We Passed!!!

Last night the FCC (Faithful Canine Companion) and I passed The Kennel Club Good Citizen Dog Scheme Bronze Award exam.

It’s a good scheme that is basically set up go give people goals when training their dogs and some idea of what is polite, acceptable behaviour from dogs.

This means, we can now progress to the Silver Award which amongst other things will include coming away from distractions, controlled greeting (not jumping up at people) and standing still while being examined. Anyone who has met the FCC will realise just how much work we still have to do to enter for the silver. Be warned  – you may well be invited to help (we need a few people willing to play stooge for training the “controlled greeting” as the FCC knows not to jump up at me and the OH but gets very excited when we have visitors) is welcome to come for tea and cake!

The Silver Award will also involve walking along a pavement by a busy road. We don’t live near busy roads. We don’t have pavements. We don’t have street lights. The FCC has been taught to lay down on the verge when a car approaches. This is going to be an interesting one!

In the meantime, we’ll content ourselves with admiring our certificate and rosette.

Happy birthday to me…

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me-ee
Happy birthday to me!

At Last!

At last, we’ve had some snow. Not as much as I would have expected and not as much as I would have liked, but at least we did get some this winter.

A bit of a hasty panorama (sorry about that).

Believe it or not, 2 minutes before I took this I was in the middle of a blizzard – for the second day in a row. It was too warm to last though, with the sun melting it all within hours. The day before we’d has snow, sun, snow, sun… pretty much all day. At least this lot stuck around a bit longer.

The Chicken Coop pt1

I made a start on the chicken coop over the weekend.

This is the site where the finished coop will go. At the start of the day it was covered in pots of rhubarb and the chicken wire from the now dismantled puppy fence.

Once cleared, I spread out the frame material so I could sort and number it all

A few hours later, only one plaster but a nice collection of splinters, this is where I got to – then the battery in the screwdriver died. The frame is nearly complete – there’s 2 pieces to go in on the left side (where the hens’ entrance will be) and 5 more pieces to finish off the nesting box (the sticky-out bit on the right) then it’ll be cladding time!

I’ve never done anything like this before, but I’m pleased with the amount I got done and how it’s all shaping up. I can also see where I could make improvements to my woodworking skills.

My favourite road

Yesterday I had to go to the Moray coast to see a client. It’s a long journey, but I really don’t mind as in order to get there I have to drive along my favourite road.

Between Lumsden and Dufftown, there’s a road that goes through Cabrach and past the Grouse Inn. It cuts across open moorland, full of derelict crofts.

Strange when you think about it that I should find somewhere many would see as desolate and bleak, that’s full of the skeletons  of a once thriving landscape so inviting. I’ve no idea how I’d feel if I lived there – it’s a place of no half measures, when it’s sunny, it’s glorious, when it’s wet, it’s really wet – but there’s a very large part of me that would like one of those skeletons and bring it back to life, using sustainable technology. Make it part of the future, not just the past.