Freedom Field at Sunnymead Kennels

10/02/2023

Due circumstances beyond our control that we have experienced over the last year we have made the sad decision to close the Field to new customers.

29/12/2022

You wouldn't hang a dog poo on your Christmas tree, would you?

So don't hang it on trees when walking in the British countryside 🌳

Please don't make Christmas a Christmess ❌🎄

🗑️

31/10/2022

We have decided to close the Freedom Field until the spring of 2023 this will give the field (and ourselves) time to rest and recover from the busy 2022 season. Thank you for your custom over the year.

10/05/2022

Defra and the Forestry Commission launch new grant pilot to help landowners tackle the pest

15/02/2022

☢️ WARNING, NASTY DOG BUG ABOUT ☢️

Guys, there is a nasty little bug about giving dogs gastroenteritis, typified by vomiting, bad diarrhoea and lethargy. It usually passes within a few days. It started in Northern England but I'm getting reports from all over now. Seems to be a lot in Northern Ireland so expect it all over Ireland and the UK in the coming weeks.

If your dog comes down with it, the advice is

😨 VETS. If you think he is very poorly, you never regret ringing your local vets (no need to bring the dog straight in as you risk spreading it). Get some advice. If antibiotics are needed they will advise.

😨 FAST. Skip a meal or two. Nobody wants to eat on a sick gut. He's not going to starve!

😨 WATER. This he does need. And electrolytes. Leave out two waters - one should be clean, filtered water (no chlorine, boiled then cooled will do it) the other should be the same water with a pinch of good quality salt (anything with a name, not refined crap) and local raw honey (energy but also anti-bacterial) dissolved in. That's his electrolytes and energy drink. He will take what he wants / needs.

😨 BROTH. Troubled guts don't like processing food but broth is simple. One of the most nutritious things you can feed and guts love it. While easy to make yourself, if stuck and in need of a quick supply, you can buy broth in the shops now (if in ROI/NI check out Karnlea, if in Britain check out Boil n Broth or Alexsanders Natural).

😨 PROBIOTICS. If prescribed antibiotics or even if not, I recommend canine PRObiotics - any type now would be fine now. Put in the broth (I would normally say on an empty stomach but hard when he's not getting treats etc). Can be given with antibiotics. Give for a month.

Also recommend picking up some SOIL-BASED probiotics (I have no brand in mind, the market is developing rapidly, but S.boulardii is one you need here). Mostly yeasts, they get in and release compounds that zap pathogenic bacteria (exactly the basis of ANTIbiotics....only natural without the gut flora napalming effect). Give for two weeks.

😨 After a day or two of broth I would start introducing something very simple on the gut such as a little carbs such as porridge. This is a great addition now as it's also high in soluble fibre, meaning it sucks up water in the large intestine. Or you can use pumpkin or sweet potato mash but WITHOUT the skin (the stuff in the skin is insoluble which is great for constipation as it makes for softer poos which is definitely not desired right now!). After this you can progress to something simple like tins of pacific salmon, slowly shifting him back to real food over the course of days.

06/01/2022

Sunnymead celebrations and why today is our Mid Winter Feast

THE MID WINTER FEAST
Our Mid Winter Feast is held on 6th January and our decorations stay in place until around Candlemas (2nd February). Don’t laugh and say that we’re bringing ill fortune upon ourselves, we’re just keeping up old traditions; for starters, the Mid Winter Feast has been held since time immemorial and the early Christians have been marking Twelfth Night since, at least, the 4th century. The early church, knowing how unpopular and difficult it would be to sweep away long held traditions, piggy-backed the new onto the old.
The Mid Winter season started with Halloween and went through until Candlemas. Epiphany, marking the visit of the Magi was the time for giving gifts. It is also known as “Three Kings Day” and “Twelfth Day,” and for some denominations signals the conclusion of the twelve days of the Christmas season. Religions and traditions become somewhat tangled here as the Magi (number unknown) were not Christians or even from the Holy Land, some of them where probably Zoroastrians.
Twelfth Night was a time for feasting parties and the giving of gifts (see the Twelve Days of Christmas as an instruction manual!), wassailing and mumming. These celebrations have fallen out of fashion, but the Plantagenets and the Tudors kept celebrating the Christmas period until February 1, the eve of Candlemas. The 12 days of Christmas started on the Feast of Stephen/Boxing Day and the big Christmas celebrations and the giving of gifts, took place on 6th January. The antiquarian William Sandys observed, “Twelfth Night … [was] probably the most popular day throughout the Christmas, thanks to Twelfth Cake and other amusements.” The cake contained charms: if you got a clove you were a villain, a twig indicated a fool, a bit of rag foretold a tarty girl, who ever got a crown or a tiny baby Jesus was king for a day.
Nowadays people see it as bad luck to keep decorations up past Twelfth Night, but it was the Queen Victoria who put the kybosh on Twelfth Night revels in the 1870s. The killjoy wanted an end to Christmas carousing and wanted people back at work.
Candlemas on 2nd February was the time when the decorations down, as noted in this poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674):
Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall
- Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve

05/11/2021

Classic FM’s popular pets programme returns, with soothing music to help keep your four-legged friends relaxed during fireworks season.

01/05/2021

May Day in Walcot dawned cold, cloudy and damp. We didn't see the sun until after 11.00 and which point it was a bit late to "dance the sun up" (as per last year) so it got a couple of choruses of "O Summer is iccumen in . . " before conditions were declared "a bit parky" and it was time for a bacon butty, a gunfire coffee and a donut.

04/04/2021

01/04/2021

26/03/2021

This website is a means to try and identify which UK pet MicroChip Database a MicroChip might be registered with, according to the format of the MicroChip numbers

23/03/2021

Owners should not stop walking their dogs but they must be aware of their surroundings and on alert for people lingering.

IT's the dark side of the lockdown pets boom, with crime gangs targeting dog walkers to steal their pets to sell on.

21/03/2021

BRITS are expected to make a dog’s dinner of the 2021 census – by including their pooches. Pandemic puppies and Covid cats are being entered on the once-a-decade statistics survey. 🔵 Re…

17/03/2021

Happy St Patrick's Day - Top of the morning, afternoon and evening!

11/03/2021

The Pet Food Manufacturers Association (PFMA) has issued a statement reassuring the UK that the coun

03/03/2021