Up The Farway Tree

Dog Parties

I had a lovely evening on Wednesday with my friends and the meal was delicious! We had a really good laugh and it was so nice just catching up with friends, which I always feel is especially important at this time of year and we really should do it more often!

Thursday was the last dog training session....and the Christmas party. Training went fine and we finished up quite early because the later class were joining us for the party. This meant a whole new set of dogs for Seb to meet and he wasn't too keen - he had only just got used to the first lot! I think there were about 22 dogs in total, flashing lights, music and children running up and down. Seb looked completely bewildered! I suppose he is used to a very quiet life really. He did well however and joined in all the games with a little persuasion ;-) First we had limbo with the dogs - getting yourself and the dog under the rope. Easy for Seb but I nearly dislocated my knee and woke up unable to bend my legs haha. Competitive you say?! We then moved on to 'musical sit' where we had to go round the room and then get the dog to sit when the music stopped. I thought we would be out first round as Seb likes to take his time when sitting but he did quite well and surprised me...until he decided it was now very boring and just point blank refused to sit one more time. The most amusing was where they lay out three rows of sausage pieces and you had to run down the hall, getting the dog to eat the sausage and try and beat the other two. Some dogs practically inhaled the sausage, some didn't seem to get the point and some just wandered off. Seb however was rather unique! He saw the sausage no problem, sauntered up to it, sniffed it carefully before picking it up for closer inspection. He then sat down so he could relax while carefully chewing his prize. I am shouting 'take it!!' 'hurry' and he just kept chewing before slowly getting up and wandering over to the next piece at a leisurely pace before repeating his ritual. Everyone else was finished by the time he finished the first piece and the whole place was in hysterics at him!! Lastly we did recall but this time they put a treat in between you and the dog and the dog was supposed to ignored the treat. We got into the final because Seb did ignore the treat first time - but that was only because it was a dry biscuit and he doesn't 'do' dry biscuits. In the final they put a liver treat so he was definitely stopping to eat that on route! Needless to say Andrew just watched and laughed while all this was going on -no way was he getting up to play dog games. I later discovered that the other dogs were from the advanced class, which runs after ours, so apparently we are able to go to that now if we want to. I am thinking about it! I am not sure what they do and it might be a bit advanced ...but it is good socialisation for Seb (since he is not that great with other dogs) and might be fun :-)

I've also been wrapping Christmas presents with Seb trying to help by lying on the paper and looking in all the bags. I had to wrap my presents in many stages last year as the bending over made me so breathless. This year I did it all in one go and although it took hours I was fine (other than a sore back!) It is looking a bit like Santa's grotto at the moment....magical.

Seb was told to stay out the way so sat himself under the tree, looking a bit huffy...


He slowly crept out from under the tree until he ended up in the middle of everything....

Ooooooh........Magical!!