Bath Time - what's that all about?

Hi all, hope you had a great weekend. The weather here is still brilliant, the human is just hoping it lasts as she has a big family wedding to go to on Friday, we don't mind because we go to stay with her friend Jean for the day - Jean knows how to spoil us rotten!

Unfortunately we have to complain about our humans today, we don't do it often but it has to be said. Why, when we've spent an age in the fields searching out the best smell, usually foxes poo, rolled in it to really get the smell on us, do they insist on then drenching us in water and SHAMPOO to get rid of these delicious smells!

What's this all about!

To add to the humiliation, they put us in a baby bath of all things, it really is not on and we're going to have to do something about it, possibly shake before we get lifted out - we haven't decided, they occasionally use the shower instead which isn't quite so humiliating. We would like to hear how your humans torture you with water, maybe some dogs like it but we just can't understand why anyone would prefer the smell of shampoo to foxes poo - no contest in our opinion! Anyway, Dex had his own back a while ago and ran off with the sponge - they still haven't found where I hid it!

...and you're not having it back!

 Enjoy the rest of your day everyone, we'll be busy starting our Operation Bath campaign, any tips welcomed. Dexter & Louis x

More Favourite Walks - Great Bedwyn

Hi all, a group of Schnauzers and their owners our human knows from her Schnauzer Forum are meeting for a walk today and this reminded us of a fantastic walk we've had a couple of times when we've met up with our cousin Buster who we originally met through the forum.

This walk is at a place called Great Bedwyn, a village in the county of Wiltshire. It really is the most fabulous place, it's on the river and the Kennet & Avon Canal also pass through it. We take a picnic and have the best day out, here we are ready for the off, being strapped into our seat belts, as you can see we're not too impressed!

Is all this really necessary?!

 The journey seems to take forever but at last we arrive, the village is really pretty but what we want is the walk along the canal which is only a couple of minutes away, at last we're off!

Will you lot come on!!!

 For some reason the humans are busy chat, chat, chatting - no time for that when there are all these news smells to investigate and new peeps to meet, these two daschunds were having a dip so we introduced ourselves:

Do you chaps come here often?

 We're very interested in the water but not enough to get in, thank you very much, we have enough trouble at bath time without getting wet voluntarily! The walk carries on along the towpath as it's called and we crossed the river via something called a Lock, which opens and closes and raises or lowers the level of the water in the canal to allow the narrow boats through. My human did not like this at all, neither did Louis and we all laughed at them struggling across - hee hee:

We don't like it!!!!

 There is a great place on the other side to stop and have an ice cream - unfortunately we didn't get one each, we had to share which is a bit unfair but at least we had lots more walk to enjoy. The other side of the canal is lovely green fields, perfect for running around in, the humans kept practising our recall and here comes Louis doing his, ears a flying!

Louis Come...oh and you then Dexter!

 We had a lovely time, running through lots of fields and the humans had a lovely time non stop talking! At the end we were all very muddy but very happy - here are the three of us, Buster is on the right here:

Three muddy but happy cousins.

 We carried on walking and found a beautiful village with the prettiest thatched cottages, all the humans said they'd love to live there - we know we would, think of the walks we have every day!

Pretty cottages, and a village pond too!

 Looking back on these photo's has reminded us what a great time we've had there so we're going to start pestering to go again, there must be a few new smells there by now which will need checking out! We'd recommend it to anyone in the area - the humans said the pub in the village is great too for meals! Bye for now, Dex & Louis x

Royal Weddings and all that...

Hi all, well the day is finally here and it's the Royal Wedding today...it doesn't mean a thing to us except we're getting an extra long walk out of it! Our lady human is all excited and off to a party with a lot of other excited ladies to eat cream teas, drink bubbly whatever that is, and watch the wedding on the TV.

Our man human has no interest whatsoever which is fantastic news for us. He wants to get as far away as possible from all the fuss so we're off for a boys only walk along the river!

Our favourite spot along the river - lots to sniff out!

Weddings aren't really our thing although our human tells us we have a connection to a famous doggy wedding! Our favourite film 101 Dalmatians was filmed in England and our human's old dog Monty was a film extra at the wedding as a doggy guest in the film! How about that, he is only in it for the big wedding scene but our human was so proud of him. He had to sit and stay with about 50 other dogs for 30 minutes with camera men walking amongst them...not sure we could last that long.

