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You know when you look at some of the advertising photos those expensive, hipster, scruffy-posh brands put out. The people look like their having such a jolly good time but you think, “ahhh its so pretentious, so staged…” Well this is that rally where they are taken. And you know what…

What time is it? No… really? We are already at the circuit and we are arguably late. At 7 am! We had to queue to get in. We had to get a bus to get here. From a park and ride. At the other end of the A43. After an hour’s drive for picking up Cerb. After an hour and half drive from Stoke…. Yeah, I was up early. But not as early as it could have been. I did the drive from Stoke last night and stealth camped in the Birmingham suburbs. As you can tell from this blog entry, I survived un-stabbed.

A couple years ago, the tree that had been growing between the bricks of the wall behind my shed, decided to fall over. And as luck would have it, a branch punched its way through the roof of my shed. It was stormy and so, come the morning, I found a lot of stuff very wet. I had a portion of type 2 fun, patching it up as best I could in the remaining 4 days before going on holiday….

Weston park international model air show is absolutely-freaking-massive!!!!! I thought Wings’n’Wheels was big, but this is another level!

I woke at the time I usually wake up – because that’s just what an adult routine does to you. But also because, no matter how much a lay in would have been nice, or how warm I was in my nice big poofy down sleeping bag, my bladder said I needed to move in the direction of a loo…. Like, right now. Maybe this really is what being an adult is like, is this the start of being old??!?!

After 4 years, it’s time to tackle the Dragon Rally again. It’s taken me this long to get over the trauma of the last event… the gale force winds… the rain… the oil on the roads…. the cow juice… maybe I’m not over it… 

But I was off early this morning and the first stop is Tescos cafe for breakfast. I’d packed up the bike over the last few days. Packed and rebuilt actually…

We are making some progress. Daito is definitely learning every day. Not many new commands but getting more controlled and repeatable. 

We have learnt one major new one which is very useful. Always in a positive way and never as a punishment.

“On ya bed” to go into his crate and sit.

This one has been quite easy to train as we already give him all his food there. Kongs are also something he loves, but he carries them around so they go in there too. And now we have a couple lick mats that’s also exciting to have in there. We only had to use the command each time we gave him a tasty treat or dinner and he pretty much got it. We are working on commanding him and pointing from a distance which sometimes works.

We have realised that we don’t have a release word. He is just getting up and walking away when he wants to. This is not ideal because we really want him to stay still until we give him a command that he can go do what he wants or we have another command for him. If he’s getting up and leaving before this, then we lose that control. We sort of use “go on then” when out on walks to tell the boys to go about their sniffy business ahead of us, so that works but might be a bit long. Maybe just “go on”. 

What we have been getting more and more of are dead bits of stuffed toy laying around. He’s always loved a squeaker and furry toys to chew on, but now he’s more powerful he’s chewing them up. He will happily knaw the tail or ear off a stuffed toy in minutes that we have had for years with Haku and Kayto. Doesn’t really matter. It’s cheaper to chew up toys than sofas. Being home all the time means we can instantly correct him on the rare occasion he has started to chew the coffee table so it’s not become a thing yet. Hopefully the destruction will be limited to toys… but that might be wishful thinking.