It’s been nearly 5 months since I put any photos of Lily on here. She is so big now and at almost 9 months old she might just have a little bit more growing to do. From the 7lb puppy that she was she now weighs in at 33lbs!!!
We are well overdue a Lily update, I meant to put some photographs up here of her as she got bigger and planned to do that recently, however we have more exciting news about her now and so I’ll tell you about that instead and maybe add some photographs from the last few months a bit later on.
On Sunday we took her to a fun dog show at the RSPCA (the rescue centre where we got her from). We entered her for a few classes and the first one was ‘prettiest bitch’ where there must have been at least 50 other bitches in the arena. Amazingly she came 1st! and this qualified her for the ‘best in show’ class at the end of the day, where she was up against 9 other dogs all of whom had come first in other classes. In this class she was placed 2nd !!! We were both so amazed and proud of course. Although a lot of the staff at the centre know Lily, none of the judges did.
Here Lily is in the class 'dog the judge would most like to take home' and she is with her friend, Skye. We bump into this retired greyhound and his owner sometimes when we are out walking Lily in the park and we bumped into them at the show and here they are competing against each other. Skye has won in quite a few other shows but he went home empty handed this time.
Lily spends a lot of time looking up at you because of her deafness, she is always waiting for the next command! Her development with hand-signals has come a long way; she now knows 12 different signs.
Sunday must have been one of the hottest days this year in England. We all caught the sun, except Lily who needs to wear sun lotion on her nose and ears. The dogs suffered a bit in the heat but the staff kept bringing out bowls of water and they were giving dog showers to anyone who requested them. I saw one small dog jump in a bowl of water and splash around in it! This photo is so funny to us, she looks like she is laughing.
This was the best in show class and it was judged by two RSPCA inspectors who asked Jess some questions and then asked her to walk Lily up and down. Then she demonstrated some hand signals to them, these were sit, lie down, play dead and jump.
When the judges left to go to the next contender I caught this moment where Jess praised Lily for her efforts.
In this photograph both Jess and Lily are having a chat with the winners of 'waggiest tail'!
It was a very long day and when we got in Lily couldn't even make it to the settee!!!
After a nap and a bath (because we took her to the stream to cool down) she regained her strength and was able to very nobly pose for a photograph with all of her winnings! These were a huge sack of posh dog food, a treat ball, a play rope, 2 x packets of dog treats, a keepsake tin for dog stuff, £10.00 ($20.00) worth of vouchers for a large pet store and a flashing ID tag.
Last one; Lily with her rossettes!
One last thing and this is her very tenuous link to our hero the great Randy Rhoads, we found out recently that Lily was born on the 6th December 2006 which means she was born on Randy's 50th birthday, I think that could make her the official UR mascot.
'I want to go home now please'
'Why do I have to spend so much time with Trigger?'
. And those eyes are very kind and trouble free at the moment, we are hoping thats how it remains.