and then she needed a drink as it was so hot!

and then - OMD Judith decided Gracie needed a fur-cut :-( 

......and she got out her little bag of tools to show Gracie's Mum how to do it!!

Poor Gracie - this wasn't the afternoon fun she had been hoping for!

I thought that's blown it - Gracie's not going to want us back again now!

But she did have quite a lot of fur and it is getting very hot here now so I think she agreed it might be a good idea to go a bit shorter - and it is very slimming too :-) 

Anyway we did get plenty of time to play again while the peeps had their tea and cakes:

Sharing a chew together

Playing with the stuffie

And just chilling

So this is Gracie now looking all grown up - I do hope it won't be long before we can see her again. Thank you to her peeps for inviting me and my peeps over for afternoon tea - we had such a lovely time :-)

Fairburn Ings

Today looked like being a bit rainy by the afternoon so my peeps decided to have a quick visit to Fairburn Ings while the sun was still shining and they took me along for a little outing as it's been a VERY long time since I've been out and about!

Fairburn Ings is one of the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) reserves here in Yorkshire and they have lots of ducks and swans as well as other little birds and dogs are allowed on lead:

I read the notice about not feeding bread to the ducks:

And checked out the coot mother with her chicks:

And then we set off for a wander round the reserve, past the creepy crawly hotel :-(

The creepy crawlies can live there but I don't think I would want to! We saw some lovely wild flowers growing:

Yellow irises

And a wild rose

And we saw the fences for peeps to hide behind and look through the gaps to see birds in the woods and by the lake:

And I managed to get in a bit of furtling along the way:

We had a lovely stroll and just got back to the car before the rain came down. Here are some more photos Leigh took on our walk :-)

A big wooden carved frog

A mallard 

The wild flowers by one of the little lakes

Me watching the ducks

A lovely swan

Feeling the wind in my beard

All in all a good morning out :-)

The Big Op

Hello bloggy friends - I'm back and able to do a little update on what has happened to me these last few days. Leigh might have told you that I was due to have a big op last week...well then it got cancelled! Our regular vet was away and my peeps didn't want a vet they didn't know doing such a major surgery on me so I had to wait until this week - yesterday in fact.

Leigh took me down in the morning and the worst thing was no food!! Can you believe it? Just when you want cheering up with some tasty foodables, the peeps say 'Nothing to eat because of the operation'  :-( Well no wonder I was so weak and down when Leigh brought me back home:

I couldn't walk very well and had to be carried wrapped in a blanket and then I didn't think I could get out of the car crate so Leigh carried it indoors with me inside and put me in the quiet room away from the others to rest. She gave me some little tablets called homeopathic pills to help me recover from the anaesthetic (Sulphur and Nux Vom) and then some more later to help get over the surgery and pain (Arnica and Hyp/Cal) Leigh has a little pet box of these tiny pills to help make us feel better at times like this :-)

I slept in the crate overnight near my peeps but I was so tired I didn't wake up until morning...and I was feeling a bit peckish to say the least! As you can see I have been lucky enough not to have to wear a cone as long as I try and forget about the stitches - I have that little Tshirt again which I wore to stop my pups from suckling when they were weaning :-) Well, I had some breakfast - at last! and I got to lick out Crybbe's bowl when he wasn't looking:

So I just have to rest now and be pampered for a while until I get better. My peeps think I will be much happier once I get over the op as I won't need to worry about bleeding and hormones every 6 months, and Crybbe getting all wound up and wanting us to have babies together, and I can just enjoy myself as a schnauzer of leisure :-) The last pic is from before the op when I looked a lot smarter - I'm a bit bedraggled just now but hopefully not for too long!

Affen Day Out

Magic is taking some time out from blogging just for a few days as she is going to the vets tomorrow to be spayed. Hopefully she will be up and about again very soon and able to share her adventures again but, in the meantime,  Aoife and Crybbe would like to share some photos  from their day out at Burton Constable this Sunday:

Burton Constable Hall is an Elizabethan country house with some lovely open spaces to wander round with your dogs. The day we went there was also an archery contest happening with many people dressed for the occasion :-)

Crybbe & Aoife were as pleased as us to see a welcome sign on the tea-room door:

One end of the stable cafe and gift shop is designated for dogs and their owners to be able to sit under cover and enjoy a snack whatever the weather.

As well as the archery contest another surprise was seeing  the remains of the skeleton of a 58.5 foot long sperm whale that was stranded on the nearby coast in the early 19th century. At one time it had been on display in the grounds but can now be viewed in the stable block.

Crybbe checking it out.

The grand orangery

  

Aoife and Crybbe on the orangery steps

The pet cemetery behind the orangery

Some alpacas shorn for the summer :-)

Crybbe and Aoife exploring the tall grass

Among the trees we also found a whale inspired sculpture:

 and lots of pretty wild flowers like these red campions:

 as well as a sheep trying out a tree stump to get a better view :-)

Hope you enjoyed the photos. See you again some time - Crybbe & Aoife :-)