Wet Weekend

This weekend we had planned to go to a dog agility competetion at the Royal Cornwall Showground. We arranged for Mike's sister and her husband to come and farm sit.

Friday started very well. My son, David, came down to help me vaccinate the herd and trim 40 sets of toe nails - that makes 320 nails in all. Makes bath time at home look like a doddle doesn't it? Although the weather was not good, we still do husbandry work as we have a convenient pole barn which we clad in weather board. It is always ready to accept new born cria or any alpaca who needs special attention and comes in especially useful for clipping, vaccinating, worming or medicating alpacas. Sometimes we use it as additional housing for visiting dogs too.

We were well ahead of the game and were only waiting for our friends who breed alpacas near Honiton to come and collect a pig ark which was surplus to requirements and to look at some of our potential show animals. Lynsey is very good at asssessing and advising on alpacas and I often ask her opinion. They were due to come late afternoon or early evening.

In fact they could not get away and it was about 6.40 p.m. when they arrived. Lynsey thought that the show alpacas were all neat and tidy and fit for judging, but they had forgotten to bring the trailer to pick up the pig ark!! They are coming back on Monday.

We left shortly afterwards and after a fruitless search for a fish and chip shop in Wadebridge (where the show ground is) we finally arrived on site at about 10 p.m. Our friend, Gary, had saved us a place and we just took the dogs for a quick walk, had a sandwich, and went to bed. The next day it was pouring with rain, with a strong wind, and we had not sorted out our camper van. It was also very cold.

We both thought that we had made a mistake in coming and Mike said he could not compete because his knees were hurting him, so we decided to pack up and go home. I could not resist running Romie, my youngest dog, in one agility class, but she thought a demolition derby would be fun, and knocked down lots of poles. This convinced me that we had made the right decision and we left shortly after we devoured a huge cooked breakfast. I had cooked enough for the four dogs too - so we all felt much happier.

The weather got worse as we progress towards home, but we made the most of it. We visited a site where Canadian log homes have show homes. We are hoping to build a bigger version of these on our farm next year.

We also visited Trago Mills which we had heard a lot about. We hated it.

We stopped at Sidford at a lovely pub and had a ploughman's lunch and a glass of wine (at least I did) before heading for home to surprise (shock) the family. I think this is the first time in living memory that I have not stayed at a dog show to compete.

http://www.alpacas-for-sale.co.uk/index.html