April 24, 2010: My Dog Ate My Lunch
When I go travelling, I try as best as my chocoholism allows to eat 'healthy.' M&S (Marks and Spencer) is my favourite port of call, ahead of the likes of Burger King, MacDonalds and other fast food chains. Luckily, on my two most travelled routes - Scotland and London - I pass right by an M&S. This week Bailey and I trotted off to London. Three hours into the trip we landed at M&S. On the menu, as always, is a bottle of Belgian Chocolate Milk and an Egg and Watercress sandwich. I could do without the watercress in the sandwich but this value added piece of greenery allows M&S to justify charging a premium price. I don't quite know why I don't make an egg sandwich before I leave home; afterall, we are not short of chickens or eggs. Still, it is a bit of a treat to go to M&S, and a packet of chocolate brazil nuts sometimes magically appears in my lunch bag. Brazil nuts are healthy, aren't they?

Having left at the crack of dawn, I was ravenous by the time we reached the M&S. I raced in, grabbed my lunch, and raced back to the truck eating half of my sandwich as I went. I then sped off to the petrol station to fill up and continue on the journey. As I was pumping the diesel into the truck, I thought of my dog Roy who, when setting out sheep in Scotland last year, ate my lunch. I had put my filled roll down in what I thought was a safe place and went to get some sheep out of the pens for the next competitor. I came back to a piece of lettuce and some peppers, no filled roll. Roy seemed mighty pleased with himself but obviously lettuce and peppers were not to his liking. As I thought of Roy, I looked in the window of the truck and the second half of my egg and watercress sandwich was gone. Not a single crumb left; not even the watercress. Bailey looked very innocently at me. Serves me right! Just as well I had the bag of chocolate brazil nuts.

London was as always choked with cars, trucks and all manners of vehicles. Road works seemed to be on every stretch of road and the M25 was clogged due to an accident. Thankfully we were going in the opposite direction. Oh how nice it is to live in the country. One of the last towns I go through before reaching my destination is a town called Reigate which is a historic market town. Two things capture my attention in Reigate. The first thing is its two wind mills. The Reigate Heath windmill is thought to be the only windmill in the world which is a consecrated church and the Wray Common Mill which has been converted into a residence. I think there used to be many mills in Reigate and these were animal powered and produced oatmeal (perhaps that is why I like Reigate). The second thing that grabs my attention about Reigate is the name of the local Realtor: Cascoigne Pees. I can't help but smile when I see that name (warped sense of humour and all).

That reminds me...every day we try to spend time one-on-one with each of the young dogs instead of having them outdoors all day playing with each other. I was weeding the garden with Kiwi 'helping' and she suddenly disappeared inside to visit Keeper, Blade and Zoe. After a few minutes she came tearing out of the house and was eager to show me the spoils of her looting - a toilet roll. She disappeared just as quickly to the bottom of the garden to evade capture and recovery of said toilet roll. Pups are SO much fun and they get a kick out of the smallest of things.

I went to Bristol this week as well. Now I imagined Bristol to be this depressed industrial city that would be nothing but gloomy, but was pleasantly surprised at its modernity. The traffic was diabolical! Bristol is only on the map for me as it is home to Richard Montgomery, a very good sheepdog triallist. Richard is also the brother of Scotland's Sandy Montgomery who is one heck of a sheepdog handler, a super nice fella, and arch-rival when we run at Bobby's trials in Scotland. Sandy kicks our butts regularly and we all love it when he does.

Today was the annual Llangadog trial, which was the first trial we ever competed at in Wales when we first moved here. One has to get up at an ungodly hour to enter this trial. We got up in the dark to get the young dogs fed, walked and settled in again before heading out with a truck load of dogs. This trial is highly competitive with almost all of the big names in the South Wales area competing. The trial field and sheep are challenging and in the two years we have run this event we have always been called for standard. The curse of the beginner! Meg and Blade have run the event twice and neither of them have got the outrun right (which is odd as both are good outrunners). This year we both decided we would send our dogs out on the opposite side of the course to previous years. ...well, that was the plan but with all good plans, flexibility is essential. We both changed our minds after walking the right side outrun. No, we thought, left is better. Luckily both dogs went out well. Meg and I got around the course with an absolutely rotten ewe but it wasn't pretty. We did shed but had just 60 seconds to regroup the sheep and pen them. Not even a full court press could entice those sheep into the pen so we timed out. BUT, it is good to finally have a go at completing the whole course - and not be called for standard. There had only been two successful pens in the first 30+ runs! Blade had a good start with tricky sheep but Kelvin retired him after missing the cross drive gate. Jamie had a run to forget and was retired (he might have been disqualified. He went to grip but I'm not sure if he did! I walked anyway). We really enjoy this trial but today we left early because with all the travelling this week, work at home was piling up.

We spent the afternoon mowing the lawn - yes, twice in one week!!! - weeding the garden, planting lavendar, and getting our poly tunnel planted with fruits, vegetables and flowers. The young dogs and pups also got to spend the afternoon outside in the sunshine. This gives us a couple of hours of peace and quiet to get some work done inside this evening, if we can keep our eyes open long enough!