What a poser

The last few days Mountain Man has been away on one of the events he works on, which left me to keep Vespa occupied while still in his supposed 'sick role'. This is the dog who slept a lot the day after the op, but after that has been going a bit bonkers with having to walk on the lead and not being allowed to jump into the car.

Actually I gave up yesterday and let him jump in the car again... I mean for goodness sake, he'd been jumping on and off the wall in the garden since last Sunday, so I couldn't think that jumping in and out of the car would have any effect.

I also gave up on the walking on the lead today and took him for a free run. I couldn't take it anymore. Luckily he was very well behaved and loved rushing about and sniffing around along the old railway line, which was a whole lot better than him rushing around trashing our veg patch and tearing up the lawn.

Vespa has, however, decided he loves the rubber collar that he had to wear at night just in case he wanted to lick his wound. Every night when I got it out he wagged his tail and seemed desperate to have it on.

We went off for a quick shop in Kelso after our walk and as we were walking around we came across these beautiful small versions of The Kelpies in Kelso town square. Just fab.

Miniature Kelpies

While we were admiring the sculptures a couple came and to chat and told me they were Puppy Walkers from Stockton-on-Tees and they have a ten month old black lab bitch, who's apparently a bit hormonal at the moment and they left at home. She's their first. It was really nice to talk to them and reminded me of how things had been with Odi and how it seems so much easier with Vespa. A bit like kids really. The first is always a steep learning curve.

As we were leaving Kelso it started to tip down, so I abandoned doing a training exercise of going to the 3 Day Eventing at Floors Castle and headed home for the rest of the day.

After watching Flash Gordon (which we enjoyed lots... me for the film, Vespa for the sound effects) I went to take the air out of the blow-up collar ready to take back to Lynne next week and Vespa came and looked at me really sadly, so I gave him a last go with it.

He seemed really pleased to have it on and posed very nicely for a pic. Not so happy to have it immediately taken off again and put way though!

A last go with the rubber ring