Birthday and holiday in Devon

On 31st July, our little Inky Dink turned 1! Can't believe how quickly the last few months have gone, and the Devon Nine have already had their first birthday - time has flown!


To celebrate we headed down to Devon to meet up with her fur-mum, fur-dad, a fur-sister and fur-brother and her fur-half sister for a walk on Slapton Sands. Very nice to have a catch up and for the dogs to have a play.


From Slapton Sands (and a night staying with Inko's brother, Tarkka, and his hu-family - thanks Jo and George) we headed down to a lovely farm cottage near Holbeton in South Devon, about 30 minutes from Plymouth for a lovely week's holiday with two friends and their sprocker spaniel, Sammy. It was a fantastic dog-friendly place to stay and it was great how quickly the two dogs settled down together. We spent days at the beach and walking the coastal paths and the dogs had never had so much fun. Inko even got extra brave and had a go at swimming in the sea!! When we first had her she would barely walk through a puddle but she has gradually got braver and braver with water and she had a fantastic time at the beach! All these walks meant we had lovely quiet and sleepy dogs in the cottage every evening.


The cottage we stayed at was lovely. It sleeps 6 (one double room, one twin and one room with bunks) and accepts up to 3 dogs at a time. It is great having a crate-trained dog because Inko settled perfectly well at night in her crate because to her, it was no different to being at home so she didn't feel at all unsettled, and slept really well. There was a nice enclosed garden that they could run around in too. Inko and Sammy enjoyed running around chasing each other, and occasionally barking at the cows on the farm when they walked past the end of the garden. Inko also enjoyed exploring in the shed in the garden and on one night came out eating a dead mouse...ew!...lappies can be so unpleasant with their eating habits sometimes!


We did have one scare on the last night though when Inko, who had been spending quite a bit of time playing in a big hedge down one side of the garden, managed to find the one hole in the wire fence behind the hedge and escaped into next door's garden and then across to the cottage opposite ours, and ran round their garden before heading back towards us...I swear she had been plotting it all week while she had been playing in the hedge!!!


All in all a very nice week away, and we'll definitely be storing the details of the place to visit it again.


Managed to get a lot of pictures, and a few short videos of Inko and Sammy. They are all on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/22914982@N08/sets/72157621856191963/), but here is a few ones that give a good overview of our first proper holiday with Inko.