Piglet at the stripper’s

Wee Piggle and I drove over to Arnside yesterday so that ace dog groomer, Hilary Gilpin, could strip Piggle’s coat.

It’s been amazingly long for ages now, but I thought it best to leave the stripping until now because the winter has been so cold. Hilary pionted out, though, that Piggle’s coat won’t have been keeping her either warm or dry for quite some time, because when it’s as long as that it simply splits along the back, and forms into little ringletty things (Piglet calls it her Rastafurian look), so that wind and rain get straight through. Doh… I’ll know for next time.

Hilary did a great job. Piglet has only a rather sparse undercoat–Hilary said that’s probably because she’s a blue and tan (as opposed to red or grizzle), as for some reason it takes longer for undercoats to develop on little blues, and Piglet’s still only 16 months old (today, in fact!) In a couple of weeks, though, it’ll have grown through and she’ll look lovely.

It was great to see my wee puppy emerge again from under all that fur, and to have confirmation that I’ve not been over-feeding her. She looks pretty skinny to me now, but Hilary (who also breeds, shows and judges Borders, so knows what she’s talking about) said there was “more than enough of her”.

Anyway, here are the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures. Amazing, eh! As ever, click on the smaller pics for larger versions.

Little Piglet’s a bit nervous on arrival

Um… where’s my coat gone?

Side two

Whassat, then?

Aagh… Lemme out!

ZOMG… what going on? And can I drink it?

Phew! A wee break.

Almost finished with the hair dryer

All smart and lovely again!

ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG!!!

Piggle's Daddy -- Tythrop Tapas

ZOMG I’m so excited that I really can’t help posting to say that I’ve just had a quick scan online, and realised that Piglet’s father–Tythrop Tapas–has just won Best of Breed at Crufts for the SECOND TIME!!!

Piglet and Puss-Puss and I are so happy about it! Piglet shed a tear of joy (actually I think the cat may have had a paw in that), and I couldn’t help jumping around the room, even though I’m really not into that Crufts stuff at all. But this is Piglet’s own Daddy, so we can’t help being excited ♥

*goes off to scan the other results*

Edited to add: Piggle’s brother won his age class, and her sister came second in hers. Wow… And Piglet is actually the most lovely of the three of them! *g* And to think we went for camping over showing!

My darling wee Piglet

It’s definitely not true…

…that the devil has all the best tunes. I’d like to know why so many of the best tunes have some sort of religious connotation. Still, and setting that interesting musing on one side for a moment…

This is beautiful: beautiful, envigorating, inspiring, cheering, shiny, joyful, heart-stoppingly, tummy-turningly, tear-prickingly wonderful music for a sunny morning. Somewhere on a dusty age-old cassette tape I have a favourite version, but I can’t find that right now (and besides–it’s not on YouTube), so here are a couple of stand-ins.

The first is just the tail-end of it (how-come-so-many-of-my-words-seem-to-be-coming-out-hyphenated-this-morning-?-?-?), to show you which tune it is, but WOW!!! What a fantastic 40 seconds of singing it is!!! The second is a fuller rendition.

Hang onto your hats when the first one gets going, and rejoice!