Just A Walkin The Dog!

You would not believe how hard I had to try to get a semi-decent photograph of my 'Lovely Lacey'.
You would if I showed you these though:

She is nearly as bad as photographing chickens.

She is highly suspicious of me with a camera and just does not like to sit still or look at the camera.

We had lacey when she was about 7months old...we can't quite remember how old she is now but we think she is six or seven.  We were her third owners and she was a bit of neurotic bag of naughtiness.  She was totally unplanned but 100% meant to be our dog.  For once it was not me nagging for a pet...my partner 'liberated' her from her previous owner who could not 'cope' with her.  Lacey was used to being left in a flat for too long while her owner worked.  Lacey had rather big issues.  She chewed everything...walls (repeatedly), tables, chairs, carpet, people!  She was also incredibly rough around the edges and clumsy.  The day she met Euan she knocked him flying in the garden and he had an egg lump on his head!  He didn't like her for days.  I knew we had to find a way to keep her though.  I knew she had the potential to be a really 'good' dog.  I also had a very old 'Sausage Dog' that was blind and deaf and diabetic.  He could only travel by 'pet pushchair' and needed lifting in and out of the house.  Lacey hated him, but he loved her.  I used to get up at 5am every morning to sort the old dog out, check his blood sugars, inject his insulin and feed him.  Then I would take Lacey for a walk.  She was a bit skittish at first but exercise really sorted her behaviour issues out.  I realised if she was exhausted she had no behaviour issues!  A bit like kids really.  The trouble is it exhausted me in the process.  She has some medical issues that took over twelve months to get to the bottom of and cost a fortune to 'diagnose'.  She can only eat prescription food, which I don't like but anything else makes her very ill, she was underweight for over a year.  She is ticking over nicely now though.
         We have a lovely dog.  She is a very good girl and has a personality like Eeyore.  We hardly know we have got her.  When you take her for a walk she completely comes alive and turns into something more like 'Tigger'.

  I am finding it hard to get motivated to go out as everywhere is wet and muddy.  I do worry about falling on my behind when I am squelching along in mud like this.

Once I am out though I can appreciate the fresh air, the Autumn colours and the antics of my dog.

Lacey knows where we are going and likes to run far ahead.  She is on the look out for pigeons, squirrels, rabbits, blackbirds and big sticks.

These look like 'Fun Guys'.  Sorry I just couldn't resist!

Lacey likes to charge off in the woods.  She disappears.  I can never find her with my eyes but I can hear her coming back, thundering along like a steam train.  There is nothing graceful about this dog.  She came back yesterday looking particularly pleased with herself, covered in mud with an earthworm on her head!  I can only imagine what she had been up to.

This is quite a steep hill and she looks at me as if I am daft as I pick my way carefully down the hill trying to stay on my two feet.

I came across 'a murder of crows'.  Isn't that a cool collective noun?  There were about twenty of them and they were making a terrible racket!  Sounded like a Hitchcock movie.  There is something 'spooky' about crows...I do not know what was bugging these fellas but it sounded like a 'murder'.
             Lacey is very cheeky when it is 'back on the lead time'.  She pretends not to hear me.  She keeps taking steps away from me making it tricky for me to catch her.  The only way she will listen lately is when I say 'Oi' in a cross voice, then she will stand still.  I wish we could come to a more amicable agreement.  Her recall is good, I generally only have to whistle her and she will come back.  It is just the 'Lead on' time she doesn't like.  The lead signifies her transition from Tigger back to Eeyore and she walks home with her head bowed looking like someone who's world has just fallen apart.  It is embarrassing to be walking down the street with such a dejected looking creature.   Her idea of heaven would be to stay out and play all day.

          Here is our ordinary little street.

We live at the house with the 'Woodpecker Knocker'.  I bought this at an Amish Community in Pennsylvania many moons ago.  As a child my Aunt and Uncle had one just like it and I loved it.  I was delighted to find my own 'Woodpecker Knocker'.  I don't have a door bell and some days this woodpecker is very busy.  The kids calling for my kids love him and even when the door has been answered they still like to make him peck!  So if ever you are passing we are the house with the Woodpecker knocker...feel free to pass on by to give me a 'knock'!  If I don't answer the door shout over the gate as I could be in the garden chatting to chickens.