Slippery Ice....

Oopsie! Ahem! Hang head in shame ..... and tail.....after it has finished wagging !...... It seems I rather forgot my manners today......or maybe I just didn't hear Mum calling me and blowing my recall whistle........not once.....of the many times she (apparently) blew it frantically........Ahem.....Oh dear!

Daddy came skidding along the towpath to point out my mistake......but you see, those two passing poochpals; a pair of flat-coat-retrievers - father and 5 month old son......they were just SUCH fun to run with! And their manhuman just kept on walking way on down the towpath, so I just kept on running with the boys.......

That towpath was super skiddy today. Even my four-paws couldn't go in the direction they were supposed to. This made Mum laugh megalots when a passing whippet came along and we tried to play chase. Mum said I was like ScoobyDoo because my legs were going ever so fast but they took me absolutely nowhere! When I did get moving and then tried to stop, I slidded into Mum's legs! I think she forgave me!

We have cruised but only two locks. Here is a video of our floatyboatyhome crunching through the ice to get into the first lock.

 

Before the ice breaking where the canal surface is all solid and flat.

After where it is all broken up into big shards and sheets about 1.25 inches / 3.2cm thick.

Don't Forget your Calendar!

Still here! No floatyboatyhome-move today. The canal has still been keeping a tight grip. The sky has been leaking too so it has been another stay-in-and-snuggle day.

I did get to take Daddy walkies to a shop but it was really slip-slidey on the towpath. Even my usually-steady four-paws were whizzing off in directions they shouldn't have gone! Mummy stayed safely at home.

Dad says that we should be free to cruise again tomorrow so we will be able to get to a post office to dispatch some more calendars.

If you haven't ordered yours yet then you need to do it very soon. Mum says there are still a few left but we are running out of time to get them posted in time for Christmas.

Just click on the link to order. There really are superb quality calendars with a new photo of me every month to grace your wall, plus a clear calendar with space to note important dates on. ALL proceeds will go towards sponsoring another puppy to be trained to be an awesome life-changing Guide Dog like me.

www.guidedogoakley.org.uk/shop.html

Major Surgery.

Somebody stole the canal water and replaced it with flat crunchy stuff. It trapped our floatyboatyhome! No cruising today! In fact, not even any rocking about. The featherballs have been skidding about on top of the water outside.

So, apart from taking Daddy for a nice leisure walkies, today has been a very lazy day of snuggles and bone-munching!

I did try my paw at a bit of surgery though. I have performed a major abdominal operation on HUMPhrey. He seems to be rather slimmer now!

5 photos:

1 Me with a disembowelled teddybear and 4 of the frozen canal outside our boat.

 

What a hard day!

'Ditsy Dunderhead'. Today's accusation! It's not my fault this white funfluff stuff all over the ground makes me a bit loopy! It is just soooooo exciting! It makes the whole world feel different, look different, sound different, smell different.... I even tried tasting it but it didn't have much flavour - just cold fluff!

We have cruised. Well, crunched and scrunched really. The water went all flat and sparkly and, when our floatyboatyhome moved along, the surface of the water broke and slid across itself. It was very noisy inside! I didn't like that too much.

The towpath, on the other hand, was just a fabulous fun place to be! Mum says it was a very good job that the light was superb for her to see where she was going because she really didn't want to be going into all the hedgerows and up the steep slopes where I wanted to go. She got a bit miffed with me for being so ditsy! Oops! Sorry Mummy......but....but.....but.....it was all sooooooo exciting it made me bouncy barmey! Heehee!

Once we were past all the roady places, Mum let me freerun all the rest of the way. We did a load of locks and zoomied the towpath in between. Well....I zoomied it .... Mum kind of stomped and high-stepped it! 4 paws wins over 2 paws again!

Mum had to dig into the white stuff to find the handles on the lock beams. While we were waiting for the locks to fill up, she got chunks of it and made it into balls, which she threw for me. I don't think I found many of them though - they just disappeared into the belly-deep white stuff. I had great fun digging and rolling and romping in it though!

