It’s a Blog ! Not a Log !

Those of you who read my blog will no doubt have come across posts about our Cane Corso (Italian Mastiff) Blue, well I’m sad to say Blue’s been a little bit under the weather these past few weeks due to damage to her cruciate ligament in one of her hind legs.

She developed some lameness in her leg in May which was prescribed anti-inflammatories for and this seemed to do the trick, however at the end of June, beginning of July her symptoms came back, so after 2 visits to the vets and a set of x-rays we were told that she’d most likely torn her cruciate ligament and were referred to a Consultant Vet at North West Surgeons nr Frodsham.

So along came the appointed consultation where we were told that from what could be seen from the x-rays it appears that Blues ligament has indeed been torn, this was apparently obvious from the x-rays (not a vet myself, so have had to take his word for it), the next step we’ve been told is surgery and at present Blue is booked in to have the operation on the 13th August 2010.

We’ve been told the operation has a 96% success rate, but this all depends on how her recovery is managed, so for the first 6 weeks, Blue will be crated confined and only allowed out for her constitutionals and that’s it, then after the 6 weeks its a case of very slow, gentle exercise, which will gradually build up to a manageable 20 minute walk, and then over time hopefully build up to longer walks and fingers crossed semi-normality.

I can honestly say I am very nervous about Blue going under anethisia, as thats probably the most dangerous part of the whole operation, don’t know what we’d do if anything every happened to Blue, so fingers crossed, wood touched everything will go smoothly.

Will endeavour to keep you all updated on how our little Princess is getting on

kennys party 071, originally uploaded by BagRat.

Kenny reached the grand old age of 50 last week along with Andy reaching the 40 mark, so they had a joint party to celebrate and used the oppurtunity to get everyone back togeather again.

It was good to see all the faces from the partys togeather again having a laugh and just generally getting on, party kicked off at of all places Stretford Cricket Club, then moved onto Lisa’s flat, where drinks flowed and people talked bollox (mainly due to what they’d had).

We left fairly early on in the morning 5:00am so maybe not so early, but the party carried on after we left, ending only when John, Ben and a few others decided to place most of Lisa food stuffs in the freezer . . . oh and after Ben had emptied a full bag of flour over the sleeping Lisa’s head (not nice Ben).

Gotta say Kenny was looking good for an old man and no doubt has many years left in him, all the best Kenny and Andy

Picture 095, originally uploaded by BagRat.

Did’nt really post to much over the weekend as I spent quite alot of it in bed, due to being called out to an alarm call at my workplace, was there from midnight Friday till 5:30am Saturday morning, so spent quite a while in bed recovering.

So seeing as most of Saturday was spent in bed thought we#d better do something on Sunday, was’nt sure what to do or where to go, but in the end we decided on Chelford Car boot.

Got there for about 12:30 and spent a good hour or so just wondering round looking for bargain’s but think we missed most of them, so just ended up buying lots of quaility cheeses instead, more about those in another post.

After leaving we thought we’d best take Blue for a walk and on the way back we chanced upon Styal Estate a rather good dog walking place, we’d heard about it before but never actually bothered to go look for it, really wish we had cause its definatly a dog friendly walk, lost of paths and fields for Blue to galavant in, I’ll stick some photo & videos up this weekend so you can see for yourselfs.

Anyway its close to 8:00am and I’d better start making my way to work, cyas laters
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Blue has her first journey on a Bus, the No 23 took her from Davyhulme all the way to Chorlton and she was a very calm and well behaved passenger

Picture 015, originally uploaded by BagRat.

Went and checked out Davyhulmes Millenium Nature Reserve at the weekend with Blue our Cane Corso, the whole site covers about 8 hectares of land along side about 3/4 mile of the west bank of Manchesters Ship Canal , the reserve is a mixed landscape of wetland, woods, water features & open land.

You can do everything from bird watching, walking, cycling there as well as having a traditional picnic on one of the benchs provided.

