Every fur needs a home and every home needs a fur...

Hello my friends...today we have an out-of-the-ordinary sort of blog for you ...because we want to highlight the good work which one of our very best friends does for animals in need of a furever home....

...since our earliest days on Twitter our family has had friends in @highlandhamish and now his successor in the Cotswolds @highlandisla.....

....Miss Isla does very good work and knows all the best places to go...BOL...

.....Miss Isla has a very clever humum pawson who realised that doggies and cats and other animals in need of a furever home needed some help meeting up with suitable people (staff as I like to call them)....the old techniques of depending on a finely honed snooter were not enough......old-fashioned snootering in progress here....

.....so Miss Isla's staff have established a very super website called Pet Adoption UK...just click that link and it will take you right there...it does an amazingingly clever thing...it is linked to multiple animal charities and shelters in the UK and gathers all of the anipals needing furever homes into one great big website so you can look at them all in one place....it updates every 24 hours too so you know that all of the animals you see there are still in need of a furever home.....it does not just do dogs of course...there are cats and rabbits..and even pigs and chickens!!.....it is a one-stop adopt-a-shop...

......the Colonel used the super-easy-to-use search function to look for border terriers in need this morning...and look!...we found three.......

 ...you can see how the clever bit works by looking at this video...its quite a thing...!...



...see, it could not be easier...and the Siverlight function allows you to zoom right in to see the sweet faces of all of those animals....

....and you can click on a picture and zoom in to see your particular anipal...oh dear, we have a lovely sweet young lady BT called Lola who is in need of a home...you can see that she is at Blue Cross Southampton if you look closely at her picture with your reading glasses on...

....the site features many of the UK's best known, but also some of its smallest, animal shelters and charities....

...the Colonel clicked on the Blue Cross Southampton link in Miss Lola's picture and it took us to a list of all of the anipals at that shelter looking for furever homes...*sigh*...

......you can even see all of the shelters and charities on a map....and find those which are near you.....

...Look!...we are quite near Border Terrier Welfare headquarters....

....and we can read about "happy Endings"...the stories of anipals who have been rescued from shelters and now have their furever homes.....WOW!..its our pal Miss Lexie who is @dogstoyevsky on Twitter and someone we have known since 2009...*whispers* actually quite a few of our pals found a furever home through PAUK....

....you can even get a shiny app for your iBone to check out the very latest whilst you are on the move....and PAUK also has a nice Facebook page and like every good fur they have a Twitter presence too...

...here at BT HQ we are very proud to be associated with Pet Adoption UK and the lovely people who work there...if you are thinking bringing an animal in to your home furever then why not think about adopting....adopt, don't shop as they say....we have given kitchen space to a wookie...although we did not use PAUK to do so, it just wandered in from the garden....

A Tail of Two Walks....

Hello my friends....we have been having some trouble with our BT HQ admin recently because the old iBone has been dropped so many times by the typist (who is supposed to be able to operate those opposable thumbs) that it has stopped taking phone calls and has a few other glitches...so on Saturday we headed off to see if we could do something about it...

....we went in to Epsom...which is the big town near to where we live...I parked Clapton's Taxi in the car park..because we went early there were plenty of spaces even though it was Saturday....

....we went to the O2 store and sat patiently waiting to be served....for my overseas friends O2 is one of our mobile network providers...they have a shop in Epsom...we were served quickly and efficiently and within 20 minutes of arriving we had secured ourselves a new iBone....for the nerds out there it is an iBone 6+ because we liked the look of the big screen and can maybe now stop using our iPaw as that is also not old and a bit unreliable...

....those opposable thumbs are going to come in handy because the new iBone is bigger than me!!....

....so equipped with our new roaming mobile BT HQ equipment we took Miss Lola up to Epsom Downs for a walk...Epsom Downs is famous as the home of the Derby...the UK's best known and most prestigious horse race....it was run last weekend whilst we were in Wales...he I am on the grass by the grandstand...it is safe to walk there after 12 noon when the horses have finished training....

.....but wow!...look at what was going on there last weekend...right where I am standing now!.....

....I checked very careful that there were no horses still racing....

....and made sure we followed all the rules...although, to be honest, the grass was a big mess as they and not yet finished cleaning up after last week's festivities...but there were a battalion of cleaners on the course with bags and picky-upper sticks for the last of the litter...

.....we walked strongly and were still in the lead at the 8 furlong marker.....

....Miss Lola was the pre-race favourite..and to be fair the typist was never really in with a chance on the soft ground....

...most of the litter was abandoned betting slips...Adventure did not come in at 9/1 for someone...

...without the crowds we had a clear view of the finish line......

....the race was actually won by Golden Horn......

....and this mornings e decided to have a different sort of walk...so I sent the Colonel to guide Miss Lola up the lanes and into the woods...

.....the sun was only just peeping through as it was so early.....but we think its better to walk then in the summer as its cooler and more comfortable for Miss Lola....

...the Coloenl, like any good soldier, is a little nervous about being on open ground in the big field.....

....problem solved....

....Miss Lola made sure she gathered all the signal intelligence from the local jungle wireless....

...and Miss Lola had a fine time and enjoyed her walk......you can see her bumbling along here (alas we could not get the video to embed to Blogger)...

...loving the new iBone...Clapton

Dragons be gone...

Hello again my friends...as promised I am bringing you a report on the Dragon Ride...the cycle race that the Typist entered and which I talked about in my last post....

