Aston Rowant (School Trip #6)

For August's afternoon outing we made our way to Aston Rowant Nature Reserve with the same crew as last month (Ted Gus and Thor), plus Lola! The reserve is located just on the edge of the Chilterns, and has really beautiful grasslands and views, despite it's proximity to the M40. We had fun spotting all the red kites, along with chalk hill blue butterflies and green woodpeckers, as well as walking the sculpture trail which had some hilariously bizarre wind-up listening posts. 

Obviously the dogs didn't care about the views, wildlife or M40, they were simply happy to run around a new place! They had lots of fun together, Ted and Lola bounding around like little lions and Gus and Thor playing nicely. There was also a tremendous number of blackberries of which Lola, being no stranger to wild foraging, snaffled an impressive number! 

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Windrushed in Swinbrook

For this month's dog adventure we travelled out to Swinbrook, a little village to the West of Oxford with some beautiful houses, a huge valley, and the river Windrush. This time we had Jax, Pepe, Ted and Wilbur along for the ride! Although this week we had been promised sunshine, we were blessed with wind and grey clouds! We both marvelled at how accurately the river was named, as the wind was rushing through the valley past us... However upon further investigation it’s actually because the river winds through rushes for most of its course. 

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After snooping around some of the gorgeous stone houses, complete with tennis courts, and swimming pools, we set off for our circular walk through the valley and along the river. As you can see, the pooches and Alice were all jumping to get going! The doggos really loved having such a big open space where they could run around in circles together, as well as the river to have a paddle in! We managed to get them to stop playing just long enough to pose for a photo in front of St Oswald's Church. Jax used the blustery weather to achieve the perfect windswept look for his close up.

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Swinbrook was another great excursion with the Woof + Whistle pack! Keep an eye on your inbox for Tail Mail (our monthly newsletter), with details of May's adventure date and location, or to subscribe just enter your email at the bottom of the page.

Wags from Woof + Whistle!

Testing Tractive

In the wake of the Beast from the East, we have had the absolute pleasure of a few warmer spring days this week. Perfect for a test run of the new Tractive GPS tracker. We chose Chester as our test doggy this time, mainly because he does love to pose for a photograph.

The tracker itself is relatively small, only weighing 35 grams, and clips onto a collar (for speed we attached it to a second collar, then popped it onto Chester at the beginning of the walk). It survived the usual hurtling across fields and rolling on grass that our dogs enjoy, and emerged from a swift dip in stream completely unscathed. Chester seemed completely oblivious to it, which was a plus! He had a beautifully sunny (but windy) walk, with lots of bounding about and some rough and tumble with Bear, Monty, Poppy, and Paddy. 

Probably the most testing part of the experience was us attempting to use the phone App. The live tracking actually worked remarkably well, it was quick to find itself and did appear to update every few seconds as claimed. We even managed to get a little pink squiggly line showing Chester running around in circles. The GPS seems to have good resolution, enough to track a detailed route even within a small area. However it didn’t keep drawing the route after about 10 mins of the walk, and only the live tracking (the blue paw-print marker) kept going for the hour. I think this was 100% down to user error though…

All of our dogs actually have really great recall and don’t tend go out of sight. However we can never be sure that one won’t get stuck somewhere, or run off chasing after a deer. The live location information will put our minds at ease, making us prepared should the unthinkable happen! Next time we will track the whole walk, so keep an eye on the blog for updates!

P.S Always remember to switch your tracking device off after a walk to avoid mapping yourself!!