A slight Misdemeanor.....

Last week, I was relaxing in the garden helping Mum out.

Mum, You've missed a bit.....zzzzzzzzz

I was disturbed from my sleeping vigilant supervising by Mum going onto the driveway and heading towards my car. Now, I don't get up for much, but a car ride is something else. So I got up and followed Mum. She lets me do this, as although it gives me access to the road, I have never in two years ventured to the pavement outside. As it turned out, Mum was just getting her specs from the car, but then something spooked me. I put my ears down, shot up the drive, onto the cul-de-sac and headed for the road. By the time Mum got there I was nowhere in sight. 

You can imagine she was pretty panicky by now, so she rushed back to the house, grabbed her car keys and set about finding me. Just after she turned onto the road, she spotted our lovely postman, who is a big admirer of mine dragging walking me back home by my tag collar. (Mum says thank goodness she never takes that off) Apparently he'd been driving down the main road in his van and had spotted me the other side disappearing into a big estate. Mum says (a) it is a miracle that I wasn't killed crossing the road and (b) if I'd gone into the estate she would never have found me. 

But now I am safely home because of Richard, the lovely postman. Boy, am I glad I made friends with him!

Of course Mum was pleased and as mad as hell all at once, but she managed not to shout at me. Nevertheless I was grounded and put on sentry duty for a while:

Aww come on Mum. I'm sorry, really I am. What have I got to do to make it all okay? I promise I won't do it again (as long as you don't let me onto the driveway...) 

Look I've bought Richard some chocolates to thank him. Now will you forgive me?

So Mum says after that little escapade, it may be that my off lead moments will be severely limited. That little thing called trust seems to have disappeared..... From now on, it may be just  Ganny's garden and the tennis courts. Or if you know anyone with a field to hire, just shout.......!

Me having a zoom at the tennis courts.

Walking The Beat........

Today I want to tell you a little about a friend of mine who, along with her family, does the most wonderful work to help retired and rescued greyhounds and lurchers.

Sue & a pile of hounds!

Many of you will know Suzy Taylor from her blog Suzy's Sanctury or from Facebook. We have known her for nearly as long as we have been blogging and we think that the help that she gives to hounds in need is wonderful.

Some of the hounds who landed on their paws at Sue & Eric's!

Sue and her husband Eric have been involved with Greyhound Gap for over 10 years and throughout that time have fostered and adopted more hounds than I can count ( I can't get past 16 as I only have that many toes....) First Mac, then Alfie Bear, then Ranger, then Gangley, then Mojo, then Ruby, then Elmo, then Orin, then Twizzle, then little Belle with her broken leg,... and so it goes on. Greyhound gap call and Sue answers!

This doesn't look a bad place to stay does it chaps?!

 Over the years as she has become more experienced, GG tend to send her hounds that have either physical or physiological problems meaning they will be long stay fosters, which in turn means that by the time they are deemed fit to rehome it’s too late and they can’t bear to part with them, so her pack just keeps on growing!

Mac gets a comfy sofa to recover on.

 This year she has had two greyhounds arrive; one via GG and one privately from a chap in deep trouble; both have stayed! I think I am right in saying, the pack currently consists of 8 hounds.... You see what I mean, when I call her our Houndie Hero?!

This lot think their Mum is pretty special too!

GG is a small independent charity that takes in and rehomes Greyhounds and Lurchers that find themselves in PTS situations in UK pounds. Most of their hounds are either in holding kennels or foster care; they don't have kennels of their own. If they did, it would make a massive difference to the amount of hounds they could help.

Sometimes Sue's sofa is full to bursting point!

 When one of Sue's hounds, Sandy, sadly passed away from the dreadful Osteosarcoma, her son Marc, a serving Police Officer, decided he wanted to do something in her name to help  the GG kennel fund. It was decided that he and some of his colleagues would attempt the four coast to coast walks of England, Scotland, Ireland & Wales........and so the idea of Walking The Beat began.....

Marc with his beloved Sandy - the inspiration behind it all.

The first two walks in England & Scotland raised £6000 and by the time the final walk is completed next year the boys hope to have raised over £10,000 and will have walked 1000 miles. This year's walk (Wales) begins on 1st September. The boys will begin at “Offa’s Dyke” walking the coast of Wales from South to North. The walk commences on the River Severn at the Sedbury Cliffs (a mile south of Chepstow) and finishing on the North Wales coast at Prestatyn beach. They will pass through no less than eight different counties and cross the English and Welsh border over twenty times.The walk will cover 180 miles over 7.5 days with an average of 24 miles walked a day! Impressive isn't it?!

