A couple of weeks ago Penny invited me to guest blog for her whilst she was away in sunnier climes. I was super keen as I love reading her blog and follow her on Twitter, where her tweets often make me laugh out loud.
I really enjoyed the opportunity to write for another blog, but it was difficult trying to find a subject matter that would be a good introduction to me, for readers who won't have come across my blog before. Unsuprisingly the post includes puppy photos, if you can bear the sight of yet another image of a fluffy-faced dog, then you can read my post here.
Have a look at Penny’s blog whilst you're there, hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Well, that was an eventful month! Things are still very busy at work, so of course the sensible thing to do when I'm rushed off my feet at work is to get a puppy (not!)
If you've not read my other posts, we did indeed collect our puppy, Barney at the start of June. A month in and it feels as if he's been around forever and there have only been a couple of occasions when I wanted to put him on a train back to Liverpool. I took a few days of peternity leave to keep an eye on him when Andrew needed to be elsewhere, so all in all he's been very well looked after. He seems to like it here, now if only we could get him to sleep through the night so that Andrew can also sleep through the night, that would be perfect.
As you can imagine, our lives have been pretty puppy-centric since 5th June. Luckily we've had plenty of visitors (all visitors now come to see Barney, not us!) and have been able to get Barney out and socialising since he had his second lot of jabs. We even managed to go out for a sneaky lunch, just the two of us, whilst Barney was snoozing in his crate. A tiny glimmer of light at the end of the biting, house-training tunnel!
Now onto how I'm doing against my plans for the year...
Read sixteen books
Not fiction this time, but I read 'The Happy Puppy Handbook' by Pippa Mattinson. I'd never had a dog before and wanted to be prepared. This book was recommended to me and it was really good, it certainly gave me the confidence to know what to expect before Barney arrived and was a useful source of reference in the first couple of weeks.
Find one hundred geocaches
No progress on this, Barney can only do fifteen minute walks at the moment, but hopefully we'll be able to take him for a trot via some geocaches soon.
Try three gym classes
My weekends now broadly consist of getting up with Barney so Andrew can catch up on sleep and then entertaining whoever is coming to see him. Hopefully in a few months I'll be able to get back to the gym reliably. For now, I'm enjoying our daily walks through the fields.
Meet up with an old friend
No change with this, but I think we'll meet plenty of new people through Barney, he's a bit of a people magnet!
Blog once a month
I've
been fairly active this month, there are a few new posts on here if you've missed them over the
course of the month. There's the story of Barney's first day with us and a few things I didn't expect about getting a puppy. I also did a photo an hour post.
Watch a new film once a month
There seem to be so many new films that I'd love to see at the cinema, but I think I'll have to wait for them to come out on DVD. I'm not sure Barney can keep his legs crossed at home for three hours!
Take two holidays
I'm going to take this off the list. We had a really nice trip to the Isle of Wight, but I don't think it's going to be practical to do much more than day trips for the rest of the year.
Take six day trips
No progress on this over the month but hopefully we'll catch up over the remainder of the year, albeit with a very excited hound at our feet!
Hopefully July won't be as dramatic. It's my birthday month so hopefully the boys will spoil me suitably. Barney also starts puppy school, I'm just hoping he's not the terror of the classroom! All in all, I can't wait to see what it holds.
