A week of labradors, stress and fantastic agility training!

It's been a long and stressful week at Born 2 Run HQ! The week started with the usual chocolate labs in the house, Charlie and Meg. Meg is 9 months old and in season (on her second week, so at the most fertile!) and Charlie is 2 years old and entire! They come from different families but I have them both on a Monday and a Tuesday. Obviously I had to keep them separate which wasn't as easy as it sounds! Charlie thought his luck was in and a little thing like Meg being in another room wasn't deterring him!  Meg had been booked in for her spay but came into season the day before the op! Typical!

Big boy Charlie! I think he weighs more than me!

This is Meg giving Brae a cuddle

My friend Maureen from Trophy Pet Foods helped out with Meg by having her for a few hours until Charlie went home. then, another lab joined the pack in the afternoon! Taz the black lab was coming to stay for a few days. Taz is 8 months old and absolutely gorgeous! Of course he hasn't been for the old snip yet either so this caused tension! Charlie thought he had absolute rights to Meg's remaining smell and told Taz all about it! They did settle down and started playing after Charlie realised how submissive Taz was.

Taz

Then, Brae decides to show Taz how to obsess over the rabbits. She shows him how to stare at them until they move and then how to try and nip them through the bars! Taz thinks this is a great game, the rabbits, Boy Florence (he was named before I was sure he was a boy. He was pretty so I thought he looked like a Florence!) and Poppy thought otherwise!

The very pretty Boy Florence!

So after dogs in season, dogs scrapping and dogs running wild in the garden after the waskerley wabbits, I see my cat, Sullivan in the garden spraying up against the compost bin. I go over to wash it off and notice that it has a red tinge to it. He has had cystitis before so I whipped him indoors and rang the vet for an appointment. He also has an upper respiratory infection that keeps recurring and it makes him sneeze and wheeze!
When the time came to get him into the carrier to go to the vets, he was no where to be found! I called him, I rattled his biscuits, his tin of food, nothing. I went outside and did the same, nothing. So after 20 minutes of looking in every room and calling him I finally gave up. I called the vets and canceled his much needed appointment. By this point I was thoroughly fed up and worried about the cat.

After walking Millie, Brenna, Brae and Taz I went and had a much needed relaxing bath. It was while I was in the bath reading my book that I heard a familiar wheeze! Sullivan was only under the bath! There's a missing panel at the end and he'd somehow managed to squeeze himself in! He then went very quiet and I couldn't hear the wheezing. I panicked that he was really ill under there and asked my other half Graeme to pull the rest of the panels off so I could get him out!
We started pulling the panels off and when there was a big enough space I poked my head in with the torch, expecting to see a very ill cat. Instead, I saw a very relaxed Sullivan staring back at me! He then sloped out and went to his food bowl to stuff his face!

Sullivan is so laid back he's horizontal!

After all that I finally got Sullivan to the vets on Tuesday. He's on a course of antibiotics and metacam and I'm still trying to get a urine sample off him! Trying to keep him in the house is a nightmare, he dives out at every opportunity!
Meg came to stay Tuesday and Wednesday and with help from Maureen I managed to keep her away from the boys. Meg is actually getting a big brother, her owners are acquiring a 14 month old black lab called Xander to keep Meg company. He's entire so can't move in with his new family until Meg's season is finished. That's one more labrador to add to my books, making 6 labs in total!
Charlie went in for the snip yesterday and I'm just waiting to hear how he is. Two stones lighter I can imagine!

Wednesday was a much better day, stress wise. I was still busy but it was a productive day! I took Brenna and Brae to agility training at 5.45pm. It was Brenna's class first, she's in the improver class, with Brae being in the beginners class.
Both dogs did so well considering we've missed a lot of training recently. Brenna was measured into large so has to jump the large jumps. This was a struggle for her at first as we'd spent a whole year jumping medium height, but she is improving every week on the large jumps. We've already had our first competition but we only did one run in the 'any size jumping' class. Brenna did very well and came second in her class of 17!!

Brenna at our first competition, 02/04/11

Our first rosette!

We have our second show on the 28th May. It's any size jumping again but I'm still looking forward to it.
Brae will be old enough to be measured in July but I already know she'll be measured into large. She was a little superstar at agility practice, she jumped full height, she turned left when I told her and watched me closely for changes in body language. Considering we've missed a month of training classes she did very very well! I even got a compliment from the trainer Shaun, which made my day!

Brae practicing her contacts

Then the weaves!

So after a mad week with lots of labradors and stress, it's ending quite well with me being so proud of my agility girls! They did however, get a baby rabbit at the agility field today :-(
It died as I was taking it home to see to. Dogs will be dogs and unfortunately baby rabbits just aren't fast enough to out maneuver Brenna and Brae.
Tomorrow I have Kito the bearded collie and Benji the collie cross coming at 8am for the day. Both are lovely dogs and I think it will end my week nicely!