Indigo and Rush as babies

Get that ball Indigo!

The end of an era, I have lost Indigo, he was the last of my original line and the last one who went and came back from the long long sojourn in the US. He was thirteen and a half, a good age for my Labradors, and he had suddenly started to show his age in the last three months. He was very arthritic in his elbows, and then on Thursday he suddenly went lame, very lame behind. So I took him to Eden's on Friday and he had ruptured his cruciate ligament. At his age it is inoperable and anyway keeping him in a crate which is what you are supposed to do for six weeks would have made him miserable. I brought him home and we tried pain killers, but they really did nothing. So I organised for Eden to come





out and put him down on Tuesday. Indigo insisted on coming upstairs to bed each night, which for the last couple of nights was a huge effort on both of our parts, on the trip up at night and back down in the morning. But that was Indigo, a brave a loyal boy. He is now buried next to his brother Rush in the woods and I miss him daily, as do we all.

 

The younger generation grow apace, Agapanthus is a big puppy, almost twice the size of his sister Night Shade, but they are both charming people. They are vaguely related to Indigo through his dad, but it is really hard to keep a blood line through the males, much easier through the girls of which I now have four.

 

I have also put out a plea on Facebook, or at least Holly is going to put it up for me tomorrow, looking for a home for Sedge. He hates the puppies, and he would make such a great friend to someone who is a dog person without a dog at the moment and who works from home. He is great fun in his cart and not that much effort if he is the only person you have to worry about. Here is hoping I can find him a lovely lovely home.

 

Birds are well, we have split up Lammerlaw and Faraday the African Fish Eagles as we have a new

male for Lammerlaw and she and Faraday are siblings which is not good for breeding. The two boys are next to one another and being pretty vocal right now. My Merlin, Windward is starting to fly quite well and we have just got out my new young male Grey Buzzard Eagle, what a lovely looking boy, I hope he flies well and is nicer than Scorpius who does not like me and the feeling is mutual!! The three new Lanners are going loose and the last two now out for training and we hope to add two new Sakers to the team as well.

 

I have started to paint the Incubation Facility - white for a change, rather than the usual magnolia. It has been an interesting day weatherwise and we had a thunderstorm all around us for the last demonstration, but just about got away without the rain until 5.30, which was jolly decent of it.

 

Its definitely juvenile buzzard year, we have two that are about ready to go if I can find someone to hack them back, a very weird one who's wings and tail appear not to have grown yet, but I think they are coming and the most beautiful very pale bird, who went back to the wild today.

 

Next task, a show at the weekend, and then one next sunday and then the Falconry Weekend, which if the weather is good should be a first class weekend.