 

1 Me sitting in the deep snow beside a lock top. This was near the beginning of our lock working journey today. I was on lead and Mum had looped it around a bollard (She said it was to keep me safe from the road nearby). The whole world is covered in deep snow.

Close up of me sitting in the deep snow which is up to the middle of my front legs. I had a bit of a chilly bum!

Me sitting in the snow getting a very cold botty while Daddy points his one-eyed-clickybox at me

Me peering down at Daddy. I am at the top of the lock while he is down in the bottom of it on our floatyboatyhome. Just checking he is OK after crunching through the hard water.

Me helping Mum to clear the snow off the lock beam so she can get to the handle to do her pushy-pully stuff.

Yayyyyy! It's Snowed!!!

No words needed. Just fantabulous fun in the park today before church. The world got covered in white fluffystuff and it was superb fun - added to by meeting Bruno boxerpup and Arnold Choccy lab.

Just take a look at the video Mum too: https://www.facebook.com/GuideDogOakley/videos/1961517203862970/

Vetman!

Meh! :(

My tummy is not nice. This morning it told me it didn't want breakfast. I sat and looked at my bowl and tried to convince myself I should eat it but.......Meh! I went back to bed.

Mummy did her talkybone thing and then we set off to visit a vet. I thought he was a nice vetman. He was a nice vetman......until he tried to poke a stick up my botty! I soon convinced him of the error of that idea! He did do some nice tummyrubs and ear rubs in the process of poking and prodding me all over. I think that made him a sort of nice vetman again. That was until he spiked me in the back of the neck! That was big-bad-nasty-ouchy! It really hurted me! It made me howl out loud! That made Mummy a bit sad too. She has never heard me howl like that!

Mr Vetman said the spike was to help stop my tummy feeling so icky. He gave me yummies and more nice fusses after that. I think I like him again.....but.....hmmm???

I did manage to go into the Post Office to dispatch some more calendars. Mum says that one of them is going a very long way to some place called a merrycar on the other side of the huge puddle.

The rest of the day has been spent on the sofa with Mummy. I'm just off now to take Daddy for a gentle walkies to see if that makes me feel a bit better. I hope so. I'm sure I will waste away if I don't have my dinner.......

.... and back! I'm feeling quite a bit better now. My dinner went down a bit slower than usual, but it has stayed where it belongs; in my tummy!

I shall continue to enjoy the love and cuddles with Mummy on the sofa/my bed and hope to be up and bouncing again tomorrow.

Here are three photos of today's trip to the vetman:

Mum says this shows me being a complete wuss; lying on my back so the vetman couldn't do anything to me.

The nice bit after the vetman had made me howl when he stabbed me, we came out and found a fellow black lab. I just knew he was a special buddy. His name is Burman and he was training to be a Guide Dog, but he ate too many silly things (gloves and dishcloths are his delicacy) and so couldn't make the grade. He is now doing a very important job of loving his family.

Aren't we a handsome pair!

Photo of me lying on my bed, head on a very colourful cushion, looking very sorry for myself.

Nut Bum!

"Oh, Oaks! You do make me smile!"

That was Mum's reaction when I did my bestest to cheer her up this morning. Clearly it worked!

Mummy was a bit mouth-corners-down this morning. She didn't even bother to put her eyewindows on. This happens when they don't make any difference to her fuzzy sight. It makes her sad too. I don't like a sad Mummy! So I persuaded her that I needed to go out. Well....actually I REALLY DID need to go out; my botty was shouting at me! So, after a very necessary download (or several! - That was a good bone!) I took Mummy along the towpath, up and over the little bridge and into the park. I may have got a tad excited......I may have done a bit of a loony dance - twirling around in sillycircles and bouncing about while I was doing it! Mum called me a 'crazy nutbum' and it all made her mouth go up again! Much better!

Then I found a buddy to play with - a 15 month old boxer pup called Bruno. He and I got on with the serious business of playing together while my Mum and his Mum did a whole load of yacketying. Well....they were enjoying themselves so we did too!