Can somebody please tell Smudge this is not what being on the telly is all about!

Seriously he is a very miserable little kitty at the moment. He came home 2 days ago with a poorly little front paw and has been hopping about on 3 legs ever since. It's not swollen so nothing is broken and it must be getting better because he will let me touch it today, but he is still milking it for all it's worth and making the most of being spoilt with roast chicken and fish and cheese......

I was ABANDONED twice this week! Tonight She who thinks she must be obeyed left me to go to a meeting about watching Dolphins. Every year for the last 17 years volunteers sit on the cliffs and look out for Dolphins, they fill in forms about how many they have seen, what they were doing and what boats were about. The information is all put together and a code of conduct for boats in the vicinity of Dolphins has been devised using the information provided. Anyway She who thinks she must be obeyed is doing it this year, so I suppose I will be abandoned again while she is busy (or expected to sit very still for2 hours!!!!!).

On Tuesday night she went to a talk by 2 police dog handlers about the work their dogs do, now that sounds real good fun,( much better than sitting still just LOOKING at the water). They explained how the dogs follow the scent and find people, (sometimes dead people) and how they are always right. Did you know that in Holland they use police dogs in police lineups but they don't trust us enough over here to do the same! Anyway she came home thinking that my brain is not being used enough so now she is getting all enthusiastic about TRAINING again!

On Sunday morning when we woke up the Ash tree outside the bedroom window was doing a pretty good impression of the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter so She who thinks she must be obeyed decided not to go riding in the morning and we'd walk down to see the horses instead. To get there we have to go across the beach and along the cliff path, so here are some of the photies she took on the way.

Me playing in the sea, (the shutter on the camera didn't open properly so you can't see all the BIG waves.

That one nearly got me!

Come and get me now wave!

Looking across the beach.

Going off the beach towards the cliff path.

In the summer the local teenagers jump off that cliff into the water, even I wouldn't do that.

Looking back towards Aberporth, the waves are really pounding against those cliffs, I don't think I'll go swimming there.

Can you see all the white horses in the sea?

These lazy white horses wouldn't even get up to say hello to us after we walked all that way to see them!

Patch

Oh my paws! I knew something exciting was going to happen today when She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed put the waterpawroofer on her boots and started putting things in the rucksack. She was meant to go and do something for someone today, but they phoned and said not to come so as the man on the tele said it was going to stop raining by 10 o'clock (it didn't) she put on the waterproofs (I already had my allweather fur coat on, who needs anything else?) and we got the bus to Patch.

Me waiting at the bus stop.

Apparently it's up to the driver whether I'm allowed on the bus or not but luckily it was a nice bus driver who knew She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed. Many years ago when she first had Imshi, she was riding him along the road and this bus driver came the other way in his bus. He was very good and stopped, but Imshi took one look and climbed a six foot high bank at the side of the road, the bus driver couldn't bear to watch what happened next and drove off, She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed dropped the reins and told Imshi he got them into it so he could get them out of it and the driver of the car behind just sat frozen until Imshi was back on the road again, the bus driver reminds her of this every time she gets on his bus!

Me on the bus. We sat right at the front because there were loads of people already on the bus. The driver scratched my ears.

I was very excited when we got off at Patch because it's one of my favourite places. The tide was in so I got down to some serious swimming straight away!

The tide was going out quite quickly so I had to really CHASE those sticks before they got away!

I like swimming!

We walked round the headland to the sea, but there wasn't any beach there 'cos it was all covered up with water so we walked along the caravan site and back and then the tide had gone out enough so we could walk up river towards Cardigan. We didn't go all the way to Cardigan though. She who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed was looking for Marsh Samphire for her dinner because they were talking about it on CountryWise last night , but it was too early_ it must be out earlier in Devon! But I did some foraging, I found a rugby ball and an aquatoy!

Here are the toys I found on the beach. Aren't I a lucky puppy!

