Alive alive alive!

Yes, we are alove. Hazel is still cute. She is also still the world's craziest dog. I have no excuse for not posting and not enough time to up load pictures, so I will give you a little story from yesterday:

Now that the living room is finished we have moved onto the tiny bedroom that was skimmed at the same time as the lounge. It's really tiny--like 2 square meters--so it will hopefully not take very long. Then again our living room was not nearly big enough to take as long as it did so -shrug-.

Anyway. Yesterday I was painting in there. Hazel takes this pretty well, which is good. She still doesn't like when I bathe though so it was very annoying when I got paint in my hair. I went in for a shower and forgot to lock the door which means that approximately 10 seconds later I was barged in upon by Little Miss Fluff. Which would normally not be such a problem as it was, but the bathroom (with its wide open door) is at the other end of the hall from the tiny bedroom, whose door was propped open for air flow, what with paint drying and whatnot. And of course, there are no curtains because it is being painted. And it has a big window which looks out over the street. Or in this case right into the house across the street. Which was not as empty as you want it to be in situations like this. Sigh.

So there was a crazy mad dash to get one of the doors closed without showing the whole world my bits and then Hazel decided that when I got back in she was going to join me. But it turns out she didn't like that much and she jumped out again approximately 3 nanoseconds later. Of course 5 minutes later she had forgotten that she didn't have a particularly enjoyable time in the shower when she last attempted so she got it AGAIN. This happened 3 or 4 times before I got all the paint out of my hair.

Today? Today I'm not painting.

The End.

Hazel: now with added cuteness & cheekiness.

So. There have been a few trips to the vet in the past week-or-two. Trip one revolved around this:

Which was impossible to get a decent picture of:

Suffice to say that my dog had a lump. Which she bit, so it exploded blood for a few hours. Fun stuff. Needless to say, we were in the vet asap, where we had some new vet that we had never met before and who I was not terribly impressed with. She looked at me like I was insane when I said that we had only noticed it yesterday and dragged her in (Hello? 'splodin lump here!) and I think that she thought we were just bringing in Hazel for a scrape. Also on a completely unrelated note she had the strangest accent, like eastern European but educated in Ireland? It was odd. So yeah. Hazel got a shot of anti-inflammatory goodness and some drugs and told to come back if it didn't go away in a week.

It didn't. We had to go back in anyway for Hazel to get a booster shot and to get her boobies prodded (she appears to be having a bit of a false pregnancy) so we had that vet give it a look. Really at the moment it just looks like a scab but she reckons it is a histiocytoma, and is nothing to worry about at this point. 

This is Hazel hiding. She is a big fan of climbing under anything. That and stealing Dave's spot on the sofa.

So, last Sunday we had a nice roast pork dinner. it was yummy. You should ask Hazel:

What's that, Dave? Did you leave the kitchen door open? So, no left-overs for mummy and daddy but Hazel got porky treats all week!


I cannot stay mad at this though (who could?). I was really just laughing the whole time and obviously went for the camera before getting teh hunk o' meat away.

I think she is adorable even in this snuggle picture where you don't see her:

Cheeky dog? Oh, yes...

And one other thing:

We stuck on and painted the last of the skirting boards this weekend which means that this room? The one we started redecorating before we got Hazel? Yeah, it's finished.

Somerset Day 5: In which things do not go exactly as planned.

This is what the bedroom downstairs looked like, in case you wondered. 

As we began packing up Hazel went a bit funny again and sat in front of the door. Perhaps we should not threaten to leave her behind so often, maybe she is learning English ;)

The steps going up to the cottage were dangerous! I fell like 4 times because I am awesome. Hazel had a habit of running around the corner and trying to jump up them and then sliding and leaving claw marks behind:

 

I can't believe it but we didn't take any pictures of Freddie, the dog that lived next door and Hazel's de facto best friend while we were there. He was a great big lumbering and slobbery black lab. Very cute and a little bit afraid of Hazel's craziness.Can't say I blame him.

We set off back up the country and had a bit of a break where Hazel practiced her driving, before carrying on to Birmingham.

Now, those of you who have been paying attention know that Hazel comes from Birmingham! So we had a bit of a stop at her breeder's house which was nice but did not exactly go as I had imagined it would. Hazel's mummy was not so much pleased to see her and came out of the kitchen a bit snarly and had to go back. It is probably because she is in season, poor thing. Hazel's Daddy, on the other hand, was *really* pleased to see her -wink wink, nudge nudge- and also had to go back, although they did have a few nose kisses which was sweet. After the excitement with her doggy parents Hazel was a bit freaked out and ended up being very shy and not at all like herself. She was nervous of the people and really didn't want to do much but have a cuddle with Dave or myself, which was really a shame. She did get some strokes from them if she was sitting in my lap, silly thing. I've never seen her like it before, although it was probably a bit strange to go back if she recognized the smells and whatnot. So. Bit of a fail, that. Maybe we will try again someday. Anyway, here she is glued to her Daddy, although she doesn't look like a crazy weirdo. You will have to take my word for that.

