Wordless Wednesday - The New Hens

Harvest Time

Here in Yorkshire now the autumn has come all the vegetables and hay are being harvested. Behind our garden are fields of hay, sweetcorn, potatoes, turnips and carrots and there are tractors and lorries harvesting into the night. The photo is the view from our back lane.

The bales of hay may look small from a distance but they are pretty large really!

The sweet corn is tall too :-)

I didn't think I was going to get out of that field before those corn monsters got me!

Back home the tomatoes are ripening but they are not very good this year because there's been too much rain and not enough sun!

This red admiral butterfly in our garden is trying to get food before winter.

Here's hoping next summer is better!

Burton Agnes Gardens Part 2

It has been a little while since I could get back to blogging and you might have thought I had forgotten about the other photos of our visit to Burton Agnes Gardens. But here they are! I have many more adventures to tell you about too but for today here are some pictures of that lovely day out:

This man was just a statue all made of wire and working in the vegetable garden.

View through the gate

Crybbe and me setting off into the maze

Me just checking that we hadn't been through this bit of the maze before :-)

Back in the gardens - phew! - and some beautiful roses

A pretty butterfly...

...and an unusual fountain.

And then we spied the 'games gardens' - there was chess

draughts

and snakes and ladders - as you can see I landed on a snake and Crybbe got the ladder!

Then it was back to the cafe for a rest - and a bowl of water

The kind peeps at the cafe brought this specially for me - they must have thought I was VERY thirsty :-)

Hope you enjoyed these pictures - I will back soon with more adventures to tell you about.

Happy World Animal Day!

Affens at the Abbey

Leigh; I would like to say thank you so much for all your kind messages after my last posting. They were all greatly appreciated. Judith & I are still struggling with our emotions but I must admit a cloud has lifted here as far as our other dogs are concerned which has also been a bit shocking to realise how Caoimhe's illness was affecting them on a daily basis. Crybbe the 'top boy' affen clearly recognised his inability to challenge a dog twice his size and had withdrawn from much contact with the other dogs; Magic too had become more of a snoozer than an active girl and of course little Aoife was living with anxiety. Crybbe and Magic have suddenly become much more playful; Trilby is  calming down and re-bonding with her mum and Aoife. But Aoife is still suffering from the trauma and our priority now is to try and give her back her self confidence and reduce her fear. At present she is running upstairs to hide when anyone comes home until she knows Caoimhe is not with them and even when we take her out she runs to hide when we get back until she feels safe. Out of the house she is more confident so at the end of last week we took Aoife and Crybbe out for a trip to Fountains Abbey and they really enjoyed themselves in the magnificent ruins. Here are some of the pictures:

2 tiny dogs in the arch

A close-up

Stately ruins

Crybbe & Aoife

In the Abbey grounds

Affens by the lake

Magic will be back blogging very soon and is bursting with energy wanting to tell all her friends about her days out and other activities...:-)

Caoimhe Remembered

Message from Leigh: Sorry to all Magic's blog followers and friends that we have not been keeping up with your posts recently...or posting here either. It is because we have been through a very traumatic week since last weekend and I have been unable to pull myself together until now to do this post about our dear Caoimhe. 

As some of you may know Caoimhe came to us as a happy loving pup and all was just as would be expected until not long after her puppy vaccinations when she changed from a laid back curious fun-loving pup to being fearful, hyperactive, screaming rather than barking and at times quite aggressive. We spent a year trying every behavioural modification techniques and products to no avail having being initially advised by everyone we spoke to that Caoimhe's problems were simply a training/behaviour issue. After a frightening incident some months back when Caoimhe attacked our cats - on 2 separate occasions very aggressively - someone suggested that she might have suffered encephalitis as a result of vaccination and her behaviour could be a result of this. As our regular vets would not or could not help us with regard to any exploration of the vaccination reaction idea, we travelled to a homeopathic vet who confirmed after a 2 hour observation and consultation with Caoimhe  that the most likely explanation for her behaviour was encephalitis brought on as a reaction to vaccination . 

