The next Tiger Woods?

Golf last Friday was brilliant - fantastic weather; I had 4 pars, including 3 on the trot - something I don't recall ever doing before - and I didn't lose one ball. In fact, I only had to look in the trees for it once in the whole round. I was "nearer the pin" than the three other guys in my group for the "nearest the pin" competition hole, and I hit the longest drive of the four of us on the "longest drive" hole.
For anyone that cares, I scored 34 stableford points, playing off a handicap of 27, and went round the par 69 course in 99 shots. I had a 30-foot putt that lipped out that would have given me a "3 for 5" score on that hole, the holy grail of golfers, I'm led to believe...

The boys were off the lead!!

The other big news this week was on Sunday we took the boys for a walk in the woods, to the place we normally go in West Wycombe, where it's rare, though not impossible, to bump into other people walking dogs. The weather continued to be toasty hot, so we took a little picnic too. Part of the walk is uphill, across large fields, which at this time of year the farmer had ploughed but nothing was growing. Lara set off walking up this hill, before a slight difference of opinion developed about something and nothing, and she stomped off in one of her best huffs yet. As we could see all around for hundreds of metres, and there were no threats visible, we just let her stomp away, interested to see how far she'd get before she turned around.
It was about 100 metres, before a circling Red Kite worried her enough to return to us, and we agreed that I'd carry her on my shoulders for the uphil bit.
The really interesting bit was the walk in the woods, where we put Jacky's new muzzle on him, and let him off the lead. We didn't actually bump into any other dogs, but it was a relief to see that within 2 minutes he was trotting along, not trying to take the muzzle off, and coming back to us whenever we called him or gave our two peeps on the dog whistle. He did seem a little subdued whilst wearing the muzzle, not really going more than 20 metres in front of us, but that in itself doesn't worry us. At the moment, we'd rather he did that than run miles away.
We kept Mishka on his 5 metre lead at this point, but after our picnic we came back through the same woods, and decided to let them both off, so for the first time since our December holiday in the Lakes last year (outside of our back garden, of course) they were both off the lead at the same time. Mishka was more adventurous than Jackson, although to start with even he would only go 20 metres before turning to check we were still following. They both came back perfectly when called and whistled, which bodes well for future walks.
We got Mishka back on the lead when we noticed a couple entering the woods, as we didn't want him bounding up to them and worrying them, and we couldn't see if they had a little dog with them, but for those 10 minutes or so, I had what I want to achieve consistently in the future, a walk with my family in nice scenery, with our dogs off the lead, but responsive to our commands. Heaven!

Struck down with the lurgy, but Junior's OK

Well, this week has seen our house resemble a ward in M*A*S*H rather than a home. Not so many gunshot wounds, but certainly an awful lot of coughing and wheezing. Olga has got it the worst, the poor love has a cough that would make a 60-a-day smoker blush, and Lara's not far behind. I've only just started with the odd little splutter. Even Mishka was having an attack of the sneezes today.
There's not much we can do for Olga, she went to see the GP today, but unsurprisingly, given her condition, her wasn't going to prescribe any antibiotics, and she shouldn't even take any over-the-counter remedies to soothe her cough, so we're relying on external and herbal treatments, with good lashings of vaporub, and plenty of honey & lemon in her hot drinks.  Lara is getting by at night with vaporub and tixylix, she has no other symptoms than a bad cough at night, and even that isn't playing her up too much tonight (famous last words - I thought that last night but she ended up in bed with me in the office till 3am). I've decamped to the sofabed in our office so one of us can operate vaguely normally after some hours sleep, otherwise we were finding that as soon as we had both dropped off to sleep, I'd roll over and wake Olga, and her coughing would start again.
I've asked my Mum how to make a kaolin poultice for Olga, but we're not sure you can easily buy kaolin any more, but I'll have a look. I've just googled it, and the second result was from a Horse and Hound forum:

I'm sure that's not something to worry about, I don't remember them doing me any harm, although it might explain why I do like to jump fences from time to time.