The site is owned and maintained by United Utilities and part of it is a designated Site of Biological Importance.

So I’ve just found a nifty piece of software to allow me to twitter alot more freely and discretely, its called twitterdeck and I’m liking it alot, infact I’m probably twittering more since I installed it then ever.
You should check it out, it works on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux machine’s, so just about anyone can install it and start using it straight away.

Allow me now to present to you the Choreographed dancing of the 1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice.

The new Governor of the province closed down what was an over crowded gang-run prison and transferred the prisoners to a state of the art prison where gangs where outlawed and introduced a new exercise routine to the prison, using choreographed dancing as a way of getting prisoners who had previously been in gangs to work along together to create something and that something was dance routines to 80′s classics’s.

Check out the rest of there videos here

Well Blue won 2 rosettes at Chorlton Parks Summer Festival RSPCA Dog show, she got 2 x 4th place :

4th Dog/Owner Lookalike

4th Best Six Legs

These 2 results weren’t to bad when you think that there were about 30 entries in both categories, though I think we were robbed in the Best Six Legs

Anyway after the Dog Show we headed to Orlando’s for one of there rather tasty breakfasts, you can seem what mine looked like below in a little time-lapse movie I made

So what did I do the rest of the weekend then, well on Saturday night Mel was doggy sitting for her sister and I was entertaining the lads round ours, these being John, Steve and Liam, Sophie was supposed to be joining us as well, but something came up which prevented her from joining us, shame really as this wasn’t a lads night and Sophie was more then welcome to join us, maybe next time.

Anyway once the lads had arrived we headed to the Green Windmill for a few beers, couldn’t stay all that long as we were all a bit skint, hence the idea of having a lads night in round ours, anyway the lads seemed to like the place and will no doubt be visiting it again, photos will be uploaded on a later post me thinks as pretty busy at the moment.

Sunday was the usual visit to Ivy Green to take Blue for her Sunday morning constitutionals, closely followed by another full breakfast at Orlando’s (this place is definitely going to be effecting my diet).

Did another Line Art time-lapse of the journey from Ivy Green to our house via Orlando’s using Final Cut Express and my Canon IXUS 80 IS , results below

Sunday afternoon and evening was spent in bed recovering from Saturday night’s fun, so apart from the dog show and the quick visit to the Green Windmill the weekend was fairly uneventful

Sit in a Cafe in the Trafford Centre and Surf the net and eat bagels while Hrs HP does all her shopping or girly things, this place normally cracks me within about 15 mins, but now I got the net I can just sit down and ignore the consumers masse’s running around like the world revolves around the latest fashion statement. .

I love you Wi-Fi

I also love bagels

Anyway whil I’m sat here I’ve set up the time-lapse camera and got it pointed at one of the walk ways, so hoping I’ll get some good time-lapse captures of people running around like mad little rats in a maze, will hopefully post some of the footage tonight after I’ve played about with it in Final Cut.

Heres one I made earlier using the Line Art filter

Please feel free to comment on it and let me kow what you think

Well finally got around to donwloading some more videos off the camcorder and have spent part of today uploading them to YouTube for your watching pleasure.

Anyway first up is of course Blue . . Blue likes to think thats shes an aeroplane sometimes and likes to stick her head out the window and pretend her ears are wings

Next up is my mum giving a commentary on the Festival of Flowers at Market Weightons All Saints Church on the 3rd of May, so expect to see lots of flowers and my mum

As for the rest of the videos they are of course of Blue so get ready for a Blue overdose

Heres Blue enjoying her new walk we found, ts Ivy Green in Chorlton

And another around Ivy Green, but this time in the meadows

Now this we think is Blues favourite video, mainly cause she gets to eat on it, one of my work colleagues Tracey has a soft spot for Blue I think and keeps bring bones in for her, this time she got to sample a Ham Bone . . .