Off to Crufts we go!!

Crikey, it's been a while since my last post. Where did it go? It's been a busy time for Oliver and the family. The weather is brightening and Oli is loving trips to the park with the whole family. Finally, Oliver is pretty much house trained. It's taken a while to get him from paper to outside and he still won't do anything on walks. The biggest news is that, now graduated from his puppy foundation class, Oliver is back in school on a Saturday morning at his activity class. Here, he'll consolidate his foundation training and learn some more advanced obedience, agility and tricks before he moves onto the bronze adult training class. We're not in the class with the puppies we trained with but are now in a class of adult dogs. It makes me chuckle because they are all very small or toy dogs. Oli is by far the youngest and looks enormous.

We're all very excited because we're off the Crufts tomorrow. We were invited by the wonderful people at the Kennel Club and Wills is really excited. We were supposed to be going today and were looking forward to seeing the Golden Retrievers but exciting plans always seem to be a temptation to medical mishaps and emergencies in William's life. I had an itchy spot that turned out to be the start of shingles and had already scratched it to pieces, blissfully unaware that I was putting Wills at risk of chickenpox by spreading it around. He is immunosupressed after his transplant and has never had the dreaded pox! If he gets it, it means hospitals and IV drugs. Shingles is not infectious unless you touch the spots - or scratch them and then touch your child! Obviously, blood tests and immunoglobulin injections to protect Wills were a higher priority today. It's worked out well though as we're now staying overnight in Birmingham today and will be at Crufts bright and early in the morning. Being there while it is nice and quiet should allow Wills to adjust before it gets too busy - I hope! He is upset he can't bring Oliver. This only served to strengthen my resolve to train Oli to full assist dog so he can be with Wills in stressful situations like a packed arena one day. If you're at Crufts tomorrow and see us please do say hello.

On Tuesday, Oli came to work with me. He loves exploring and being out and about and was as good as gold on the tubes, staircases, trains, busses and during a meeting in a dog friendly pub in London. I was meeting the Dogs Trust to hear about how they help families flee domestic violence by providing foster parents for their dogs. Do pop over to my other blog Femme 2 Femme to read more about it. If you love dogs and could find room for one for six months you could help.

I hope you're enjoying reading how Oliver is learning to help William and the special bond they have. Merlin and Grace are another pair of best friends and Grace loves Merlin so much that she wants him to win a 'Friend for Life' award at Crufts. Please have a look at this and vote for them.