And then there was a quick petrol stop and it was home time! But the heat was off when we got home and it was a bit of a mess because all the book boxes were still out. Ah well. It is good to be home.

Somerset Day 4: In which we do very little and enjoy it.

Hazel started day four in a weird mood. She was kicking blankets all over and scratching at the sofa, so we put her in the kitchen with the baby gate and she made herself comfortable without ruining the cottage's furnishings.

There are approximately zero pictures of me, so we took one. She was bored or sleepy or both. But always cute.

Spotty red cups of caffeinated goodness!

She lay like this for about ten minutes, although it looks very uncomfortable.

In the afternoon I swept up a bit and was shocked by the amount of mess that Hazel manages to leave behind in all of three days.

There was time for a quick game of Tobago...

Before Hazel, Queen of Everything, announced that it was bedtime.

Somerset Day 3: In which there are pretty views and a rocky beach.

Please enjoy the next few pictures which were taken by Dave while I got to snooze. How I love him. They are all taken from the top of the hill where our little cottage was.

They were taken in the approximately 2 hours of sun that we had the entire time we were there. Also the owners said that hazel didn't need to be on a lead so we weren't breaking the rules. Lastly our camera is stinky and the shutter thingy doesn't open all the way which is why some pictures have a black corner.

Hazel was given the bacon and egg that I did not finish for her breakfast. She was a happy doggy.

 She was less happy when she became my pillow:

But happy again when we got to the beach, where they were apparently having some form of fossil festival. Too many people!

I'm not gonna lie, the beaches they allow dogs on here aren't so nice. But Hazel enjoyed herself.

We hope that this was just rain water >_>

Hazel was really cold and shivery after he splashing about. Poor monkey. We tried to cuddle her warm and dry her a bit but it didn't work so well. She did warm up when we started walking again though.

We stopped for some ice cream near the people-beach which was surprisingly nice after the doggy beach.

For some reason when we got back to the car Hazel decided that she wanted to ride in the trunk. She just jumped right in, it surprised me. She can do some impressive jumping.

And then of course it was home time, and cuddles:

Somerset Day 2: In which we discover begging and quicksand.

This man may look sweet, but he is a naughty, horrible, awful man.

Today Dave taught Hazel that if she sits nicely by the table and begs he will feed her. He is a bad, bad man. She was doing so well until then, mostly because we have no dining room table so she has very little experience with it and just cuddled up on the sofa. Not anymore:

But seriously, how do you resist this?!

So then we went to Burnham-on-Sea which has such a promising name, don't you think? As we were walking down to the beach there was a sign about being careful when the tide is out because there can be sinking sand and stuff. They weren't kidding. See the pool in this picture?

Dis is what we in the trade call quicksand. Which wouldn't have been such a problem but Hazel ran around and got on the other side of it and we couldn't really call her back because obviously she would plow right through the puddle. So! I tried to throw the Frisbee that we had with us over it so that she would go after that and avoid the puddle but my frisbee skills are nonexistent and the frisbee was sacrificed to the gods of the quicksand.

Apparently this did not appease them and when Hazel had learned to avoid the puddles the ground *next* to one of them opened up and tried to eat her. At this point one of us went dashing into the quicksand to rescue the puppy (rather than take a photo, she was rather stuck) who came out looking like this:

Only imagine it over her whole body. I came out looking like this:

Would have been a good day for the wellies.

So anyway, we got out of there and went home to play Stone age.

And have a cuddle under the chair.

Somerset Day 1: In which there is a lot of car travel and doggy pants.

Hazel was very adamant about us not leaving her behind:

 

Which we didn't, as she was parked at the front door whining the whole time we tried to load the car.

She traveled well though, spending most of the trip in the backseat foot-well, with the occasional nose poking into the front.

 

 

 Arrival! Dave looks puzzled.

Hazel was still a little bit leaky so she got to wear some lovely pants! She didn't pull them off and shred them, which was a surprise.

She didn't even notice notice them after a while.

Hazel had a snuggle and Dave and I played guillotine for the first time--and I brought it with me from America! But it was in the boxes of books that were stored upstairs and now they have all been brought down and re-shelved.

And then for the last out of the night, Daddy wore the super-stylish wellies. It's lucky they are so big on me :D