Starting the day with a sprint … in The odd entries from life …….

Yesterday began a little early, well by our standard’s, we are moving Ziggy on in his training; it is time for a new trainer, and she is based just east of St Austell, so it was fifteen miles on the A30 followed by a trip across country; not a bad trip except for the fog! The rout is whatever way we go up and down, so we were in and out of the fog, and near St Austell there is major road works; it will be an improvement when it’s finished!

Going we got through in good time, the return took three changes of the traffic lights, we thought it was rather slow until we saw the very long row of waiting cars lorries vans and a tracker! So it seems we have the best of the road works, early going we were ok and coming home we are in a better position than those coming towards St Austell.

The new trainer soon had a good idea of how Ziggy works, and was showing a method to train him to concentrate on what he is going, rather than what his is doing what and keeping an eye on every one else as well. He was doing that for a few minutes well, then she brought in a second dog, he was well trained and a little smaller than Ziggy. He was a dog the trainer was working with him to be a hearing dog for the deaf.

So Ziggy’s training carried on with the other dog going things with the trainer, those things slowly got more interesting, Ziggy was fine for ten or twelve minutes; then he became more interesting in what the other dog was going. She said a dog like Ziggy is a thinking dog, and they can have a thousand things in his head.

She told us Ziggy of the lead it will have all those things going round in his head, if he is on a lead he might have just ten things in his head once he has been trained to just deal with the things he can reach; rather than every thing he can see. I was very impressed with her, some one who tells me things that sounds like sense I like, it is like what R J Mitchell told a trainee ‘If someone tells you something so complicated to understand he’s talking baxxs’ R J Mitchell was the designer of the Spitfire.

So we come away with new ideas for Ziggy, and I expect some where in what we were told, ideas for us! Now our Daughter has two weeks with Ziggy, she has dun a so much to improve Ziggy’s behaviour over the last two years; her aim is to Ziggy do take the training Lola’s dun.

The workers are back, now they are relaying the slabs, they are mixing some new slabs with the old, the new ones are a lighter colour and they do lift the look of the patio across the front of the bungalow.

Today had us up early as well, the Mini is having it’s MOT test, we have to have it there before eight; there was no fog today. Sweetheart came down with my car, so we were back at eight, I dropped Sweetheart off at our drive, then I perked it down the road; out of the works way.

I walked back to the drive, as I walked up I noticed a white van with blue stripes though gaps in the greenery ‘It’s the workers van’ I thought and also I thought ‘the drive is quite narrow’ and I stared to run, a sort of run you see in Hollywood action film – where the hero is running hard dodging bullets – I didn’t have any bullets to dodge just a van tuning into the drive with enough momentum to get up to the top! It was the slow motion action bit I mastered ……

I reached the part where the drive widens, and the van passed with yards to play with, it’s been a long time since I last sprinted; and perhaps not today!

Last updated October 29, 2014