On the Road Again!

Since the last update I have given up pretty much on looking for raw food for Reggie, and have concentrated on a few more overnight stops and scenic drives around the Basque and Cantabrian mountains. Distances on the map turn out to be far less when transferred into the satnav app and into the Ohrex satnav. One thing I am going to look at is using my phone in conjunction with the Navigation app that comes as an extra to the MyRouteApp that I use, and have for years, on the TomTom for bike trips. The TomTom 410 was also used in the car before we got the Nissan with the built in navigation. I have read that some people have used this app successfully on their Android tablets.  I had already booked two nights at Plays de Regatón on the coast between Bilbao and Santander. This was basically to recover from 30 hours on the ferry from Portsmouth. The plan is to try and locate a Tienda Animal store to see if they have any raw food. I have also found a motorhome parking area that should gi...

Disaster. After my volunteering on Thursday I brought Tyrone home. Claire brought Reggie out and we met on the driveway outside the door. All seemed perfect. Both dogs seemed okay. Sniffing. Tail wagging.  We had a walk along the canal together. Everything seemed perfect. Until we got home and into the back garden. Reggie, luckily still on a short lead, growled and lunged to bite Tyrone. He went mad. Really angry. Even in the house as we calmed a frightened Tyrone he kept at it... We decided to save Tyrone any further worry and took him back to the foster. It's disappointing but safer that Reggie stays in a one dog household and Tyrone is still looking for a new forever home. 

Since I began volunteering at the Kent Greyhound Rescue (KGR) centre back in January 2022 I have seen a lot of retired racing dogs come in and luckily a lot have found forever homes. Greyhound racing in Ireland and the UK isn't the "Sport of Kings", a moniker associated with horse racing, it's far more down beat than that. It's a very tough business and spits out dogs that don't do what the owners and trainers want, that's to win races and make money. It seems the latter is the most important part.   Most of the dogs that come through the charity, are from the Republic of Ireland. Many arrive in very poor condition indeed.  As a charity KGR feeds them up, assesses them and then hopefully recoups some of the money spent by asking for a donation. The charity also runs a shop to sell things that dogs' owners might like to buy. Leashes, collars and beds etc. Not everything is for greyhounds and their sighthound cousins but for all dogs. But a second dog? ...

Not a colour I would have picked but it was the only one they had that fitted him. Something warming on those freezing cold days. Microfibre and towelling.

As today was actually a in the low teens temperature wise we decided to get out to Sissinghurst and I could walk the dog, and Claire could pop into the garden to see what was happening - plant-wise. In the end there wasn't much but there are signs that the crocuses will be out n the next couple of weeks.  One of the success stories is that the path around the outside of the "moat" have been laid with hard core and graded. More for the needs of the estate's farm vehicles than us dog walkers. Still it means we don't end up in the mud or having to negotiate huge puddles. The photos abouve were taken on the Sony Cybershot before the battery ran out and I moved to my Moto G50 phone instead!

Not exactly.  A walk along the coast and beach along the Hythe Ranges. Cold in the wind. I gave the Canon a rare trip out. 

He was eleven years old recently and also with us for just over seven of those. He is still as mad as he was the day we brought him home from Dogs Trust in November 2014. Here he is resting....

These were shot on my Honor 9 Lite phone and so aren't Hollywood perfect. The first is Reggie with his new Kong toy we have named "Tigger". The second is the squirrel deciding to get his food from the source rather than wait for us to put seeds and sunflower seeds into the bird feeders.

Bonio is a dog biscuit in the UK, they may sell them elsewhere!  They are bone shaped biscuits and I usually buy a small box and that will last Reggie a while. Imagine my delight when I saw an offer to buy a 2.5kg box.  Per Bonio a saving over the small boxes. So I ordered one. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the box was actually 12.5kg...... Without my reading glasses I hadn't noticed that all important 1! So to get rid of some of them I emailed a few local dog rescue homes to see if anyone wanted a load of free Bonios. Incredibly, only one has bothered to reply. I managed to squeeze just over 2.5kgs into a tub that formerly housed wild bird fat balls. Claire and I drove round to Last Chance Animal Rescue in nearby New Romney and delivered the tub. As they are still not open to drop-ins we were unable to visit the dogs they have on site. maybe next month, with another few bags of Bonio!!! We already know this group as the last couple of Pet Food Runs I organis...

Always a photo opportunity. Doesn't everyone love to share pix of their mutt? Pre-washing Been digging on the beach Hiding!!!

With our staycation coming up in a few weeks in Norfolk, we decided to get Reggie a more comfortable bed. A trip to Pets at Home to buy one resulted in the cheap ones being unavailable. We ended buying a more expensive one made by Silentnight, better known in UK for human's beds! His usual place is on the sofa next to one of us, or he sneaks off to sleep on a bed.  He seems to have accepted this one, for now!! Photos from Claire's phone.

Not for us but for Reggie. Nice to have cool feet ..

I usually like to shop locally where I can. We buy Reggie's food from a local pet shop. He has raw food and our Hannah stocks quite a range at her family run shop. Her father also runs a dog training service. But. When we needed a new harness we couldn't get the one we wanted and so we had to fall back on Amazon. The Julius-K9 seems to be the fashionable harness to have. More substantial than the current one and a much better fit. The Medium size was easy to adjust and fit on him. Being pre-shaped it seems to fit across his back more comfortably. Let's see how it looks and works for him. .