Since attending the Pampered Pooch courses back in March I have been lucky enough to get my own clippers, grooming table, grooming scissor set and blaster/dryer - all of which have been presents for my birthday, or that I have used vouchers from Christmas to purchase!

It was very scary the first time I attempted a full groom at home, without the instructor there to put me right or correct any mistakes that I made! But the more I have done, the easier it gets, and my mantra of 'it'll grow back if you make a mistake' has certainly helped!

I'm also very lucky to be friends with a local groomer, Suzi at Bark Avenue, where I still take the girls if they need a more experienced hand! Suzi has her own Cockapoo, the lovely Humphrey, and she has helped me with some areas that were not covered on the Pampered Pooch course!

So, with a bit more confidence I decided to see what Pepper would look like with a shorter style - I was very pleased with the results!

You can really see some of the variation in her colour when she is shorter - she has lots of little white patches and you can still see her two black spots!

It's been a really exciting day!

I have been training Ruby to weave using the 2 x 2 method that I learnt in February! She has been making good progress and I wanted to get some pictures and videos of how our training has been going, so off we went to the local park with our weave poles.

Ruby was doing really well and Ian suggested that we try closing the poles so that they were evenly spaced! The first time I sent her she went a little wrong so we started again and I couldn't believe that she did it - she weaved the 4 poles!!

Here is the video of Ruby weaving for the first time:

We have been taking Pepper to obedience training since she was 8 weeks old. Having completed our initial 10 week puppy training class we moved into the Bronze Award class.

The Kennel Club Good Citizen Awards are designed to give a training structure to develop well adjusted dogs with skills that are relevant to every day life!

The first of these is the Bronze Award and I'm delighted to report that Pepper achieved this tonight!

The Bronze Award consists of a range of tests that include walking to heel, going through a gate or door in a controlled way, walking through a group of dogs in a controlled way, sit or down stay and recall. In addition we had to demonstrate the we are able to groom our dog and that they are comortable with us handling them while checking their ears, eyes, paws etc and we also had to answer some questions on responsible dog ownership.

Any test is scary, but I'm glad that we did it and that we passed!

Well done Pepper!