Pet Expo, Dog coats, collars and more

I'll start off with a happy hello! I was meaning to post something last Sunday about the wonderful pet expo but time got away from me and I couldn't. For that, I apologise. So with that in mind I suppose the best place to start would be last Sunday, The Pet Expo.

If you live in Ireland and love dogs then you should definitely go to this thing! While it is called the Pet Expo, I think it's definitely more centered around dogs but you will find reptiles, goats, sheep and much more there too. One of the great things about the Expo is that you can actually bring your dog along with you. I didn't bring Oscar this time but hopefully next time I will. To be honest, I didn't find the expo overly informative but if you are a new dog owner then I think you'll find the dog training demos and 'have a go' classes very interesting and helpful. And the dog breed village (however packed together it was) was a good place to look at some of the more unusual breeds that you wouldn't see every day.  With a huge number of stalls available you can get all your pets Christmas presents right there and then! Here are my buys,

I actually spent most of my money at one stall and to make it better she actually fed raw too! I decided to get some Acana dry food for treats too and Oscar loves it, just like he loves the Octopus toy but he wont be getting that until Christmas! The Kong is to replace the old one which he lost. That's 3 Kongs that he's lost now! I also got some raw food from dogs first and some dried sprats which are freaky!
Here are the rest of the pictures from the expo (well the ones that I took, my Uncle took so many more!),

Oscar's Equafleece Tankie als arrived in time for the pet expo but my Uncle said he'd get it for me for christmas instead as it came to a whopping €38 in the end. I agreed because I didn't really have that much to spare on the day so now Oscar may wait until Christmas day to get it. But I did get to see it and I really like it! It should fit him perfectly and the fabric is so strong, but light at the same time. It's loden green in colour, and while I did want pine green instead they didn't have that colour when it was order so it was loden green or black. The loden green is actually very nice and should go very well with his orange harness. Mother wasn't too please when I mentioned that Paul had gotten me a dog coat for Christmas but she may deal with it because it's done now!

On the dog collar front, I did email Dublin Dog about the collar and they said they'd send me out a new replacement collar. My details were transferred over to the UK distributor and they said the collar was sent out on the 30th of October. It's been over 3 weeks now and I've yet to receive a new collar! I sent them another email yesterday, and needless to say I am in no way impressed with this at all! It should not take 3 weeks for a collar to come from the UK to Ireland and as my forum buddy said, she could have swam the channel and handed it to me herself by now! It might be the postal service at fault but I  the customer service from the UK side of things is terrible! They've been no help what so ever and I'm doubtful if this collar will ever arrive. I think I'll be sticking to Tillymint (where I got Oscar's pacman collar) and leather collars in the future.

And now for the most recent action, yesterday's walk. It's so cold outside these days, it's lovely! Well, only if you like the cold air and I do, but only when I'm not in my school uniform (it's a wonderful skirt and to make it worse the school don't seem to like the heating being on during the day either so I've had to get used to not being able to feel my knees these days!). Because it's cold and frosty out it means that the ground in the fields is solid and it's not a giant mud pit. It's made walks a lot less mucky which is great for me!

We were being watched....

The dried sprats are very, very freaky!

But Oscar loved them so much!

Should I jump......

.......slowly does it, just one step at a time...

.....and he's in!

"I'm sitting nicely, treat please?"

Did I say the fields were less mucky now? Sorry, I was lying!

catching a treat like a monster!

New trick you say?

"spread em"

Kind of posing

It has now become apparent that water no longer contains Oscar! He seems to have no issues walking around in it anymore, he doesn't even hesitate when it comes to walking through it. If he'd only wash his paws off in the clean water and not the mucky water then all would be well but so far he's not tried that!
Maybe one day he will?

Today is looking like it's going to be a lazy day. Oscar seems quite happy in bed and I don't have any homework left to do either so we can both relax!

MID - TERM!!!

