Happy New Year Sophie, David and the team,
We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Sorry this email is a little later than I planned but I wanted to wait for a couple of things we had planned before updating you.
Enid is an absolute joy and settled in brilliantly. She has the sweetest nature and is so affectionate, she just wants to please. She loves to have hugs and kisses and her favourite is if you have been out running and are a bit sweaty. She’s been so easy to train and quickly picked up the basics. Both Charlotte and I trained her a lot over the summer holidays, while she couldn’t go out, so she had brilliant sit, stay and recall before she went out. She quickly learnt to work well on the lead too. I trained Enid in everything I could remember from our previous lab, Arthur and Charlotte and Enid went to Kennel Club puppy class and then bronze good citizen, so Charlotte could build her confidence and learn different techniques to find what works for her and Enid. They passed both with flying colours and were both the youngest by a very long way. I’m really proud of them both.
We’ve taken Enid to lots of different places, so she could get used to lots of places, people and environments. To start with we had a bag to carry her in. She went to parkrun the first saturday we had her and I carried her round. Although she was a little scared by all the noise and people to start with she soon settled into it, and all the sights and sounds made her very tired. She’s been every week since. As she got bigger and heavier I started to let her get out the bag towards the end and walk a short section, then once she got too big and heavy for the bag, at around 5 half months, I let her do the first lap walking with me and then Charlotte would take her back to the car while I finished the second lap. Enid was so excited the day she started her first parkrun and was with the “big” dogs. She now regularly does two and half laps before heading back to the car and on Christmas day did her first full parkrun. I have strict rules that running isn’t allowed to run and must walk even if I’m jogging next to her. Its taken some training but we have got there.
In August we have the Worcester Show which includes a dog show. We took Enid to get used to people and noise and sounds. They had a Civil War re-enactment group and she didn’t batter an eyelid with the gunfire. She came 3rd in the cutest puppy and enjoyed the couple of hours she spent down there.
Once she had had all her jabs we took Enid camping for the weekend to the New Forest. It was the only weekend that rained all summer but she had lots of fun. We took her to the beach at Lepe to see the sea. She wasn’t keen at that point, and had lots of pub dinners, which is was absolutely brilliant at, and sat on her mat and went to sleep, or quietly played with a toy.
Enid has since found her love of water. I took her to a safe place on the river severn so she could have paddle and try a swim; she wasn’t sure what to do so the second time we went my mum and her two retrievers came along and Enid quickly worked out how to swim but still wasn’t bother. Since then though the pond on one of our walks has refilled with the rain we have had and she loves to splash in there. I’m hoping next summer I can teach her to balance on my paddleboard and she can come paddling with me.
I’ve taken Enid to the train station and watched the trains come and go but she hasn’t been on a train yet. In October we took her to the Cotswold Wildlife Park. She loved it and was particularly interested in the rhinos and otters.
Enid loves her walks and loves the fields and woods we have by us. She loves to the run in the fields and get the zoomies in the long grass. She loves to sniff in the woods and play in the streams.
We had a brilliant Christmas with Enid, Christmas is definitely better with a dog. She was really good and didn’t unwrap any presents under the tree or steal the decorations or chew the tree, but she did drink the water out of the tree stand; we were happy with that option, it was quite cute. Enid loved opening presents with us and got lots of new toys and treats.
This year we are planning on taking Enid on holiday with my mum and her dogs to Pembrokeshire for a week. Its something we always used to do with our last dogs and Enid absolutely adores mum’s two retrievers so I think we are all going to have a brilliant time. I’m also hoping we can get some more camping trips in for some long weekends. Charlotte and Enid may carry on to the silver and gold good citizen when the weather warms up. We train in a field so it was raining and windy and freezing for most of the bronze training. I’ve trained Enid in most of the silver and gold criteria already so if Charlotte doesn’t want to carry on its not the end of the world. I’ll definitely look to do some sort of the training with Enid as she turns one; maybe dog agility or maybe canicross. She loves to learn and I think it helps to have something to work towards.
I’ve included a variety of pictures of the things Enid has been up to, but she has done so much there was too much to include everything. She has an instagram account so you can follow her journey on there. She is @lablifewithenid .
I think she looks a lot like Janie, but I’ve spotted some Bones manorisms from the video you posted a few weeks ago.
I hope you have a wonderful year and all Enid’s littermates are doing well.
Love Lucy, Mat , Charlotte and most importantly Enid.
