June 9, 2012

These Boots were Made for Walking....in England.

So I know I've been slacking big time on updating on here. What can I say, we lead crazy busy lives ;) Just kidding, but not really. 

First things first, Harley and I FINALLY got to partake in a competition!!! YAY!! And we didn't come in last! Even better! Of course nothing can go off without a hitch so I did have some blunders on the day, the biggest one being I learned the completely WRONG Novice test.  Yup, only I could do something so ridiculous right? Thankfully I did learn the correct Elementary test. Harley was an absolute super star! He was happy, calm, working beautifully, and it showed! Even having not learned the correct Novice test we placed 5th out of 15 or so (so just imagine if we had learned the correct one, we may have won!!).  And in Elementary we placed 3rd, out of 7 or 8-so again not too shabby.  The bummer of it that the person who got 2nd beat me by 1 point! In both classes! UGH! I know where I'm going to make up those points next time!! It also doesn't help that my boy is a Thoroghbred and not a Warmblood, which I think the judge prefered based off her comments.  She may have been a little biased too-but oh well. Such is life in competition right?

  I need to give a huge thanks to my friend Andy Cheal for taking some great shots of us, the bottom 2 included.  He showed up and snapped away, capturing my boy in action.  So thanks so much Andy!!

Here we are strutting our stuff. 

Look at the beautiful muscle in his neck! Our hard work is paying off! And I'm having tons of fun!



 So the morning after our splash onto the Cyprus show scene, we hopped a plane to jolly ol' England to visit our beloved friends Neil and Emily.  We ended up spending 2 weeks in the UK total, 1 week with our buds and 1 week up in Scotland, just Matt and myself.  It was a really fun trip (as usual right??).  Since we have 2 weeks of goodies to see I'll once again be breaking them up into smaller posts-but not into days.  We did all sorts and visited new place while away so I'll breaking things up accordingly. First up, doing what Brits do best, going for walks!

Neil and Emily (now going to be called N&E) live outside of Oxford in Oxfordshire.  Nice rolling hills, lots of green, and LOTS of farmlands. So prime place to go strolling with the dog! They brought their pup back from Cyprus (Winnie) and she's an active thing so walks are essential.

See, she likes to run and play!! Here Neil is yelling JUMP really loudly! It was hilarious!


There are these iron horses near N&E live and they said they always wanted to get onto them. Well Matt and I succeeded!! This is how Matt thinks one should ride a pony!


And I'm practicing my side-saddle skills ;)


These fields are all over the place-I think Emily called them rape-seed something.  She thinks they smell bad-I couldn't tell. 


Oh Winnie!! What a happy girl she is!


So whatelse does one see on walks? Cows of course! Emily hates cows since one chased her but these ones were pretty chill.  She's really saying "Who are MOOO looking at??"-hehe!


These were great steps that get you between fields. 


Such pretty flowers!



 On one of our adventures, Winnie just shot up the side of the wall, like Spiderdog!! It was crazy and hilarious! Em and I didn't know what was going on.  She apparently smelled some sheep on the other side and decided to check it out. All we could think was from the Simpsons "Spiderpig, spiderpig...".


This is smarty. He lives in a field with Jack.  They are donkies with BIG ears who are way cute!! They followed us through the field and even got a scratch.  I love donkies!


Winnie meet cow. Cow meet Winnie.  "When you're the best of friends..."


Near by there are some great ruins that we visited at the end of the walk.  Em and Winnie met another doggie while I wandered taking photos (of course).  I still need to edit them but here is one that isn't too bad ;)


And this church was next to the ruins. It's really really old but is still a working church.  It was so lovely and quaint.  We had a wander through the graveyard and found some really old tombstones-way before our meager country was founded! It was amazing.


We went on several strolls throughout our trip and enjoyed every one of them! We miss going for long strolls with the dog.  And the scenery was so lovely-green and lush! So unlike Cyprus!
Next post will be about our visits to Bath and Oxford cities!