Belated Birthday greetings and the wanderers hath returned

Yesterday got a lovely email from Julie, who has Poppy from Dolly's litter born the 29th October 2011 and was the first litter for Dad, Reggie. Poppy was one of a litter of eight Alfie, Chilly, Bella, Edward, Luna, Betsy and Cyril (Who I know they renamed after leaving me and his new name escapes me at this moment), so a belated Happy Third Birthday to the eight of you and hope you had a lovely day and all is well.
Lovely to hear from Julie and that Poppy is such a wonderful family dog. I have emailed Julie back about the fit, as I had Smudge do a similar thing as a pup and someone who had a Cavalier from me at around 2 years old had a similar thing happen, but both dogs have not had a fit since and why they had a fit could not be answered, so hope that Poppy's fit is just a blip and she will be fine.
Julie with the research she undertook when Poppy had problems with her anal glands made me rethink my attitude to the problem of anal glands not emptying apparently quick enough for us humans. Instead of just treating the problem when it occurred and just excepted it as a small dog problem, I looked at it with a more holistic approach, which was to improve diet to a more natural one and to not be to hasty to empty them, allowing the body more time to find its balance. I do think if your dog has a real problem with their anal glands, you really should look at your dogs diet and ease up, on sqeezing them up, as I think draining to enthusiastically often can be part of the cause of the problem, than the relief of it. Thanks Julie for letting me know how things are going and good luck with the therapy dog training.

Poppy

Dear Jane
With it being Poppy's 3rd birthday today I thought I drop you a line and a photo. 
We are in Wales  for half term and Poppy is loving all the different country smells and animals although she is a bit scared of the horses which come right up to the fence of the garden.
She continues to be an absolute delight - she has the most incredibly sunny personality and makes everyone who meets her smile. She is currently curled up on my feet snoring VERY loudly!
I mentioned to you a while ago that poppy had been assessed for being a Pets As Therapy Dog. Due to my father being ill I didn't follow it up at the time but she has now been reassessed, my references checked and we are now ready to go! The organisation gives you three different types of places to visit and then checks with you which your dog preferred. After this they can then give you places to visit which are best suited to you and your dog. Hopefully this will happen in the next couple of weeks - I'll let you know how she gets on!
I still love reading your blog and catching up with all your news.

Lots of love to you and all at Poundlane.
Julie, family and Poppy xxx

PS Poppy's anal glands are no longer a problem :) The raw food and bone diet we have her on seems to have done the trick. I'm so, so glad we sought a third opinion. 
We had a scary experience the other week though as Poppy had a fit. She was absolutely fine both before and after the fit.  The vet has done blood tests which didn't show anything and said that unless she has another one they won't investigate any further. He asked if I had videoed it (I hadn't) as they can get more information that way. I spent an afternoon watching on you tube examples of dogs fitting to see if I could find one like poppy had. It looks like she had a very mild one but I'm keeping everything crossed that it was a one off. Because poppy is a cavalier the vet mentioned the dreaded syringomyelia but when I googled the fits caused by this hers looked nothing like this.  Wouldn't she have shown some other symptoms by now if she had this? I've googled all the symptoms of this and she definitely hasn't shown any sign of any of them.

---

Poppy

Last night I intended to blog about Poppy and her siblings third birthday, but ended up blogging tonight with belated greetings due to having four Cavaliers at large yesterday evening up until 9.30 pm. It was not their fault though, as my Mum had a new nurse come to visit her yesterday afternoon and I was unaware of her arrival or departure and she left leaving our gates wide open (today I have been out and bought a "Please shut the gate" sign and it is now safely hanging on out gate). I let the dogs out at around 4.30 pm for a run around and heard them bark and then saw them all disappearing across the road to greet one of our neighbours, who just happened to of walked up their lane across from our property entrance. If she had not been there and I had not heard the dogs bark, I might not of noticed the gates open for a while and might of had all of them on the run. I thanked our neighbour for helping me get most of them back, but for four of them this was just to good an oppurtunity to miss, going on a rabbit hun. Jessica, Toby, Smudge and Millie were the absconders, so the usual suspects had taken to the undergrowth. I walked up and down the road calling, but they had high tailed it by then and supper was on the stove. I went indoors rang around local farmers, whos land they tend to favour and they laughed at my naughty spaniel yet again and said they would let me know if they heard anything or saw them. These four dogs have cost me a far few bottles of wine and boxes of chocolates over the years I've had them.
Around 7.30 pm the first two wanderers returned Jessica and Millie. Millie the old girl and Jessica the three legged girl, but hard core Toby and Smudge were still at large and I feared another all nighter and I would be ringing the dog warden and local vets in the morning spreading the search net. Husband arrived home from work at around 8 pm and he had he's tea and we then set out in the dark to search, I set out on foot calling  and my husband drove to a wooded cover we know the dogs often will go to as loads of wildlife. I returned back about 9.20 pm seemingly without any luck and my husband returned ten minutes later to find Toby and Smudge at the gates whimpering to come back in. The video below is the moment just after I had let Smudge and Toby in the back house. Excuse my husbands explitives, he was pretending to be mad with them.
I made a stupid mistake last night and said, "I won't bother to bath them now, just chuck down some clothes and I will tackle it in the morning." This morning I did not just have to tackle bathing them, but also spending a hour washing down the walls, kitchen units and fridge/freezer, as they had decided that a good way to clean themselves off, was to rub against these items making, like a wall of death pattern around the utility, but instead of a tyre track left behind them, I had almost a continuous smear of mud all the way around the back house with a layer of mud dust on the work sufaces, but I must add, I also had four very smug Cavaliers looking up at me, a lot cleaner than I had left them.Lol