Olga coincidentally had a scheduled appointment with her midwife today, and after a worrying moment of hunting around, they tracked down Junior's heartbeat, and everything was tickety-boo, a healthy 140 bpm or something like that. He or she was very active, and hid from the microphone-thingy a couple of times, and the midwife had to hunt "it" down again.

A dog blog

We arranged a visit last week from a dog behaviour specialist, as Jacky in particular gets really worked up around other dogs, and it means we never let him off the lead on walks, which is a shame (Mishka isn't let off either, but that's another problem!). Also, they both go nuts for a few minutes any time we have visitors, and whilst it's not a major problem, they shouldn't do that, and we want to learn how to calm them down. So since last Tuesday we've been working on the boys' behaviour at home and out on walks. I've taken Jackson on his own to pick Lara up from nursery one day, and we walk them on separate leads now, to try and stop Jacky from nipping poor Mishka when we bump into other dogs. Jacky gets so frustrated that we don't let him play that he takes it out on the nearest thing, which happens to be Mishka, but has been our jeans sometimes, and we can't risk him nipping Lara one day. So, we're making more of an effort to socialise him with other dogs, so he'll be going to training classes soon enough. We have got him a muzzle though, so once he's used to wearing it on walks, we'll feel better about letting him go and investigate other dogs, without concerns about nipping. As the behaviourist rightly put it, we can feel "confident that we'll have the safest dog in the park [with the muzzle on]".
I baked them a cake too! To help with training, it's good to give them better treats than standard dog biscuits, so I baked Liver Cake:

It came out better than I was expecting, and as I was out picking Lara up when Olga was expected home from a meeting on Monday, I put a post it note on it explaining what it was, in case she mistook it for a nice brown loaf and took a bite!!
And today we've moved the boys onto some posher food too, away from pedigree chum (good marketing, average dog food, apparently). We'll be ordering it on t'internet, but given we'd run out of pedigree chum today, we had to buy some in from the local pet shop. There's 2 weeks supply there!

I'll have to cancel my Sky Sports TV package to pay the extra monthly cost (sorry, Simon!!)!

To help the behaviourist monitor our progress with the boys, and Jackson in particular, I've created a separate blog just about them. In case there are any doggy-people out there, this is the link.

Oh, and how could I not post some photos from Mishka's birthday on the 20th Septemeber!?:

Windsor & Heathrow this week

It's been a busy week work-wise this week, so I'm only getting round to a blog post now, once I've finished what I have been doing, and it's late on Thursday night. Tomorrow I've got a day off for my Littlewick Green Cricket Club Annual Golf Day and Presentation Dinner :-) I had a second golf lesson on Wednesday, some more slight tweaks to my stance and swing were offered, and whilst I was a long was from perfect, hopefully if I can conquer nerves tomorrow, I might get round without looking like a complete arse (depends on what I choose to wear, I suppose!).
Last Thursday night we had a little party for Olga's birthday in the evening. Lara was desperate to help blow out the candles:

On Friday night Olga and I went to the "pubhotel" where we had our Wedding Reception, the Bird in Hand in Knowl Hill, for a nice meal and a change of scenery, as we stayed the night too, courtesy of a great GroupOn deal.  On Saturday we went to Windsor to meet my sister, brother-in-law and their two children for a picnic on The Long Walk. Lara and Elizabeth collected dozens of conkers (I think we've still got Lara's share somewhere at home), and William occupied himself with Lara's football, or anyone else's football he could find. His dribbling is excellent, I'll put some money on him playing for England one day, and he's got a better vocabulary at age nearly 2 than a lot of premier league players.

Sunday morning was all about taking Baba Luda to the airport for her trip back to Russia. Auntie Lucy has gone with her for two weeks, so we had no worries about Luda travelling on her own. Apart from her baggage, a lot of which was secreted into Lucy's suitcase, although Sergei was still concerned about the weight of Luda's holdall:

There was time for one last hug before departure:

Afterwards there was some time for retail therapy to get over the upset of Baba going home, and we found Lara her own trolley:

Bizarrely, we bought her some cute earmuffs and a hat-scarf combo, ready for the autumnal weather, and for the past 2 days the sun has been cracking the flags and it's set to get warmer over the weekend!