What's been going on?

Seems like nothing much has been going on lately. We've been enjoying a very welcome dry spell with reasonable temperatures and long bouts of sunshine.

Andromeda enjoying a spot of sunbathing!

After the wettest winter on record, the pigs' pens have more or less dried out and we are able to feed on solid ground instead of pools of watery mud. It makes all aspects of animal husbandry so much easier and quicker and there's no doubt working in shorts and t-shirts is a lot more comfortable than numerous layers of more or less waterproof gear!

Swallowbelly girls munching their vegetables

The exception was yesterday afternoon. We had planned to move two groups of pigs:7  boys coming indoors prior to going to the Big Butcher in the Sky and 5 girls moving to a larger pen with more ark space. There'd been rain in the morning but it dried up around lunch-time. The moment we hitched up the trailer, however, the first drops fell and from then on till the moment we finished our maneouvres (I kid you not) the heavens opened. We were all (5 of us) drenched! Someone trying to tell us something? Today we are back, more or less, to summer again. A friend in America advises that we are in for the hottest summer on record! What do they know over there that we don't? The pigs may be tuned in to the same channel though because, finally, they are starting their summer moult and we are doing silly things trying to gather as much wool as we can before it all drops off. Where it goes nobody knows: it just disappears. I have a theory that they groom each other in the dark and then bury the wool at the bottom of their wallows! No wonder they grin at us in that silly way.....

Who's the king of the castle?

Rocco looking for his friend

Victoria's Father's Day piglets have wasted no time at all in getting out and about. Within a week of being born they were happily running around their pen and a day later had found their way through the fence into the outside world.... tiny they may be but they are absolutely fearless. As for Victoria: having kept them shut inside for 5 complete days she's now like "Piglets? yeh, yeh, yeh... they're fine...". No doubt it'll not be long before they find their way up to the flower beds.....
Rocco, meanwhile, is hoping a new 'friend' will find his way here soon. He's settled down on his own now but he spends great chunks of his day just staring into the distance as if there's something out there that'll maybe eventually come close enough to see .....We have various irons in the fire regarding a companion for him so hopefully before the long summer days are over he will no longer be an only pony..... Even when we're out for a hack he's taken to suddenly stopping, staring into the distance and snorting so I know he's looking ........
As for the rest of the animals: we have 9 young bantam chicks which is unheard of. Usually, like the one here, the hens sit on a dozen eggs and when

"Are you my mummy?"

one hatches it's  case of "job done" and off they go with a solitary chick leaving the other eggs to go cold! Maybe because of the warm weather a couple of the hens actually managed to hatch 8 eggs between them and, even more amazingly, have managed to guard and care for the chicks for nearly 3 weeks.  It'll be interesting to see how many of them make it through the next 3 - like all little things, they keep finding holes in the fencing and one day there may not be somebody there to put them back on the right side again...... We also had 7 ducklings hatch in the main hen house yesterday- a first for two years (the chickens destroy any alien eggs they find).... Their mother's fiercely protective of them and, cleverly, hatched them inside the original duckling pen so here's hoping we can keep them alive to maturity...... just one of life's little challenges.
Other chaps here have been setting themselves challenges too - but that's a story for another day..... Like I said, nothing much has been going on around here.....

Happy Fathers Day

To Black Banana & Victoria this afternoon - a litter of squiggly pigglies.... Victoria was absolutely spot on time and the family couldn't be more appropriate than to be born on Father's Day.
What a clever girl...... there was no nesting, no fuss - she was out for the afternoon, ate up her tea and then went back for a doze. Three hours later when I went to look, there they were...... just like that!......

Team Gunner Go Group Training

Serious subject requires serious face!

"Changes are a-paw. They need some serious thinkin' about. My whole life I has been a one-Person dog and that Person, in all matters to do with my workin' life, has been a one-Dog person.
"Now we have two gonna-be-gundog Understudies. Stands to reason they may shape up into workin' dogs too. Otherwise why She (who must be etc etc) spendin' so much energy on 'em? And She been takin' them for lessons every week to Rory-the-trainer. Bein' flibbetyjibs with the attention span of a gnat (in the case of Understudy #1 aka Jaunty aka Gaberlunzie Master at Arms -  half a gnat - don't larf 'cos that's his full moniker ... in fact, his name's a load bigger than he is - and a dog's life more serious....) She takes them for a 'shared hour' which, they both assure me, is more than strenuous enough. (From what I seen, gettin' them to concentrate for 5 minutes is a Major achievement!). She's also been takin' them along to somethin' called Group Trainin' Sessions when she has market-free Saturdays. She said the idea was just to 'socialise' them (pardon me, but I'm a pretty sociable dog and I never attended a single Group Trainin' Session in all my life..... actually, I tell a porkie..... last summer She had the idea it would "do Gunner good" to go to Group Trainin.... It was not an idea I welcomed. But I had a plan.... I'm not the fastest dog in the pack at the best of times but I really excelled at bein' totally pedantic in my attitude to group stuff. Rory-the-trainer even had the cheek to refer to me as Lightening whenever I was asked to do somethin'. The plan worked a treat: after two sessions She decided it was makin' me blunt & bored instead of sharp and keen. We did not return!!!!! *Grins*).

"Now; it seems that this group stuff has been making my boy Bugler, normally a quite sensible (if more bouncy than a bucket of frogs) young dog, a bundle of excitement & nerves. She says he can't sit still for more than 5 seconds at a time and really gets wound up when any other chap gets asked to do anythin'. Jaunty on the other hand, at home unable to sit on the same spot for any measure of time, excels in the group - patiently waitin' his turn and then chargin' off like a bat outa hell to do whatever's asked of him. Not always correctly 'cos he does tend to forget what he supposed to be doin' and need quite a lot of remindin' but he, on the whole, do behave a lot better than when he at home.

"So, she said to me the other day, that we were now goin' to do Group Trainin' Sessions at home! That way, maybe the norty Jaunty behave better and the bouncy Bugler calm down a bit!
(Note from Ed. .. "It pays to be optimistic when training spaniels")
"I must own up to bein' a bit shocked, if not betrayed.Worse than that - these GTS's have replaced my usual mornin' runs 'cos, She say, I don't have enough energy to do both. Well, if She had consulted on the matter, I'd have had a few words about priorities, but, typical human, She just went ahead & decided what was to be!
So here we are, at home, doin' Group Trainin Sessions every mornin.....

I was resistant to start with; specially when she did the 'quiet call' lesson. If I been told to sit, I sit. And sit. Callin' my name is ignored. I has been taught to sit still till whistled. Now, however, in Group Trainin, if I hear my name I am to move up to Her; if one of the others is called I sit still; they move up to her when their name is mentioned; immediately; and turn in turn. When 'trievin we only go if our name mentioned; that difficult cos when I hear "fetch" that my cue to go without any names....After all, that's what I been doin' these past 7 years. We been spendin all week gettin it sometimes right  & sometimes wrong... it difficult to learn new ways and the pups are quick to bounce up at me when I get it wrong......
It's a difficult lesson. Personally, I don't see the point cos there's no way the Understudies are gonna be ready to go to work for ages yet. She has ambitions though. That's a Human thing. I'm happy as I am but Her? Nope. She got plans for what a twitter pal of mine (@disneyspaniel) calls Team Gunner. She say I gonna be No.1 dog in the bestest spaniel pickin' up team. I suppose if that means extra bickies then I might consider it but I not havin' anyone on my team who ain't absolutely best - and from what I seen in our GTS's so far, that could take a lot more thought and work than She might be realisin..... As I said before, needs more paws for thought....