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I really need to tackle the garden, which has become enormously wild and woolly this year. I just couldn't find the motivation for it somehow.

Art class this week was looking at light reflected on wet paving slabs, but mine isn't finished yet.

I painted this last week though:  my beloved old dogs Az & Mollydog.  A typical pose: Molly full of enthusiasm, Az looking doubtful but also a bit mischievous.
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I'm slowly nudging in the direction of hoping to actually make saleable art, and in preparation for that distant happening, I made a quick website : https://victoriaclare.com/

I've started thinking about perhaps adopting another dog, though I'm not sure. Rosie seems to be enjoying being an only one. But I do like the look of Anton. A scenthound might be a nice change.

We took the mattress we borrow every year from my mother back to its home again (we only need it for the one week when we have 5 guests at once!).  We've got very good at wrangling it up and down the stairs by now, and the mattress itself is a seasoned campaigner, a little scuffed at the corners.

This weekend I remembered to order vegan cupcakes for T's birthday (thank goodness they are now in Victoria, which actually has vegan food suppliers so it's much easier to send them things they might like!)  I also made a chocolate hazelnut fudgecake for us, which is very nice.

Oh, and I FINALLY finished writing A New Road or a Secret Gate which is a story about Elrohir meeting Amrod & Amras.   It has a slightly unexpected ending and I couldnt' work out how to make it work for ages, but finally I did, which is rather a relief.  

There was a change to the law recently which said that all dogs in the UK must be microchipped, and that the microchip record must contain the details of the current owner.  This came as a nasty surprise to the many dog rescues which had been keeping all the dogs they rehomed, microchipped with their own details, and consequently had thousands of dogs microchipped with one set of contact details - but the law was well overdue.

Dog rescues (in my opinion, and I have some experience with them) typically do not have the internal data management systems in place to keep in touch with all their adopters, let alone being able to update the contact records when the new owners move or go on holiday.( Read more... )( Read more... )

Oldies Club, and indeed most small dog rescues, has liability insurance with Cliverton, a company which has made a bit of a corner of the market in the area of small volunteer-run rescues. The problem with this is that when they decide to change the rules, it's very difficult to find anywhere else to turn. 
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Here is a summary of my thoughts on this matter, courtesy of https://www.lucidchart.com/ (I wanted a practice project to get to know their handy diagram-making product) .  Click for big. 

GinormoDoop has gone home.  Our house feels a lot bigger now it only has four dogs in it!   I was inspired to do a Duke retrospective post.


( Cut for many photos of dog. And a bit for relentless sentimentalism. )

 I started adding this to my previous post but it got long so I gave it its own spot. 

There are people that grump about rescue dogs coming into the UK from Ireland. Why, they ask, should we import dogs when thousands are put to sleep in the UK every year because nobody wants them?

I think there are several things that viewpoint misses:

( It's long but not *very* ranty...  )