We found an old log which had got washed down the river to sit on and watch a Heron but the Heron didn't want to be watched so it flew off ( I didn't help it, honestly. It decided to go all by itself!) so we ate our lunch instead. We shared a humongous Cornish pasty and I washed the box it was in up so She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed didn't have to do it when we got home.

The Heron.

It was still raining and it was a long time after 10o'clock so the weather man was wrong, but it didn't matter after all I got wet swimming!

After lunch we started walking home and then it did stop raining and the sun came out and it was quite hot. We walked back through some woods and She Who Thinks She Must Be obeyed did some more foraging and found enough elder flowers for some Elderflower cordial. This is very refreshing for your humans and if they put it in their water bottles when they take you for a walk it makes them able to take you further because they are refreshed, but don't let them drink too much because they have to leave their pee-mail in special little houses and there aren't too many of them about when you go on a good walk.

I watched She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed make some and this is how she did it:

10-15 fresh elderflower heads

zest of a lemon and an orange

1 litre boiling water

750grm sugar

100ml lemon juice

Shake the flowers to get any insects out. Grate the lemon and orange zest and place in a heatproof bowl with the flowers. Cover with boiling water. Cover and leave overnight. Strain through a sieve into a saucepan and add the sugar and lemon juice. Bring to the boil and simmer gently scimming off any scum. When cool strain again and decant into bottles and refrigerate. Dilute with water to use.

(There weren't enough flowers yet to do Elderflower wine, which is probably just as well because it is powerful stuff and made Auntie Sue fall into the bushes when she had two glasses of last years brew_ mind she was on the medics and shouldn't have had any anyway, but she said it was too nice to miss! I'll give you the recipe for that another time

A Day Out With Peter

The Friday before last the phone rang, I pricked up my ears and heard Ann asking us if we wanted to go for a walk in Tremain Woods, well we haven't been there for almost a year now so I barked and told She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed to say 'yes please'. Well, not only am I a bit fed up with our usual walks but I haven't seen my friend Peter for a while either. Here we are together.

and here's Peter by himself, he's 2 years older than me and taught me loads of interesting shepherd stuff cos I've known him since I was an itty bitty puppy dog. When I first met him I was right scared of him cos he was so BIG, but I soon found out I was better at dodging than him and could get out of his way real good!

Here's a little bridge across the stream, the path leads to a couple of lakes with ducks on, but we didn't go that way.

We chased along the path, through the bluebells. I'd forgotten how many bluebells there are there, the whole wood is carpeted with them.

On the way back we cooled off in the stream and got nice and wet to get back into Ann's car!

It's taken so long to write this post because She Who Thinks She Must Be Obeyed forgot the camera, and Ann took these pics and e-mailed them to her

Meet Alphie

The camera is now talking to the 'new' computer so I can at last start catching up with some of Finn's adventures since the last post.

This is about the day he went to play with his friend Alphie, a Staffordshire bull terr

ier.

Alphie

Kitties having food! How dare they eat in front of me.

Please can we have some, PLEASE.

Alphies got some, what about me....

My turn now, thankyou Auntie Sue.

num num num

I love Alphie's Wiggley, giggly ball.

But it's so tiring playing with it!

Once again I have to apologise for not blogging for a while. We've been invaded by electricians rewiring the house! First of all the computer room was a total disaster area with about two foot of floor space to walk on as everything was dumped in there out of the way, then when I turned the computer on it wouldn't and just beeped at me! So after much beeping on my part the MAN was called in, he said it was easy to fix, but yes it did stop beeping only to start SMOKING. I can definitely state that smoking is bad for you, computer is now dead.

This is a new computer so there are no pictures of our adventures over the last couple of weeks yet as I have still to install all the camera stuff onto it.

I've just been catching up with all your adventures and I'm glad to hear none of Finn's friends were hurt in the tornadoes. We complain about our weather, but that was SCARY. We don't know we're born over here.

I'm gonna go now and try to get this computer to talk to my camera so I can post some photies