The other hero's in this story.....!

So.....what I am really doing here is asking if you are able to help out? I appreciate most people don't have that much spare cash these days and there are many worthy causes out there. I hope some of you will want to help the "little guys" who don't get any funding, rely totally on donations but do such fantastic work. So please, anything you can spare, just £1.00 would be deeply, deeply appreciated. 

You can donate to Walkingthebeat 2013 at their JustGiving page by clicking HERE or the link in my sidebar. 

Thank you very much in anticipation of your help.

Just in case you've forgotten how handsome I am.......!

Frosty Friday!

I would like to dedicate today's post to my good friend Lori over at What Remains Now. One of Lori's greyhounds, Casper, is my cousin. Yeah I know, everyone is my cousin. I blame Grandad..... But I digress. Lori has made this very hot week so much better for me. She writes a fantastic blog about painting, crafting, her life and most importantly, her 3 Greyhounds!! You really should visit if you haven't already met her.

A couple of days ago, Lori wrote about making frozen treats for Casper, Freedom & Nikki. One of the ingredients was pumpkin, which immediately caught Mum's eye. (Mum is obsessed with canned  pumpkin, which can be quite hard to come by in the UK) Mum was inspired! We are in the middle of a mini heatwave here in the UK, and while I show no distress in the heat, Mum is keen to keep me cool.

Out of Lori's ingredients, we only had pumpkin (and I don't like peanut butter) so Mum thought she would improvise.........

......and came up with this. This is a very simple frozen treat made by mixing together skimmed milk and pumpkin. You can use soya or rice milk if you are dairy-intolerant. 300ml of milk and 3 table spoons of pumpkin make two small pie tins of mix.

Oooh wwhat is this?!!

Aaagghh! Mumth  meh thung is thuck...!

Well that went down well!

I'm all cool and relaxed now.....

Mum now has another obsession; Lolly making! Here in the UK we don't have Frosty Paws or anything like it, as far as I know, so these home made treats are fantastic......and very cheap!  They went down so well, Mum made some more....

This is the rather exotic, skimmed milk, coconut and melon...

I only have one left, so I am sending Mum off to the kitchen to make more....not that she needs any encouragement.....  Today we are thinking something with apple....

Thank you very much Lori for a great idea! Stay cool and safe everyone. I'm off to see Ganny, so catch you all later

Deccy xx

Nearly Wordless Wednesday 17/7

Ahhh! All you need is the love of a good woman; and I've got that twice over!

Chuck and Duck!

As some of you know, Mum and I have an ambition to be able to let me off lead in non-enclosed spaces. Not near roads, you understand, but not fenced in.

Why she just doesn't get on with it, is beyond me, but she worries I might go nuts and run off. So far I've been really good and trotted along sniffing, but the whole point of letting me off lead is so that I can have a gallop. Bit of a dilemma really.

My first ever off-lead experience. So much wee, so little time...

Recently we were watching a video of a friend of ours who was training her dog for exactly the same reason, and she was using a tennis ball to play "Fetch" with some pretty impressive results. "Pointless with you" said Mum in an unnecessarily accusatory tone. "You just give me one of your looks that says *** off and fetch it yourself" Nevertheless the idea stuck so she dug out an old ball and gave it a go. Incredibly I ran after the ball and brought it back.....well sort of anyway.

Another friend suggested a squeaky ball would be even more enticing and recommended a Kong squeaky American Football. Seconds later and Mum had ordered it and it arrived at the weekend!

As you can see I have mastered some fairly niffty moves, even at this early stage in my career! I'm taking it with me to Ganny's next week where we will have more room to practice....and more distractions, so lets hope I cope with the challenge.

Mum says when we are out on a walk, she needs to feel that she is more interesting to me than all the sights and sounds, so I will return to her when I'm called. Okay Mum we can give it a go, but as much as I love you, you will never compete with Vintage Labrador 2013 wee mail. No offence............

Black and White Sunday 7/7

Need a Guard Dog?!

ADOPT A GREYHOUND! Ahem..........

Nearly Wordless Wednesday 3/6

Does my nose look big in this?