Fly Agaric

This morning Luke got up early and took Xena for a walk before her breakfast. He has been working long hours as he has been having training all day, every day this week, and then at night he is working very late on his usual client work - usually when they are training they do not do other work but they are just so busy at the moment, so he is working till midnight trying to get through it. He wanted to clear his head before his working day started so Xena got a bonus walk, as after breakfast I took her to the woods again for her usual walk. 

I have seen many fly agaric this season, and as was the case here they are usually hidden away and covered by brambles and other things. I had to try and remove all the spiky brambles to get a clear view of this one, and it was far off the path under some thick vegetation so I could not get the perfect position I would have liked.

A few weeks back Xena had a blood test to check her level of antibodies for the rabies inoculation, which is required for the pet passport to travel to Europe. Well, we don't know yet if it is actually a requirement as due to Brexit, the current passport becomes invalid and Defra have not confirmed what the new requirements will be, but it very much looks like it will go back to the previous rule of requiring a blood test to confirm the rabies antibodies. When she had the blood test a few weeks ago, the vet warned me that is was likely she would fail it as the level of antibodies required by the EU is abnormally high. She did fail it and so we have to start the process all over again, so today she had the rabies inoculation, and then in a month's time she has the antibody blood test which hopefully she will pass, and then 3 months after that she is allowed to travel to Europe. As it is a 4 month process we decided to start now so that she can have her passport by the time we are allowed to travel to Europe again. 

I made good progress with online shopping for Christmas presents today - I like to buy lots of little things and those little things take time to find online.