All about Amber...

There’s not much cruising to report so I thought I’d just write about Amber’s progress. It’s been 10 days now since we collected her from the van which had bought her over 2000 miles from her rescue shelter in Romania, and she’s doing pretty well. Apart from paperback books having an uncontrollable fascination in the middle of the night…

To be fair they are the only things she’s taken her boredom out on, and only at night. So barricades against the book-cases are the order of the day until she loses interest. She has her own toys and chews anyway, so any sign of interest in a book while we’re there gets intercepted and a nylon chew bone shoved under her nose.

She sleeps on a rug in the saloon, having shunned the £30 bed I bought her. Too well stuffed we think. I have a pad on order for her which she should find more comfortable. At first light, unfortunately at around 4 AM at the moment, she toddles through and stuffs her wet nose in my ear, but goes back and settles down for another hour or two before reminding me in the same abrupt manner that she needs a pee.

She lets us know when there are people passing, very vocally at first but that’s getting a bit better as she gets more settled. The other morning she woke us at 1:30, barking loudly. I found her stiff-legged in the middle of the saloon, glaring at the stove. The bright moonlight had allowed her to see her own reflection in the door glass and she was barking at the ghost dog. A sheet of black-painted cardboard sorted that out.

With the very hot weather I’ve made a half height barrier to fit across the front doors so she can’t molest passers by but can still see out. She’s happy to stand on the step and rest her paws on the top.

Outside she started out a bit of a hooligan, barking at approaching dogs and strangers. Focus and distraction training have improved her attitude to the extent that she completely ignored an oncoming dog on a very narrow stretch of towpath this afternoon. She kept her eyes fixed on me – and the bag of chicken morsels in my pocket!

She walks well on a slack lead, but that’s not really down to me, she does it anyway. When we get out in the fields I let her roam on a long lead and take the opportunity to do some recall training too. At first she was nervous of the wide open spaces, but now she enjoys herself rooting around.
So long as there no one around I’m happy to let her have short periods off her lead local to the boat.

Food wise she’s been on dry food when we come back after the morning walk, then cooked chicken and rice in the evening. That’s what she was on with Valentina in the rescue shelter. But now I’m slowly weaning her off the cooked stuff and she’ll be a wholly dry diet soon. Quality stuff too. Growling Tums was recommended (thanks Alison) so I got in touch with them for advice and they were very helpful. Unfortunately until the C-19 situation is resolved their courier won’t deliver to a collection point, so we’re stop-gapping with another dry food I was able to source.

Didn’t realise that 12kg of dog food would be such a tight fit in my rucksack!

That’s about it. She’ll sit and lie on command without any problems, and I‘ve started mat training to calm her somewhat excitable tendencies. She’s going to make a good dog, I reckon. Everyone admires her looks, when asked what breed she is I just say “pick one, it’s probably there somewhere!”        

We’re still pottering between the towpath and the Ellesmere Arm, going into town at the weekend for shopping.




This Friday there’s an extra delivery, though. Our ageing fridge has finally turned up it’s toes. The compressor is running all the time but the freezer compartment won’t drop below 1 or 2 degrees. So it’s either the compressor itself or a loss of refrigerant gas.Rather than mess about trying to repair the 14 year old unit we’ve a new Shoreline coming on Friday afternoon.

That’s it for this week. Take care, keep well. TTFN.