Walk in the park

On Sunday morning, while Tracy was at work, I took Mollie to Elvaston Castle, Derbyshire. It's South East of Derby, just off the A6, and has beautiful gardens which are open to the public.

We went to meet a virtual friend, Bev, from the D For Dog forum, and her beautiful whippet Katie - we'd never met face-to-face but since we only live half an hour apart it seemed daft not to get together. Bev forgot her camera completely, and I forgot that I had mine with me so didn't take any pics until we got half way round!

Here are Katie Whippet and Mollie. They didn't really want to pose. Katie was busy watching everything and trying to remove her Halti, and Mollie was just busy, as terrierists always are.

The Border Collie below is Maggie. Maggie likes to sit and watch the ducks, and herd them back into the water if they come out, apparently. We called her to get her to look at us, but if you look closely you'll see that she stuck her tongue out!!



When we were nearly back at the car park, we met up with another of Katie's friends, Ryka. He's like a whippet sized version of a Pharaoh hound, with the most amazing ears, and he took to Mollie straight away. It was mutual, and they spent quite a while chasing each other round the field and playing with the tennis ball - stealing it off each other. A couple of times, Ryka tried to mount Mollie (although he apparently doesn't quite know why he's doing it yet!!), but she just gently told him off and moved away, then rugby tackled him for the ball!

The fantastic thing about all this is that, apart from a quick woof at Katie when they first met, Mollie was fine with all the dogs. And Katie doesn't normally like strange dogs either (I witnessed her threatening a GSD pup!) but was instantly friends with Mollie - which is great news, because we fully intend to meet up again, this time with more photos!

On the way home from the castle, I dragged an exhausted Mollie into a big pet shop (well known chain store but I'm not going to give them free advertising!) in Loughborough. I'd never taken her there before as I was worried that she'd bark at everything, but she was incredibly well behaved. She didn't steal anything, even though all the interesting toys were on the bottom shelf, and didn't bark once. As a reward, I let her sniff all the different dried meats to see which she wanted. She selected dried chicken fillets, and has now become addicted to them - as have the cats!

Oh, and while I'm praising Mollie, she went straight into a sit when told to, when bikes & horses came past, and even a down once! (ah, the power of the tennis ball!) And with the help of tiny bits of chicken jerky and doggie choccie chip cookies, she's been learning paw. If you hold something out in a closed fist, fingers upwards, she will paw to get it. Next step - associate the command with the action...

Oh, nearly forgot - Mollie gained a new nickname, from Bev - "Mollie chops". She seemed to quite like it!