In mid August I celebrated my 18^th Birthday and true to form I celebrated it at the British Fly Ball championships. What could be better than 2 days camping with dogs, 2 days fly ball racing and 2 nights partying?

The first party night had a neon theme where everyone glowed in the dark. The bar man recognised me as the girl from X Factor! Well not quite as I know Gin is talented but I have not taught her to sing yet! The Saturday night party theme was Posh Frocks and wellies so some great sights here!

We did however have a slight mishap on the Saturday night when we lost my van keys and Gin was locked inside. We looked everywhere for them, but as it had gone dark and we were in a large field ,with only a couple of torches and a dark tent we had no luck in finding them. How were we going to rescue Gin? Eventually when our request over the tannoy for any budding car thieves to come forward failed-it was decided that the only way forward was to phone the RAC. They acted promptly and sent out a great man who very professionally broke in to my van and gallantly rescued Gin. He did say that his wife would not believe that he had been called out to rescue Gin – the dancing dog -so to prove it we sent him home with a signed copy of my book. We did eventually find the keys but couldn’t have left Gin locked in the van over night so we are very grateful to the RAC for all their help. I suppose though that I was lucky that the keys were lost at night when it was cool as had they been lost during a hot day it would have been a real emergency to get Gin out very quickly Remember dogs can die in hot cars.

Ice was recently entered into her first ever Canine Freestyle Competition at Stoneleigh Warwickshire. As Gin and I  have won Advanced classes , Ice had to compete in Novice for her first competition instead of starters ,as once you have won out of starters with any dog you can never compete in starters again even with a different dog. So here I was with a young dog entered in a Novice class. She performed her little socks off and obviously thoroughly enjoyed herself with a wagging tail throughout. She did eventually win this class and I am so proud of her. Since then we have entered another Novice competition in which she came 2^nd . This success now makes her eligible to compete in intermediate classes in the future which is an amazing achievement for any dog let alone one so young.

Last weekend we were invited to perform at the Boomerang TV Pet Awards which took place in Regents Park London. We had a great day, and both Gin & Ice performed whilst being closely followed by TV cameras. The overall winner of the Pet awards was a Beagle with his young owner. His prize was a trophy and to have his dog made into a TV cartoon character-what an amazing prize!

It was great to meet up with George Sampson and sisters whilst performing at Butlins recently. He had not met Ice before and thought that he was seeing double when 2 dogs walked out of the dressing room!  There were lots of cuddles for the dogs and I got a great reunion hug too.

We are going to be performing in the YKC ring at Discover Dogs in Earls Court London on Saturday 14th November at 12pm and again at 3.25pm. If you are attending do come along and say hello. There will be lots to see and do whether you are competing or spectating. The YKC alone have demo’s and competitions in Handling, Obedience, Heel work to Music Agility and Grooming. Many of the competitions will also be Cruft’s 2010 qualifiers so don’t forget to get your entries in. We can only attend on Saturday due to performing at Crewe Lyceum Theatre’s Star Burst Charity Show on Sunday 15^th November.

It is just over a year since Ice came to live with us as an 8 week old pup and what an amazing year it has been for all of us. On Sunday I am going to take her back to her roots in Yorkshire to the farm where she was born. We are going to try our hand at sheep herding to add to her many talents. I can’t wait for this and will let you know how we get on with hopefully some photographic evidence of Gin and Ice working the sheep. We were unable keep in touch with Gin’s breeder so it is great to be able to keep in touch with Ice’s.