Mummy's First Gift

Well, toy wise anyway  ;o)

I made it alllllllllllllllllllll the way through two whole days at Crufts and bought not one thing for Cheese pup! Hopefully, next year's shopping will be different as he/she may have been born by then  :o)

I was browsing Amazon for something completely different, but ended up in the puppy toys.............as you do. I couldn't resist when I saw this little toy. It was delivered today and has now been de-tagged and placed safely in the Cheese box.

Mummy's first toy for Cheese

Spoiled puppy received their first collar charm last week as well when my very clever friend Audrey came to visit.

Collar charm

Luckily, Audrey is clever enough that Cheese will hopefully be getting a very special personalised treat bag and travel bowl soon  :o)  Hopefully, her business of handmade items will be booming soon, so I'll be sure to provide more details when I have them.

Cheesy Clothing

Let's just get 2 things clear before I go any further: 1. NOT clothing for Cheese and 2. I am NOT a minger!!

There is an abundance of cheese related clothing to be found on t'internet and I am frequently sent links of the coolest and/or funniest items by my friends so there is already a bookmark in existence for all of these links so that I can indulge once Cheese is closer to arriving.

However, lovely Cheryl couldn't wait and sent me these:

Cheesy Socks

Awesome, huh?

I also stumbled across a previously unknown fact from one of my favouritest dog related clothing company today that has made my day and given me much excitement about future plans!

Dogs n Dubs have a fantastic supply of dog (and VW!) related hooman items from t-shirts to hoodies to bags to phone cases and there are even rumblings of onesies arriving soon  ;o)  Dog coats have also been recently introduced. I am proud to own several Dogs n Dubs items and have supplied friends with DnD stuff too. The quality is excellent and the vast array of dog breeds, clothing and vinyl colours for you to truly customise your item is just spectacular  :o)

Here are some of the items I own (to give you an idea):

Chocolate brown hoodie for when I walked Bran and I was absolutely thrilled
when the gold vinyl that I'd chosen was actually metallic gold and not a shade of yellow!

Chocolate brown t-shirt to match my hoodie

Purple hoodie with neon pink vinyl (my favourite ever warm thing to wear)

Close up of the pink vinyl on purple hoodie, but still not showing as bright as the pink is in real life

Me in my most accurately captioned t-shirt ;o)

Anyway, what I discovered today is that Dogs n Dubs can do personalisation! So, instead of buying random Cheesy items from t'internet, I can now think about having yet another labrador hoodie/t-shirt/whatever in appropriate (or daft!) colouring with "Cheese's Mum" on the back of it  :oD  VERY excited!!

If you fancy treating yourself or your dog, here are the places you can find Dogs n Dubs: official website; Facebook group; Facebook group for dog coats. Some of the products are only available via Facebook so check out all of the links for what you want  :o)

Right. That plug over, I had more exciting news this week  :oD  Go Fetch It are going to be running some classes back at the original venue where we trained with Bran, Moss and Casey so I don't need to stress over finding a different training class! Woohoo!!

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)

Happy New Year!

Never mind "white rabbits", my first words of the new month and the new year had been sitting waiting to be uttered for a very long time:

"Next year, I will have my Cheese puppy"  :oD

I know that it is far too early to start properly shopping for him (her?) but *stuff* has started to accumulate all the same  ;o)  I've decided to make a special box to store everything in for when they arrive and then, once they are here, the box can be used as a memory box to store puppy stuff in. Once it's finished, I'll share a photo but, for now, here's what the box looks like pre-decoration.....

Off to play with glue........

Cheese: Probably going to be the most spoiled puppy in the world

This Christmas has been quite difficult to face without Bran and I have to admit that I've been finding it a struggle to get into the spirit  :o(

However, I temporarily forgot about the incredible support network that I have around me and their amazing kindness and thoughtfulness and how well they all know how to make me smile  :o)

From my lovely friend Emma, Cheese already has their first ~ personalised! ~ puppy dummy and dummy keyring

From my lovely friend Jo, a special coffee mug to remind me of the good things to come

From my lovely friend Tina, a necklace to keep Cheese close to my heart

And just a sample of the gifts that Moss and Casey received from us and our friends! The box full of treats was out in the kitchen  ;o)

Not to mention the constant access to the doting "grandparents" who have been on hand 24/7 to play tug with Moss and to cuddle Casey as well as the bowls of turkey and leftover veg that have replaced the usual meals!

