LOST in Ireland

Well here i sit in a hotel bar in cork Airport having missed my flight back to the UK, long story , but i had a 2 hour drive in a gutless hire car from Waterford where I had been lecturing the previous evening, got up at 06.45, left hotel at 07.15 ( no breakfast as it was too early) and proceeded, listening to an RTE radio programme with a couple of eejits called "colm and jim-jim" prattling inanities to each other. Now when I had arrived in Cork i had driven through an area called Douglas- and thought it funny to have found another place named after my family ( huge fan of my family name Douglas- so this was interesting to me) any way traffic report came on the radio mentioning south side ring road in Cork around Douglas! An 8 car pile up had occurred and i was headed directly into it! Any way have missed my flight so I'm catching up with stuff such as this blog, missed having to travel directly up to peterborough for an evening meeting there! No flight back till tomorrow, so in for a boring day in a hotel!

No blog for a wee while as I've been a tad too busy for it, not done much agility in the meantime.
Puck seems to have turned a bit of a corner ( helps not to have any bitches in season)and just as our season ends he starts to work very well and is coming into his own. At a funday event recently he beat ruby in a jumping course by 0.2 of a second- and took what I would describe as the slow route! And this week at a mini competition night we had up at The FC headquarters, nice to have Suzie josty and Barry James come up with us- very welcome new input to what we do. Anyway we set up a judge (Nick Josty) and a timer etc, Ruby ran the first course very nicely, but was a tad too neat and knocked a pole down, but was timed at 28.2 secs.
Puck came up , all fired up and very excited that there were some new black and white doggies there, off he set powering round the course, finished with me trailing behind him- and no destruction in his wake- and Nick was clapping- he'd gone clear- but no one told me the time! When I looked I nearly choked - His time was 25.02!! 3 seconds quicker than Ruby!! now i know he's fast and powerful, but maybe, just maybe we're turning a corner, he's worked magnificently recently, so with all the things I have planned for the winter we'll see, maybe now is the time for him to get the snip, it's only this year he's been bothered by sex, but it disrupted him greatly.
Ruby has the Supadog final this weekend, now this event I hoped to get to this year- one of my objectives! So fingers crossed she'll do well.
Draco has started to be trained and at the moment he is a bouncing, gangly fool, but he'll also be going to Golden valley to be trained as from next weekend.
isn't it funny how the plans you lay down for your pups go arigh as they grow up- I'd intended on training Draco on the lead, the same as Puck, but Draco is much more sensitive and has to be off the lead so lots and lots of hard work ahead.

Blossom about to drop her puppies, she's now trying to work out why she's not so nimble and as full of energy, she's slowed down a lot and has ( relatively) lots of goodness for the pups to feed on when they decide to come and see us. Marie said she felt the pups inside bloss this mornign so hopefully the pitter patter of tiny feet soon- And in a few weeks a cacophony of little noisy shelties.
Well hope I haven't bored the pants off you, and hope to catch up soon!