Chocolate, orange and ginger

I always enjoy looking after the chocolate Labrador. She is so easy. A dog sitters dream sit. She is easy on the lead, doesn’t pull, likes to play but isn’t demanding it all the time and loves long walks. This one is a bit odd as she won’t go up stairs in any house. I think she has been taught she mustn’t go upstairs and she obeys that rule. But if you take her on a bridge where there are steps, she will go up them. But she doesn’t like confined spaces, and really doesn’t like kissing gates. But like all Labradors she is obsessed by food. Anything is fair game that’s on the floor, but she won’t normally steal food off a low table for instance. A lot of her toys are missing limbs, when you hear the toy being ground down by her powerful back teeth you know another limb is about to be amputated. She is so friendly with other dogs, and will walk away if they don’t suit her friendly manner. Her main bad thing is eating dog mess. Not any old mess, sometimes she will pass it by, maybe it’s not old enough. It’s hard work, as you want to let her enjoy the walk, but you have to be mindful that where she is sniffing there might be a hidden lump that has attracted her attention. She still has three carrot bits at the start of every walk. Here she is in the TRHA store sniffing the hedgehog food, that we think is just dog food.


 The reason she was in the store with me, was it was raining, we did a long walk before it started. Two wooden cabinets were looking worse for wear, they came out of a railway vehicle I have been told. So I sanded them down and painted them while the dog lay in her bed. Outside it chucked it down.

I decided to go back to a cake I have made before, ginger and orange cake. It has icing with orange juice on it. The cake has the zest of the orange. I gave a few slices to friends, and my physio got a bit too.

A short video of the Labrador. I was eating my breakfast and she was giving me those puppy eyes, to try and persuade me to share. She looks at me, then at the breakfast and back again. She was rewarded. After this her next desire is the morning walk. She will pester you for it until she gets her way. She lies beside me so I can stroke her, she knows I love doing that. She is a very clever beautiful dog. The cocker we had with us for one night, it was his birthday the other day and when we walked past his house he was in the garden  and he went mad when he saw me. 

It’s been nice walking the lab around here as we have met many people I know and some with dogs. I will miss her coming to see me at 6.30am wanting her breakfast, I send her away and she comes back later on, eventually I give up and get it for her. On some  days she gets a treat of a raw egg on her kibble. If it was possible that meal gets eaten even faster than usual.

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