....so we drove down to Wales on Saturday evening and stayed in a hotel in Newport...

...I made sure the bike was secured in our room for the night....well done to the Holiday Inn for allowing us to look after her properly and not putting it in some shed somewhere...

....I made sure there was satisfactory facilities for all the athletes.....

....and in the morning I made sure that we pinned our race number securely to our short...there were 5,500 cyclists taking part and so we did not want to lose the Typist in the melee...

...now, ahem, I have to report that I did not actually go on the ride myself...on days like this all of his pockets are stuffed with food and spare parts for the bike...so I waited at BT HQ Remote Command Centre and monitored the race....so to give you a flavour of the day here are a few pictures that the Human Race (race organisers) posted on their Facebook page today...the Typist is not actually pictured here but I think you get the drift....please click to BIGGIFY the pictures and get the full panoramic effect....they look much nicer BIGGIFIED (technical terms courtesy of Shawnee the Shep)...

...beautiful, beautiful Wales....

.....the Typist and his team mate rode for 11 hours and the sun shone for all 11 of them...thank dogness they remembered to apply suncream before they set off...

....er...how steep is the Devil's Elbow...??

...fortunately, our team leader did manage to get a couple of snaps on his iBone as he guided the Typist round the course....

...a typist cycles off into the wild blue yonder....

...but not forgetting to stop and admire the view....note those bulging pockets....

....and if any of you nerds out there would like to see a detailed view of the map for the event and the Typist's progress you can see it HERE  .....

....we had the most super day out....and I see that the Typist is still with us today although he looks slightly slower than usual....and is walking with a bit of a funny limp....

Woof....Clapton....

p.s. I forgot to say they rode 142 miles in all...phew

Here be DRAGONS!....

Hello my friends....as a lot of you know....the staff at BT HQ have been taking a few weeks away from social media to recharge our batteries and rest our eyes...well...*drum roll*...I am pleased to say that we are back...we have missed you all...and I must add a special hello to our new readers: the very famous Sarge  and also Miss Mara ...who were both sent to my blog by our old friends Mr Frankie and Mr Ernie...who have the funniest of blogs....hello to all readers old and new...and, if you have time, do visit our friends' blogs...

...anyway, we have a special trip to tell you about today...our chief member of the junior staff, the typist, is going to Wales tonight to take part in a very important cycle race on Sunday...it is called the Dragon Ride....and you can read all about it HERE  ....he and his friend will be riding up and down the hills of the Breacon Beacons for 140 miles....so this morning we were up at 6am to start preparations....apparently he is riding a bike and not a dragon....

.....we got up at the crack of dawn and took the bike out to the garden and fixed it to our smart blue stand.....can you see how dirty it looks?...pfft...the typist rode it in another event last weekend and was so tired when he got home that he did not have time to clean it after 8 hours of cycling in the rain!....and then he went way for a few days...and then....[insert further excuses here]....

...The Colonel is not at all impressed....this will never do at BT HQ.....

....first we had to remove the mudguards from the bike because it is going to be sunny this weekend and not rainy like last weekend....can you see how many fiddly bits there are?....took ages to get them off and left us with very dirty paws.....

....we took the front wheel off and washed that with some nice soapy water....and then we washed the rest of the bike too...that took ages....and left us with wet, dirty paws.....p.s. these are his new racing wheels..and he really should take better care of them....

...then we got out all the gear to clean the chain and the cassette...which is very oily...we put nice lemony cleaner in the blue gizmo and then fit that on the chain and take off all of the grime....it has lots of brushes and cleany bits in it....

....look how oily that cassette is!...pffft....we use the green can of squirty lemony cleaner to get all the rubbish off...

.....much better!.....(p.s. we carried on for a bit after this to get it totally shiny)....and when that is all adobe and all the metal parts are clean and free of dirt and grease we add back some new, clean oil to keep it all running smoothly...

.....look how nice and clean it looks now...ready to ride I think....the Colonel is much happier......all we have to do tomorrow is pump up the tyres to get them up to race pressure...

...when we had got the bike all clean we went inside to sort out our gear....food is very important....we have carbohydrate gels to eat whilst on the move, and those brown ones even contain some coffee for an extra boost...and some protein products for recovery when we finally get to the end...and for an emergency sugar shot whilst we ride we have...JELLY BABIES!!...perfect for cycling....

...and of course we carry spares and essentials...lights, a pump, tyre levers and spare inner tubes in case of punctures, a fixy-things-up multi-tool and a sort of spanner for last minute tuning up....we did have a little puncture last week....

...and not forgetting the outfit...socks, shorts (with padding!), shirts, arm-warmers for the chilly early start, a light rain jacket just in case and, of course, our helmet to protect his head (which I thought was made of rock....)...we have padded gloves too to protect saw paws....we packed suncream too....

...and shoes!...these are made of carbon fibre....they help to clip him onto the bike so he doesn't fall off...

....and of course we have remembered to pack Alberto, the king of mountain cycling dogs, who was made for us by our good friend Miss Helen...you can see his story in our last blog....

...this all has to fit into a small bag...I am going to try and sneak in here before he sets off so I can report from the race tomorrow....

....I shall try and sneak a few photos from the race tomorrow for another blog...but I don't think I will actually be on the ride as conditions on the bike are a bit cramped and uncomfortable and his pockets will be stuffed with food and stuff....I shall spend the day watching, cheering and sampling all the cakes.....cakes are a vital part of all cycling events..

...woof...Clapton, en route for Wales......