I planned on writing a post last week (and the week before that, and the week before that) but I had no time so here it is....eventually!
Like any Irish person I'll start off my talking about the weather - A true sign of Irishness. Its been raining, and raining and raining all week. And last week and the week before. Proper winter weather, it's even quite cold out too. And as a result of this rain, the fields are marshes! Especially since I am forced to walk in the muckiest and biggest ones because the horses are still in the fields behind the house! They've been here so long this year, since the start of August at least and it doesn't look like they'll be moving anywhere anytime soon.

I'll start off with the walk photos first. It's the walk we went on last weekend as he had to have a bath after it because he got so mucky! We went on the same walk today but he didn't get so mucky and was spared from the dreaded bath......and there was no way I was going to give him another one! Oscar is lucky to get 3 baths a year, never mind 2 in two weeks! Just to give you an idea of how mucky the fields are I have a before and after photo of my boots,

Before.....

.....After

I'm sure you don't care about my boots though so here is the monster in his element!

Durning the walk he gave me a mini Heart attack and he shot off up into a ditch after some funny sounding bird and I couldn't see or get at him. You really do realise how heavy muck is when you're trying to run to the field on the other side of the ditch and the muck is like lead weights on your boots! Obviously Oscar did eventually appear again and he actually did a wonderful recall back to me, so I suppose it wasn't all bad!

When we got home Oscar was obsessed with the oil shed. He wouldn't leave it alone. I think there's mice or something under it but Oscar went mad trying to get under it!

As a result of his adventures that day he came back looking like this......

.....And he stank! I'm not sure what it was but whatever he rolled in that day was definitely not alive and hadn't been for a long, long time!  So he got a shower instead of a bath. They're quicker for both dogs and humans and less messy. He really didn't like the small ensuite though, or the shower part but it was over in 5 minutes and then he got to lie in front of the fire to dry off so he definitely gained more from the experience than he lost.

"Please let me go, please"

A dangerous move venturing into the shower!

All clean!!!

And.....SHAKE!!!

Look.....a walking....towel monster....

"Now can I go?"

I also took a few dogless photos on our walk that I spent ages uploading to photobucket so I'm putting them in here!

A two story shed type thing in the middle of a field! Complete with a chair!

The steps to the second floor

The huge gaping hole on the ground floor!

The smallest puddle of the day

This is....was...a field, it is now a pond! Complete with ducks too!

A little stream running though the fields. 

Seeing as the weather is taking a turn for the worst I have finally decied to get Oscar an Equafleece Tankie! After at least a year of indecision I'm going to do it, I'm going to spend €35 on the perfect dog coat for him. Although having finally decided on that, I've now discovered that they do not take paypal as payment so it's going to take some convincing to get my parents to order it. I'm hoping I can convince mam to do it with her credit card and just not tell dad as he usually says no as soon as I say they don't take paypal but my mam might do it for me.
I'm hoping the coat will live up to all the good reviews it gets, unlike Oscar's DublinDog collar. He hasn't even had it a year yet and it's got a hole in the side of it! These collars were recommended to me by countless people, they looked great and were supposed to be very strong but I guess not everything is what it seems.

Really disappointed with it. It cost a lot of money too and there's a flipping hole in the side of it now! I sent the company an email about the collar. I'm hoping they can do something for me but I'm not sure as I didn't buy direct from them but from a UK retailer. Either way I made sure that I told them I won't be buying or recommending their products anymore.

I got Oscar some new toys the past few weeks too, well 2 to be exact. I'm not sure if you could class either of them as new though really, as one of them is just a replacement of an old one and the other is......a glove....... and it wasn't so much of me giving him the glove, it was more like he stole it from me instead! He loved them though so that's all that matters!

GLOVE!!!!

Oscar's idea of a game of 'tug'

Nom........nom......nom.....

Arghhh!!!!

Squirrel toy 

Catch me if you can!!!!

My mother was at a hen night party a few weeks ago and as part of the party they all go these little red hats and bow ties to wear. They obviously got to take them home and it was one of the first things that my mother showed my upon her arrival home. Then we got this brilliant idea......

Oscar didn't seem to mind and I think the bow tie suited him brilliantly! He's going to be perfect for coming to my debs next year!!!! Heheheehe!