Now. Where were we?

Ah yes. The Cheese box. It's finished!

Front
(the little black pup with the toilet paper in his mouth - above the 2 yellows - is there in honour of our special ex-foster boy, Tucker ;o) )

Back

Side

Other side

Top

Inside

Inside with "stuff" added

I had LOTS of fun decorating it and incorporated a lot of the Christmas cards that we had received as well. The only problem is that I've had my birthday since these photos were taken and I received lots more labrador/Cheese related pressies so the box is now actually at capacity!! I really love having something special here just for Cheese though  :o)

Next month, we're off to Crufts for 2 days to meet up with friends, check out all the cool dogs, maybe see the beautiful Lara in action, watch some friends showing their dogs and to do ~ maybe ~ a teeny tiny little bit of shopping  ;o)  I did mention to Sophie that I would HAVE to buy something to put away for Cheese. Her response? "You can barely make it out of the supermarket without buying something for him so why would I expect you to leave somewhere like Crufts empty handed"!! LOL! At the moment, the only thing that I have in my mind that I want to get is an octopus, but I'm keeping an open mind and am happy to be swayed. And I'm not *that* bad ~ I've only bought collars and a lead so far! It's just all my lovely friends that can't resist  :oP

I need to spend some time scoping out training classes, which could be tricky. The puppy classes that we attended with Moss and Casey were run through our vets and they were AWFUL. The trainers were firm believers in the outdated dominance theory and frequently told us that our tiny yorkie x chihuahua pups wouldn't do a "down" because they were far too "dominant". Good grief. What an entire waste of money that was! Not long afterwards, we found a fabulous trainer working in a hall at a vets in Nailsea (Go Fetch It). Moss made it through his bronze Kennel Club Good Citizen award; Bran made it all the way through bronze, silver and gold awards and Casey had a ball at the clicker workshops. Unfortunately, they have now moved and are now about 35-45 minutes' drive from us and it may not be feasible to get there  :o(  I am gutted because I've not found such a fab trainer anywhere else in Bristol and I've looked many times over the years. I had been looking forward to taking Cheese to a sensible puppy class and working through the KC awards with him too, so we'll have to see what can be done.

I think Cheese is on my mind a little more than I've been aware of recently. I had this dream the other night:

I was at my parents' house and out in the front garden, when a man and his girlfriend came down the road on a homemade scooter/go-kart type thing. It was built like a giant block of cheese. They stopped right outside of my parents' because the man wanted to look at an abandoned child's bike in the road. It was a Spongebob Squarepants bike that featured a very large picture of the yellow sponge, but it had come loose, slipped on to it's side and now looked like a large piece of cheese. Meantime, the pavements were littered with loads of humungous packs of open Cathedral City cheddar.

;o)

Ooh! I'm also not the only one with Cheese on my mind. Apparently, lots of my friends think of me and the pup-to-be when they see anything Cheese related now. I even received this photo the other day from my lovely friend Sophie. She was glad that the van stopped at the lights long enough for her to get a photo as she'd been planning on following it until she got the picture and she wasn't quite sure where she was going to end up! How's that for dedication?? LOL!

Life is busy at Ardenbrook too as Faith is hopefully going to be having her last litter soon. I'm hoping beyond hope that we can squeeze in another visit whilst the puppies are still in residence. I know this isn't the Cheese litter, but I would love to meet an Ardenbrook puppy in the flesh  :o)