Hello everyone!

Hello pals, and welcome to our new blog. I am pretty new to this stuff but I will try my best. 

Let me begin by introducing ourselves; my name is Jodie Forbes, I am 17 years old and these are my two crazy, gorgeous and fantastically clever border terriers, Hazel and Bramble. 

I'm relatively uninteresting and impressively unsociable around human beings, but around animals I suddenly become some confident and self-assured creature-magnet. After failing my life-long dream of becoming a vet, I currently find myself confused about my future and a little lost. I paint a lot and have considered a career as an artist, but, somehow, I just can't see myself in a beret! 

When I picture myself in the future I see a strong female explorer trekking through the Amazon, rescuing snakes and crocodiles and being loved by all (imagine a combination of Steve Irwin and Wonder-Woman), but in reality, the way I'm going I will probably be selling newspapers on street corners.

But lets be honest, the real reason you visited this page wasn't to listen to me whining about my petty problems, it was to hear about the two scruffy muttlets known as Hazel and Bramble! 

Without being labelled as an existentialist, it's always hard to know why you were placed on this Earth, but for a child who barked instead of spoke, a child who went round people's houses to play with their dogs, not them, and a child who begged their parents to go to pet shops to look at the dog products- my fate was written in the stars and life seemed a little incomplete without a dog. But when I was nine years old, and after my parents promising me a puppy of my own, I found a breeder online who had one little puppy left, who would become the Hazel that we all know and love. Without going into huge detail, the couple who had put a deposit down to buy her split up before they could get her (this must've been terrible for them, and whist I honestly can't feel bad about it, I thank them so much for breaking up when they did!) 

We went up to Surrey to visit puppy-Hazel, and my heart flipped, exploded and melted spontaneously when I first set eyes on her. On the journey home my parents told me not to get my hopes up, as we weren't going to buy her, but a week later I came home to Baby-Hazel strolling around the house. Turns out my parents were joking, and they had actually put a deposit down the day we went up to visit her!

When Hazel was nearly a year old my parents took her and me to our first dog show, it was only a little fun one, but when we won a second and a third rosette and then won the junior handling class I was completely over the moon. It may seem novel to people who go to shows every weekend, but this remains one of the proudest moments of my life.

After owning Hazel for just over a year, we joined an agility club, and when she was three years old I started training her tricks. In 2010 Hazel qualified for Crufts with me in Grooming. 

Four years later, Hazel met her boyfriend, Sid, and became pregnant with six puppies. With my mother away and the vet caught up in traffic, I had to deliver the first few babies. The first of these pups was little Bramble, the size of my palm and looking like a slug with the ears of a bat! Although we knew there were at least two more pups coming, we knew as soon as she was born that this was our Bramble. Once all six of the puppies were born, Bramble still stood out- instead of having black fur like all of the others, she was orange. Even my mother who was in Spain, upon seeing a photograph of all of the newborn pups, said 'I like the orange one!'

When she was only a few weeks old I discovered that Bramble absorbs information like a sponge, and after seeing her mother perform some tricks she just joined in, without me even training them to her. That is the massive advantage of having a homegrown puppy, everything they know stems from you!

Now, almost four years on, Hazel and Bramble have done very well in shows, having qualified for Crufts 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, winning first places twice in Groomer of the Year and in Freestyle to Music. We have also performed in the main arenas at Crufts, Discover Dogs and the London Pet Show, been on television, magazines and in newspapers. They even won us a holiday to Los Angeles (That last one got them lots of treats!) 

But because they compete in shows it doesn't mean they are no longer pets, they are the most cherished thing in my life and I will be nowhere without them, anything else is just an extra.

So now you know just about everything about us! 

We will try to keep you up to date with our adventures and post regular photo updates.

Jodie, Hazel and Bramble

xxx

*A dog's life is dedicated to its owner and everything they do is to please those they love (this isn't a discussion point, if you don't agree, quite frankly, you're wrong) and this couldn't be more true when it comes to Hazel and Bramble, they learn, they perform and they compete for me. If I ever forgot this I would become instantly unworthy of their love.*