Back in action....

Wow..... time flies when you are having fun. The Munchkin has been back at training for several weeks and I'm only writing about it now. 

We took the puppies out to the Grass Farm at Cato Ridge and played with them. Our first point of order for the day was to do some search and rescue training with both dogs. Lisette hid at the edge of the reeds while the Munchkin watched - she found Lisette easily. Then we decided we would be clever - well, not so clever in hindsight. Lisette hid again and I took the Munchkin further up so she could search across the wind. She disappeared into the reeds. I couldn't see her, just heard her bells jangling as she tried to get through the reeds.  I then decided I needed to zig zag across the wind - all good in theory except that the reeds were taller than I am (and I'm not short). How on earth I expected to be able to walk through the reeds, let alone see the Munchkin at the same time, no one will ever be able to fathom. It was  a comedy of errors - I fell over into a bramble bush, the Munchkin jumped onto me from the back and pushed me over after that etc. She got very frustrated and started crying. However, we persevered and Electra eventually found Lisette. Talk about doing things the hard way. There is actually a bank around the reeds and you can walk the whole way around the big bed of reeds. If we had walked around the bed of reeds, the Munchkin would have found her victim easily (and I wouldn't be pulling bramble thorns out of my hands etc). We've learnt and won't be making that mistake again. 

It was actually Griffin that showed me that running on the bank around the reeds to find people is a good idea. He found Lisette very easily by running along the bank and darting into the reeds just in front of her. 

When the SAR part of the training was done, we did some recalls and some play drive, and a horrible down stay. Poor Munchkin..... it's not fun having to lie down quietly when there is lots of exciting stuff to explore.

In these photos the Munchkin and I are playing with her ball. Ouch, my fingers aren't fast enough :)

The Munchkin and Griffin lying down quietly. As you can see Griffin managed to tangle his lead round his head - he was being a silly :) The Griff has grown so fast that he is now known as "Jack the Giant". 

After all the hard work lying down quietly, the puppies went for a long walk. Guess what, they found a really smelly muddy dam. What's new? The Munchkin has a reputation for diving into any dam. And when Griffin is with her, well.... I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. Needless to say we have learnt to keep towels in the car to dry puppies with

Tired, wet, smelly puppies :)

In conclusion a fun day was had by all. The Grass Farm is an amazing training venue.

The following photos are of the next day - Sunday morning when we went to Pipeline beach, Amanzimtoti. The sea is not quite as calm as it is at some of the Durban beaches. I'm slightly relieved they didn't swim out or try and body surf in the big waves. The Munchkin jumps over the small waves and is learning to body surf back to the beach. These waves were just a tad to big for my liking.

The Munchkin is improving!!!!!

The Munchkin is getting better. The medication is horrible - she is sometimes rather miserable after she has been given it but we have to persevere otherwise the parasites will never die. We have also given her Bravecto so will hopefully avoid a recurrence of the dreaded tick bite fever (or Biliay for that matter). She still gets tired easily and sleeps a lot. The good news is that she was bouncing like the Electric Munchkin this morning, true to her name.

While we wait for the course of medication to finish we have been doing fun stuff like swimming in the sea and walking over and under obstacles etc. She even got to walk out on the new Fishing Pier near Snake Park Beach, Durban yesterday evening. The sea was rough but not washing over the pier. I was also amazed at how noisy the waves were. She wasn't bothered at all. In fact, my biggest problem would have been stopping her from jumping into the sea. Fortunately she is level headed and worked out for herself that it wasn't a good idea to try and jump off the pier. She is a water baby and loves water. I suspect she also has a healthy respect for crashing waves. Here is a photo of the Munchkin on the pier. You can see how rough the sea was. We stopped and watched the waves just in front of the fishermen.

When we had finished watching the waves, and talking to the fishermen (the Munchkin is such a beautiful dog, she attracts visitors), we wandered off to the beautiful gardens with water features and steps up and down. She walked up and down steps and around the water features. She posed for photos in front of a beautiful wall.... Doesn't she look beautiful?

Unfortunately, after this, it was time to go home.....