We were given a homeopathic remedy which initially showed very good results in that Caoimhe stopped the screaming, calmed down considerably from the hyperactivity and seemed somewhat less fearful on walks and in the house. However 3 months in and, despite times of calm and periods when we thought we were managing the situation, Caoimhe's aggression increased. We had kept the cats well away from her but she suddenly for no apparent reason attacked our affenpinscher Aoife. The screaming was terrible, the other dogs were in pandemonium, I managed to prise Aoife from Caoimhe's jaws whereupon she turned and bit me all over my hands. Aoife was cut, bruised and had lost some of her fur but although not seriously injured physically was badly traumatised. This was not the first time that she had attacked Aoife or bitten me and things seemed to be getting worse.  I could not get an appointment quickly to see the homeopathic vet again so we went to our regular vet who advised that (whatever the cause) with Caoimhe's mental state being so unstable - he likened it to human paranoid schizophrenia - she would only get worse, that there was no medication to treat this kind of mental illness in dogs and that for the safety of our own animals, ourselves and others, the kindest and safest course was euthanasia before serious injury was done.

The shock and devastation we have been through this week have been indescribable - I was so sure we would be able to help her even though looking back it was clear that things were very wrong with Caoimhe mentally and that our other animals were all suffering stress as a result of her behaviour and she was having a bad effect in many ways upon young Trilby. I will leave here a few pictures in memory of a sweet loving puppy that had a few  months of happiness before the illness took over and hope I have captured some of those other moments when she felt something of joy and not the mental anguish I think she must have been in for much of the time.

The day she came to live with us

A beautiful girl

Seeing snow for the first time

Running down the garden with Trilby in pursuit

A rare moment of peace this last week

Run free dear Caoimhe - you will never be forgotten and I hope that you are truly at peace now with no  pain, fear or anger to disturb your mind. 

When it is time for me to go 

And join her there, this much I know 

I shall not fear the transient dark 

For she will greet me with a bark. 


Author Unknown 

Burton Agnes Gardens Part 1

Hello friends - Magic back - with Crybbe - for another mammoth bloggy post :-) We went on a wonderful day out to visit Burton Agnes Hall in East Yorkshire 2 days ago and Leigh took so many pictures we will have to do 2 posts to fit even a few of them in! This place is pretty dog-friendly as you will see but we were not allowed in the House so all our day was spent in the woodland and gardens but it was great fun!

This is the gateway entrance to the Hall and gardens. It is a very old place that has been in the same family for 900 years!! The original house was built in 1173 by a man called Roger de Stuteville and is still standing but not used now:

This is the ground floor that was used for storage.

and this is the 1st floor up a tiny winding staircase.

But in the 16th century the family decided to upgrade their house and they built this:

It is very beautiful and the grounds were good to explore - we headed for the woodland first

where we found little sculptures of animals like these hedgehogs

and this owl. 

There were lots of strange bugs and things in the trees too - pretty big ones at that:

We even caught sight of a hare in the fields but it scampered away before Leigh could get a picture.

This was the view across the cornfields from the woodland.

As we headed back we saw these wind-chimes in the trees - you could hear them all through the woods.

Back in the gardens we decided to have a rest for a while under the trees:

I don't know what I'd done to upset Crybbe but he looks in a bit of a huff in this photo :-)

This was only part of our day at Burton Agnes so I'll post some more photos of our exploration of the flower and vegetable gardens, the maze..and the cafe soon.

Darlington Championship Dog Show

Hello bloggy friends - this is Caoimhe here today doing a post about my trip to Darlington Dog Show. As some of you may know I've been not very well after being vaccinated last year and I'm trying to cope with scary situations better with the help of some homeopathic treatment from a special vet. Yesterday my peeps took me for a day out to a big dog show to see if I would be able to manage in the crowds ..and even in the show ring. It was a sunny day so the showing was being done outside on the grass. Here I am being prepared for my go in the ring.

I had a good view of everything going on from up on the grooming table :-)

 

There were lots of dogs there of all shapes and sizes - not just schnauzers. Huge ones like this wolfhound:

 

 

and this borzoi:

 

 

Spotty ones - like these dalmations:

 

 

Laughing bull terriers:

 

 

Basset hounds like Fred & Gloria:

 

 

and mini schnauzers...like me...time for the ring!

 

 

I had to stand on a table to be examined - being a small kind of dog :-)

 

 

Well there were eleven of us in the ring and in the end the judge thought I wasn't one of the best :-( so I didn't get a rosette but my peeps were so happy with how I managed in the show ring and with all the other dogs they said I was a superstar anyway :-) We went for a tea break and saw these salukis lounging in their coats:

 

 

and then it was time to get back home. I could hardly wait to tell the others about my day:

 

 

Hurry up and pack the bags in the back!

And by the end of the day I was ready for a snooze in the sun:

 

 

Catch up with you all again soon :-)