I made this Toad in the Hole tonight at MsDD’s special request. I very rarely make it because it’s not the healthiest thing in the world but it makes a change now and then. I am fasting today so I wasn’t every going to have any of the blousy batter so soft yet so crisp.

Sadly, it’s that time in the term where MsDD is always exhausted. She seems to be coming down with a cold too so in the end she wasn’t hungry. And the OH, who has been leaving home at 6.30 for the last week or so, was just to tired to appreciate it. “It’s a bit rich,” he opined. So the lovely batter ended up the dogs. I wonder why I bothered now.

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Following last week’s running off debacle with Raffles, it was decided that he should perhaps have some extra outdoors training so that Inger our trainer could see how he behaves outside the village hall. I had to walk the dogs anyway so I agreed to go along at lunchtime today.

Imagine my amazement when Raffles seemed to enjoy the training and the controlled direction work so much that he was top of the class! Not bad for a naughty beagle.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I decided that I’d join the advanced class with Oscar rather than walking him around a recreation ground where he was likely to go and say hello to dogs he already knew and disrupt their training class. Oscar was, sadly, not as well behaved as Raffles today. He went overboard in his enthusiasm for this new sort of class, not realising that he is required to exercise similar self-disclipline outdoors to that which he exhibits in our weekly indoor class.

An enthusiastic disaster. He ran in everywhere and picked up everyone else’s dummy. In the end I had to put him on a lead like a baby because he refused to behave properly like a big man gundog.

We have been proper gundog training before but it was a while ago before he had that terribly nose complaint and we haven’t done it since. Seems that Ocar has forgotten what’s expected of him.

I too, had forgotten what it’s like spending hours out in the cold standing around waiting for people to have their retrieve. It’s no wonder I don’t often find the time to do extra training.

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