springer spaniel pet portrait

Not too much of an update on Brodie's pet portrait. This past week has been quite tiring at the day job so I've not done much at all. At least Brodie has 4 legs now and can stand up! I'm still trying to figure out the background but I am working on it I promise!

And talking of work, this was the lovely place we ended up at on Thursday, it's a fishing pond near a place called Steam Mills. This is a man made pond created by the Forestry Commission, isn't it lovely!

I even managed to spot some of the local wildlife (it turned out to be a foreigner who has moved in permanently into this country...a mandarin duck and her little ducklings)

And here they are hard at work, it was quite a busy day with the boys felling some difficult tress and then me trying to help drag them up a bank, I did get ran over by a tree at one point!

As you can see, nothing is ever easy, there were some harder trees to fell, this involved them having to be roped and dragged back in by hand, I found myself on the end of the rope many times and boy did my arms ache afterwards!

And poor Willow was not impressed at all, as she isn't worried by the noise of the chainsaws I did tie her up out of harms way as the trees were felled because I thought she may have come to investigate, even then she narrowly escaped a tree falling on her as it was taller than expected and fell short by about a foot, she just lay down but never stirred!

Anyway, it turns out she was smarter than I gave her credit for and simply moved even further away when let off her lead to sit and watch us from a more comfortable distance. You can just see her ears poking up.

And today was another steam rally, I've added a few pics to my flickr account and you can see more here

And I have got a little video of mummy muscovy duck with some of her new duckling babies (the rest are underneath her keeping warm.)

And yet more news on Pickle:

Since my last post Pickle took another turn for the worse and was returned to the vet, he has had xrays and ultrasound and was found to have at least 4 stones, the largest of which was the size of my fingernail, luckily the vet was able to remove this during surgery, unfortunately he could not locate two smaller ones but they could well be on their way out so that's good news but he still has one in his kidneys so only time will tell if this one can be broken down. Pickle now has to eat lots of apple and beetroot for the acid in them to break down the remaining stones and prevent anymore. He is currently holed up in a large carry cage in my living room so I can keep an eye on him. Poor Pickle, but at long last things may actually be cured so I've got my fingers crossed. I would show you a picture of the stone that was removed but it is a bit gory! Oh and you'll be glad to know he's already had a bit of carrot.

Plus one last thing to report, I'm thinking I may hold another pet portrait competition after the success of the one held last year so I'm starting to think about details on that, any suggestions or ideas from you all on that would be appreciated.

If you like my work please take the time to leave me a comment or become a follower (see bottom of page). If you would like to win a pet portrait of your dog, cat, horse or any other pet please see my new competition. It costs nothing to enter, all you require is internet access.

If you are interested in commissioning me please visit my pet portrait artist website or my wildlife artist website

Thanks for visiting!