The Happy Couple in the film.

Monty in his later years

 We never got to know Monty but we're told he was a character, full of mischief and would have a go at anything. His one weakness was food which we can well understand! He was in a dog display at one time and in a line of dogs, when he suddenly broke away and ran off to the front of the crowd to do a perfect sit in front of a man eating a beefburger! Monty we like your style and would have been great buddies. Anyway, we hope you all enjoy your day whether you're watching the Royal Wedding or off enjoying the peace and quiet like us. Any one off to a street party? Bye for now, D & L xxx

Where we live.

Hi Everyone, Dexter here,  it's been so much fun reading about all our new friends, we have heard from dogs from all over the world, it's amazing! We thought we'd tell you and show you a little about where we live and would love to know where you all come from.

At the entrance to the park - hurry up!!!!

I was born in a town called Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, UK and Louis was born in a town called Shaftesbury, when we were old enough we came to live with our humans a few miles from Bath and Bristol. We are lucky to be close to the countryside so get plenty of good walks but occasionally get to go to Bath, where they have a fantastic park called Royal Victoria Park. 

The park is really old, my human said I must give a bit of boring history that it was opened in 1830 by Queen Victoria when she was 11 years old - did she have a dog though? That's a much more interesting piece of information! There is lots to explore in the park, you don't know where to look first, I spotted this little squirrel munching away but it shot up a tree so fast as soon as I tried to chase it!

Spot the Squirrel!

There are lots of places to walk around, the human always wants to walk along The Royal Crescent which is in the park, they use this for a lot of films, I keep suggesting that Louis and I would make a great couple of extras but she hasn't taken us along yet! I think we'd make a brilliant couple of lap dogs in a Jane Austen novel don't you? 

Never mind the buildings, look at all that grass to play on!

This is me walking through The Crescent, our human says she'll have an apartment here when they win the lottery whatever that is.

Enough of the buildings - I need to get back in there...now!!

There is one word of warning I should give other dogs about this park. Very often these huge things with people in fall out of the sky. It is our job to alert everyone to these so you really must bark as loud a you can when you see one to get everyone out of the way. This one landed just feet from us and I told them off in no uncertain terms, this is the 'thing':

This is the very noisy 'thing' to be avoided at all costs!

There are 57 acres to explore so it's a busy time for a miniature schnauzer, it's often quite busy but you can find quiet areas, on the other hand it's nice to meet people and other dogs sometimes, another plus is the amount of bread left around for the ducks, if you're quick enough you can get some before the human spots you - that's quite yummy, here we are heading off to do some more exploring:

Quick, quick...I think I spotted the Squirrel, this way...hurry!

I hope you enjoyed our little tour around Victoria Park, we'll show you some more places around us in weeks to come, I'll let Louis get a look in next time...maybe. Would love to know where you all live, or is that being nosey? Have a good day everyone, Dex & Louis x

Which Dog Sport do you choose?

Hi all, thank you for all your lovely comments on the training photo's. The human has been adding a list of training sites onto our page and we thought we'd tell you a little about some of the things you could get involved in. There are so many choices for dogs these days and you can choose what suits your human best, some aren't built for running round an agility course but might enjoy something like Rally O.
Agility:

We're sure you've all seen this on TV, Dog agility involves the dog negotiating anything up to 20 obstacles against the clock, the fastest clear round is the winner. The quickest fastest dogs are often Collies although many other breeds do really well at this., and there are competitions for ABC (anything but collies) We know many Miniature Schnauzers who love agility and do really well in competition, our human did this in the past but said she's too slow these days!!! Here's our friend Darwin doing some practise in his garden:

Darwin looks so happy!

Cani-Cross

CaniX as it's written is quite new to the UK. It's basically running with your human, and you can be any shape, any size, any age, all abilities are catered for. We think this looks fantastic fun! You can enter CaniX races with no special equipment, just a collar and lead although most tend to wear special harnesses which make sure you don't lose your human and they have their arms free. This is a short video of a demonstration at Crufts, some of these look pretty serious,

 Obedience:

Dog Obedience has been a popular dog sport in this country for many years and most people will find an Obedience club somewhere near them. Often handlers will take the Good Citizen tests and enjoy the sport and decide to take it further because they and their dog enjoy it, small exemption shows often have Obedience competitions where people and dogs get a taste for it...working all the way up to Crufts and International Championships of course!

