I have found that when one of the dogs is sick it is difficult to concentrate on anything. Arabis has been going downhill for a while now. We took her for an MRI scan yesterday, but she was not well enough to be anaesthetised, so she stayed in, has been on a drip to push up her blood pressure and will be ultrasound scanned today. I only hope that it is a problem that is fixable. Dogs do not live long enough as far as I am concerned, they give you so much over their lives, are always there and make the best of companions, but it is so hard when you know they are getting to the end of their lives with you. I have lived through it many times and it never gets any easier. Although I would not give up having them as my best friends just because I know they are short lived, but 12 years is not enough.

The birds are well, we are getting some nice flying from some of the young birds. The new owls have been a little troublesome, but we are getting over that. One thing we have discovered, we used to keep the baby owls in an open topped play pen on the lawn as they grew, as we got more organised we had aviaries instead. This makes it easier and nicer for them, but it means that they are not as used to things flying over their heads, so pigeons become really scary to start with. So we have put the five baby snowy owls out in a pen to start with to see if it makes a difference.

The wild Common Buzzards are a scream at the moment, they keep coming in when Hard Tackle the Indian Tawny Eagle is flying. He has been superb this summer, several very very high flights and stoops, but he has been stooped at, played with and generally chased by them. To start with he tended to drop away from them but now he just ignores them. Its amazing although he is not a large eagle how small the buzzards look against him. It has been a pleasure to watch them having fun and I don't think he really minds.

Cool Ground the new Snowy Owl is turning out to be superb, he is starting to do circles and really is a joy to watch, it bodes well for the owl evenings this autumn and winter. They are going to be exciting.

The new window is in Charlies room and hopefully the door through to the cafe will be by the start of Sept, so we will be able to utilise that room more. The refurbishing of the small falcon block goes on apace and the difference between the newly done enclosures and the dilapidated ones is amazing.

And lastly we took out the two kestrels that Alasdair and I trained last year, they are doing very well, have moulted beautifully and look stunning and should be flying free again in a day or so. The only slight problem being that I am damned if I can remember what we called them!!