What a very lucky pup Cheese is going to be  :o)

Evaluating priorities and a new obsession??

I had a conversation with Kate recently that made me stop and have a really long and hard think about my priorities in the puppy that will one day be Cheese.

She sensibly pointed out that as the sire of Lara's litter has not yet been decided upon, there are no guarantees as to what colour the litter will be. She knows that I had my heart set on a yellow boy but basic labrador genetics come into play. If she chooses a black boy who carries no yellow, then the litter will be all black (as that's the labrador "default" colour); if she chooses a black boy who carries yellow then the litter may be 50/50 black and yellow; if she chooses a yellow boy then the litter will be all yellow.

I spent an entire night tossing and turning and trying to decide what I needed to say to her. Then, as the sun rose, it struck me that I had prepared for myself a very specific and detailed list of what I wanted from a breeder, some things I was prepared to compromise on but most I wasn't. In Kate and the wonderful Ardenbrook, I had not had to compromise on a single thing, thus far, even on the things that I had really expected to have to compromise on.

And suddenly the sleepless night of fretting seemed completely and utterly ridiculous, because I realised that my number one priority was that Cheese be a happy, healthy puppy born to Lara and raised by Kate.

So. Decision made. Cheese will be what Cheese will be. I still have a slight preference on Cheese being a boy, but if my yellow boy turns out to be a black girl, then so be it. And they will still be called Cheese whatever the sex or colour. I imagine the name will be explained many times anyway, it'll just be a slightly longer story if Cheese is black!  ;o)

Of course, if Cheese DOES turn out to be a black girl, then she will fit in just perfectly with the pattern for every other plan I've ever made for having dogs! Our first dog was going to be a golden retriever, but turned out to be a 7 month old lurcher. My second dog was going to be a saluki, but was actually the world's largest collie. I wasn't having a third permanent dog at all, until I met Flora. We were never having terriers, and then along came Hugo, and, eventually, Moss and Casey. Bran was the only dog who was ever exactly what he was supposed to be  ;o)

In amongst all of the serious thinking that I've had to do, I've also been desperately missing my darling Bran as Christmas approaches and trying to accept that I have yet another dog who will not be receiving presents this year  :o(  I have done several things to cheer myself up. The first is to send presents to all of Bran's most special doggy friends ~ all thirty-five of them! The second was to buy Cheese a Christmas present that won't be able to be used until they are almost fully grown, but hey ho!!

My lovely friend Dee spotted this collar and how could I not get it???

Christmassy Cheese Collar

I bought it from Rescue Me Collars in America and I was supremely impressed with them from the moment I placed my order. It cost only £13 for the collar to be made in a large size AND to be posted from the US to the UK ~ bargain! Rescue Me Collars also ask you to nominate a rescue when you place an order and when a rescue receives 6 nominations, they will send them a free collar ~ isn't that lovely? The choice of fabrics is vast so you'd be bound to find something very special and unique for your dog  ;o)

And then the collar arrived and I was even more impressed. Firstly, it was wrapped in red tissue paper and tied with a green ribbon and looked just lovely. Secondly, a Christmas card was included with my invoice. You have to remember that the lady who made the collar knows nothing of my Cheese plans, but the Christmas card had a yellow labrador puppy on it! She had also written a very lovely and personal message inside the card thanking me for ordering and telling me how much she likes this fabric and wishing me a happy 2013. I will most definitely be recommending them and have no doubt that I will need to be ordering more collars very very soon.

For the record, Cheese now has a baby puppy collar, a bigger puppy collar and a matching lead, plus this Christmas collar for when they are growed up. Too much, d'you think??  ;o)

Double Take!

This afternoon, Sophie, my mum and I went to visit Whitehall Garden centre in Bristol to have a look at their Christmas displays.

We often visit this garden centre as it's quite small, quite reasonable and very dog friendly. It will undoubtedly feature heavily in Cheese's socialisation as they have chickens free roaming, plus rabbits and guinea pigs in hutches, as well as lots of pushchairs and wheelchairs around and exciting things that can be sniffed but not nibbled.

I had a bit of a "moment" as I remembered all the times that I'd brought Bran with us to visit, but caught my breath as I spotted one of the gorgeous garden ornaments that they had for sale. I really had to do a double take as it looked so realistic!

It was very tempting to buy him so that I could have a yellow lab in my house/garden NOW, but at a smidge under £100 I felt that the money would be eventually better used on lovely things for a REAL dog  ;o)