Too posh to clean up puppy poo, Treacle's siblings say a 1st Birthday "Hello !" Flora smells the flora, and after a hard days work !

It's been a busy few days here and finally got everything loaded up on the blog, so I can now start a written account of things that have been going on around the place at Poundlane. Last Friday I blogged and pre-empting the busy time ahead for the next few days, I did birthday greetings and wished all the fathers doing the Dad stuff a Happy Father's Day. This weekend that passed was a full weekend milking and is where I milk just under a hundred cows and as the cows are block calved, we are now heading very quickly towards starting to dry them off for the Autumn calving, so the milking is just two and a half hours in the morning and around two hours in the evening. This herd is a lovely herd of Dairy cows, really good herd health and although I know they appreciate me milking for them every other weekend, I must confess I appreciate milking for a farm that looks after their cows so well. Both herds I milk for luckily are nice people with nice cows and that makes working for them nice.
So both Saturday and Sunday saw me having a 5 am start and both mornings with the pups, I was greeted with a pen which is best described as poo city, not very pretty. Primrose has decided to decline from cleaning up after her pups, since they now are eating puppy food full bore, unlike most of our other Mum's who happily pick up the business until around 6 weeks, Primrose has decided five weeks is her drop out time from that duty. She is happy to nurse them still, but any thing coming out the back end, no way she cleaning that up, unless she grows opposable thumbs and I hand her a toilet roll. Lol
Well, I cleaned up the mess and washed a couple pups off, as they had decided tap dance through the stuff, as well. The amazing thing though is that Monday morning came and the alarm went off for my husband to get up 5 am and I jumped out of bed like a greyhound out of the traps ( My husband is a very tolerant man, but cleaning up a puppy pen of puppy poo at 5 am in the morning before going of to work for 14 hours, could try the patience of Job) to find a clean puppy pen, quickly put the pups out and since Monday other than the odd pee, we have had a poop free puppy pen. Hallelujah ! The pups seem to of got the hang already of going out side to poop and we are now just getting pees in the pen.

This weekend the Smelt family will visit us to see the last pup on this litter being the boy with the camouflage collar and we will hopefully have names for them all then. This last weekend saw the first two boys meet their families and they are now named Colin with the blue collar with a white stripe and Henry with the blue striped collar. The third girl is now named and she is called Dottie with the pink striped collar. So the names so far are Colin, Henry, Lottie, Maddie and Dottie.
The video was taken this afternoon and mostly done by our daughter Florrie who was right, it was Colin, I'm not very good with names and I get a sharp reminder from the pups,  that wearing flipflops around puppies is not a good idea.

Last Friday as I said above I blogged Birthday greetings for Treacle and her siblings first birthday on Saturday. Treacle is from Dolly's with Dad being Reggie obviously born June last year. So next is greetings from four of her seven siblings. THanks everyone for emails and photos and good to hear all is well and how they have brightened up your world.
The first is from Michael who has Sasha. Thanks Michael and enjoy your holiday in Italy.

Dear Jane

Yesterday was the first birthday of Sasha, the black Cavapoo we so happily got from you last year.

She is very loveable, and is very much one of the family  -  two grandparents, one daughter, and two granddaughters.  Used to be well-trained, but recently has declined to be easily put back on the lead after going right around Hyde Park or Battersea Park or Kennington Park off the lead.  

She is also a terrible thief, stealing clothes, shoes, toys, pens, bottles, etc,etc,  from inside the house and carrying them triumphantly off into the garden, mostly to chew.  And being very reluctant to give them back .

We have shorn her ourselves just recently, and looks fine.  Is very healthy, though had a bad bout of gastro-enteritis which required two nights in a Vet hospital.  Is on a diet of 100 grammes of Science Plan dry kibble a day.

Has been to Italy with us in the car, and is about to go back there for 7 weeks with us.  No problems.

All the best

Michael Cook 

Now fora lovely update and photo from Karen, who had Darcey. Thanks for letting us know how she has helped you to recover.

Here is our one year old Darcey! It has been a fantastic year, from sitting nervously,contantly refreshing your blog page to see how many had been born, to today walking through the woods with one of our many new friends that Darcey "found' for us.

She is super well behaved, after a shaky start her recall is perfect and her only fault being her reverse recycling, where she takes everything out that you just put in!

After having a very bad start to the year being crippled with anxiety that was so bad I couldn't make it outside to the bin, my dog has helped me walk through the bluebells, speak to the numerous people we meet and has completely restored my confidence.

Thank you for our curly, muddy, cheeky, brave and funny Darcey xx

Darcey

And here is Treacle's almost identical twin Dotty, who has helped Caroline's daughter over come her deep, phobia of dogs. Thanks Caroline for keeping me updated on your daughter and Dotty's progress together, means a lot to see them together in the photo's, especialy with your childrens smiling confident faces when with her.

Dear Jane,
Hope you, the family and pack are well!  We are very excited about Dotty's first birthday tomorrow - she had a joint 'party' with a neighbour's puppy who turned one a couple of weeks ago, and she has lots of presents waiting for her in the morning! 
We feel very blessed to have such an amazing dog - she is loving, friendly, cuddly, fun and more!  There hasn't been a moment that I've regretted having her, despite all the hard work involved in having a puppy at times.  We continue to go to training with her, and she is generally very obedient, and definitely seems to have an awareness of the situations she's in - behaving beautifully and being very calm when she needs to be, and mad as a hatter at other times.  She loves her runs in the park with other dogs each morning, and recently in the hot weather she has taken to a little swimming in the lake.
Hope Treacle, and Dotty's other siblings have a great birthday!
Best wishes
Caroline, Simon, Annabel, Louisa and Dotty x
PS will send some pics in a minute
I will send you some recent pics

And last of the first birthday updates tonight is for Molly who I last saw flying off into the distance on her way to live in Jersey. Thanks Lynne and Andy for keeping me updated on Molly and good to hear she is getting over being spayed quickly.

Molly

Hi Jane

Hope you are all well at Poundlane.

So Molly was 1 on Saturday, was lavished in playtime and cuddles!  She is loving playing with her new birthday toys and all the old ones I have just spent an hour sewing up!

She was spade two weeks beforehand and recovered extremely quickly.

Here is a photo just taken, she is in anticipation of diving towards a toy I had just mended!

Best regards

Lynne, Andy, Alfie & Emma

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Last on updates tonight is from Lucy and Alan who had Flora from Smudge's litter born this year in February. I get lovely photos from everyone, but you get every now and then a real beauty, as we say in Devon and the photo of Flora below sniffing the flora is in that catergory. Thanks Lucy and Alan.

Dear Jane
Just to let you know Flora is doing well - due to " graduate" from puppy training class this week!Have attached a couple of photos of Flora on a trip to Hever Castle taken this week , and just one of her with spring flowers from our first couple of weeks with her  living up to her name. Hope all is well with you all.
Best wishes
Lucy and Alan

A quick end with a photo of my husband David taken Monday night after he had been milking each end of the day and in between ripping up one of the concrete yards were he milks to, as they are putting in a new parlour, a rapid excit 20/40. He milks at the moment in a 24/24 parlour, but hopefully with the rapid excit milking time will be quicker, mind he can on his own get 220 cows through the old parlour in three hours and it is a block calved, high yielding pedigree Holstein herd.
Any way back to the photo and that is him trying to stay awake watching some of the World Cup football with Jessica cuddled up with him. Jessica after having her leg amputated is doing really well. Time for me to get some shut eye now.

David and Jessica