Rally O

This sport involves you and your human navigating a course with numbered signs, at each of these signs you do a different exercise such as, Sit, Down Sit, Straight, figure 8, Send over Jump, Recall over Jump, Left Turn. This is done in teams and is one continuous performance, your human is encouraged to talk to you in encouragement during the performance. We found this video of a Mini competing - wowser!!!

There are many more sports and hobbies you can try, Working Trials, Schutzhund, Showing of course and many more. There are links on the right to all the websites for these activities which are great fun to read. To finish we thought we'd show you a game our friends Darwin and Mia invented! It's hunt the treat in amongst all these pool balls!!! Don't know if they've given it a name but what fun!!

Darwin & Mia's new sport of Pool Balls!!!

 We've only shown you a few here but will look at more in weeks to come. Now, what sport do you enjoy and are there any you'd like to try?

Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman

Hi all,Louis here. Well it has been the hottest day of the year so far and what do we do? Go to the beach, go to the nice cool woods, crash out on the lawn...no...our human decides to go dog training and that meant I had to go too.Our training field is a nice big paddock behind the vets (yikes!) - it's surrounded by fields of horses either side, I'm not bothered but some of the other dogs don't like and tell them so! This is one of my best friends Brue, who I travel with every week, he's a Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, at least he says so but I've yet to see a duck! This is me with him, I know - I need a trim, well I've had it now, this was a while ago:

Louis and buddy Brue

 My human instructs the puppy class so I had to sit in a crate and watch the goings on., at least I was outdoors and had lots to drink. They had 2 new dogs in the class today, not really puppies but young Boxers who had just been rescued from a puppy farm, they'd had lots of puppies each and were just money making machines (so my human said). Everyone welcomed them, they'd had NO training whatsoever, never even been in a house before. They were called No.26 & No.27 - how awful is that? They are now Zena and Gracie and I'll get the human to post a photo next week. The class did basic stuff like heelwork and stays but then started some weave pole training afterwards, the owners were soooo excited and are all going to buy their own now.

Anyway, here's another training pal, called Buzzard. He's a German Shorthaired Pointer, we're looking a bit miserable here but then we are doing something the human calls a sit stay:

Louis & friend Buzz

 My turn to strutt my stuff in the training field and I did okay today, although I was just too hot to put a lot of effort in, just enough to make sure the treats and praise kept coming.  Plenty of water breaks made sure it wasn't too bad although I noticed the big Husky didn't come this week - far too hot for him I imagine! This is our down stay, hee hee the black lab next to me stuck his botty in the air and wouldn't lie down:

Li'l Louis second from the right!

 As you can see I'm the smallest there but I do have the biggest mouth so the human tells me!! Have a great Easter weekend all, I'm off to check on Dexter - lucky so and so got out of training and went on a lovely field walk. Bye for now Louis x

Cute Friday Photo's

Hello all, and a huge thank you to all of our new follwers, it's so nice to meet you all and hope we get to know a lot more about you. We hope you're all enjoying a nice Good Friday - we're a bit put out that we can smell these lovely things called Hot Cross Buns but aren't getting any! The human has been busy making Easter cakes and not even one of those - I mean, it's not on is it! Cheek of it she offered us a piece of carrot a while ago- what's that all about? - we're not rabbits!!!!!!!! Anyway, as we've been sharing lovely photo's of all our cousins, and there are more to come, we thought we'd post a few of us, Dexter & Louis. We're going for the cute theme as it's Easter, bunny rabbits, lambs and all that. As long as we get the occasional aaaawwwww.....sweet, we'll be happy. Love Dex & Louis xxx

We like to sleep snuggled up

Puppy Dexter waiting for a lip smacking treat!

Louis first week and learning from Big Brother!

Louis and siblings, too cute to leave out!

How embarassing!!! Not a cool look for us!

The famous time we ate the bed and then hid inside - sorry Mum!

Hope you enjoyed, we loved our trip down memory lane, big licks, D & L xxx