We love the beach!

It's a gorgeous day here today (which is nice after seemingly endless days of rain) so we went out to a beach on the North Shore, just a 15 minute drive from our house The beach is gorgeous and all off leash and also has a great man made walk thing that goes round the bottom of some cliffs to link up two beaches.

There was a bird (a shag I think) that was swimming around not far from shore and ducking under, popping up in random spots. Pepper spotted him before I did and was off swimming after him (I thought she would swim out to sea and never come back!)

Speak!

We've tried to teach Pepper to speak for a while but couldn't find anything that riled her up enough to get her barking, until Ben discovered last week that blowing at her got her going, so now she speaks on cue, although the cue is a little odd - a pursed lip and quiet blowing noise.

There's also a shot of her zipping through her new tunnel - its way too ridiculously long and hardly fits in our yard but she loves it - I'm going to try and chop it in half because two 5 metre tunnels will be much more fun than this one giant one.

And heres a couple more birthday pictures - we had to wait for Ben to come home before she had her cake of course, so thats why we didn't but these pictures in the last post. It's a veal muffin with cream cheese topping, she went nuts for it!

Happy Birthday to Pepper!

Today is Peppers 1st birthday!

Obviously she is highly embarrassed about being made to wear a party hat, and rightly so, she looks ridiculous. Oh the shame.

We went to a shop we have just discovered, Miss Maggies and got some cookies and a liver muffin (we wanted to get a cupcake but they didn't have any today) We found out that they sell Possyum - a possum meat dog roll that we used to use for training treats in Wellington, its really stinky and holds together well when in small pieces so is ideal for training but we hadn't found a place to buy it up here - I'm so happy to find a place that sells it and they're just down the road too.

We went for a walk in Waiatarua Reserve and as I let her play in every muddy puddle/bog/stinking water hole that we came across. She made the most of it too and ended up smelling like a toilet. But she was a happy toilet so that was ok. We also went to the "Big King" for the first time and climbed up a wee hill to look out over Auckland. It was cold but a nice walk and great view plus lots of other dogs to play with.

So my wee funny looking puppy is now a dog, still (almost) as cute though!

Meeting Snoopy, Arrow and Kaha. And some naughty goings on.

Today we were invited to go for a walk at Craigavon park with another blogger friend Helen and her two dogs, Snoopy the rescued pig dog and the ex speedster Arrow the greyhound. Helen's friend Leilei also came with her dog, sibord Kaha. When we arrived Snoopy and Pepper hit it off straight away - the two of them tore around in large circles playing chase, with Pepper displaying her extremely embarrassing high pitched squeals and yelps. All the dogs got on really well, although Kaha did take a little too much of a liking to Pepper towards the end! (this is a common problem for us with male dogs - we think probably because of her issues with her reproductive bits)

Go Kaha!
There was another dog playing too - he was a sibord like Kaha.

Craigavon park has some permanent agility equipment - tunnels, tyres, a wee dog walk, and so we played with the dogs around the equipment.

Snoopy struting her stuff on the dog walk

And Pepper through the tyre.


And out of the tunnel


Snoopy making herself smell delicious!

And I didn't get any pictures of the beautiful Arrow (except for the half one above) so we'll have to meet up again so I can papparazi him too!

We also wanted to show some incriminating evidence. Pepper is normally very mellow and "well-behaved" when it comes to being left at home alone, or in the car or in the yard. The only time she ever seems to do "naughty" things is when I'm working night shift and sleeping during the day - she must get so frustrated that I'm not getting up and playing that she takes to mischief! This is from last weeks efforts. I was woken mid-morning by a pair of extremely muddy paws bopping me on the face (not to mention the linen) and then this is what I discovered - excavation work had begun.

The dirt was flung for miles on either side of the hole. The time before she dug up three out of four fern-y type plants and shredded them to pieces Obviously she hates night shift nearly as much as I do.

You'd think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Not quite.

Saturday afternoon breakthrough

Pepper finally cottoned on to how to limp today, sort of, only getting one step at a time, occassional flying leaps and not too much forward movement but at least she gets the concept!