It's Daisy and Poppy's birthday today.  They are 10 years old.

We still call them our puppies yet in dog years they are about 70.  We took them to the pub for lunch to celebrate :)

We've had Daisy since she was 8 weeks old.  We didn't get Poppy until she was nearly 4 years old.

My Dad rescued her from her previous owners who weren't looking after her very well.  We don't know much about her first 6 months of life other than my sister-in-law used to climb the fence to take her in as she was left outside for most of the day.

Those signs of neglect are still with her today, when she is in the garden she doesn't bark to be let back in.  When a door bangs shut, she runs and hides.  Any unexplained, noises like fireworks and the bird careers over the field have the same effect.

The bird scarers cause us a little problem.  When they go off Poppy starts to run home or heads for shelter.  The first time it happened a mile sprint by Fran and I to try and keep up with her and stop her running in to the road was scary.  

Currently she try's to get the walk over and done with as quickly as possible.  She trots off ahead of us as normal then takes short cuts and waits for us to follow.

Over the weekend, I tried a new tactic and walked the route in the opposite direction.  She was fine, fortunately no bird scarers have gone off while going in that direction so she does't associate it with fear.  

We see the same with our Team Achieve members and eating plans.  They just can't get their head out of the struggle of dieting and it's general short-sighted goals.  When we tweak the direction of the eating pan and take the focus away from being on a diet to following a plan to improve their health, everything changes.

There is a mindset shift and success follows long term.

One of our blog readers emailed me over the weekend to let me know that the blogs have inspired her to make some changes and she has now lost 2.5 stone.  I'm so chuffed with that and it is messages like that that make everything we do worth it.

We start our next Achieve Bootcamp a week today and are going to try a slightly different focus, more on that tomorrow.