May, 2015 | ZentaiSpot

The late May Bank Holiday weekend saw the Annual Birmingham Pride weekend event, and like previous years Spot went along for a day out… although this time, I had some time constraints so wasn’t able to stay for the entire afternoon.

As in previous years, we took the train, and I was intending on travelling up in Spot, but circumstances got in the way and I couldn’t change until I got there. After a quick pause in the Bullring shopping centre to get changed, and cheer up a few people on the way back through, we wandered down to the pride area.

After receiving the wrist band, which was attached to my harness as in previous years, we headed in to the pride area. To start with, we ended up having to go through security, where the bags and both my owner and I were also searched – I suppose for safety and legal reasons mainly.

This is where the fun begun – wearing figure hugging Lycra, there wasn’t really much place for me to hide anything. The comment from the security guard was along the lines of “I need to be sure that you haven’t anything to hide”, as I’d made the comment that I had no pockets to hide anything … I let him pat me down to be sure … he then announced to his colleagues, that I had nothing on me I shouldn’t and then proceeded to point at my middle area and went on to say “… well, apart from maybe that!” … he was referring to my manhood …. while another security guard exclaimed on the fact that there was a dog in the bag as well – referring to my pup hood and paws! We all chuckled and then were allowed in to the Pride village

We headed out in to CloneZone to have a quick look at some of the stuff in there, and we spotted a couple of things we liked and decided we may head back in later.

On to the wandering around the village… or after a quick stop for some food! Then it was on with the hood and paws, and the exploring began. We started with a few stalls, where the stall holders were wanting to chat to me and take selfies. We also collected a load of flyers and stickers while we wandered down the stalls.

Our next port of call was one of the fun fair rides, where I went on the ride as Spot – fully hooded and paws. Although, I did feel a little queasy when we came off as my peripheral vision is restricted when wearing my pup contacts and wearing the hood… but it was good fun anyway!

After the ride, we visited the police stall, where I managed to get my photo taken with some of the cute puppies that were there, and also let them meet a different sort of dog! One of the slightly older pups decided to lick my pup hood and nose … which brought a smile to all.

Meeting a Police Puppy

While we were wandering around, I kept getting stopped with people wanting pictures with me – or selfies. There was also a great reaction from the crowds in the bars, with people pointing and staring.

We were approaching our curfew for getting back home, so we headed back to the fairground section so I could go on the other ride I wanted to… again, the lack of peripheral vision made me feel not so good – but it was still fantastic fun.

Shortly before we left Pride, we bumped into Pup Echo.

meeting Pup Echo

Leaving the pride area, we headed back to towards the train station, with me still in full pup gear. An irresistible opportunity arose outside the O2 store in the Bullring though – a picture of a human pup next to the “Be More Dog” poster!

CFti3VpW8AA9gr-

We continued to head back to the station, and had to do the obligatory picture outside the Selfridges Building

Outside the Selfridges Building

While we waited on the train, I was sitting on the floor like a good pup…

Birmingham Platform Waiting

and it’s just as well trains only run the way the tracks go – as there was at least one train driver who was looking at me rather than the way he was going!

I then proceeded to stay as a puppy on the train where upon I slept for most of the journey home.

On the train home

It’s the first time I’ve actually slept with my pup hood and paws on. Our tickets were checked by the guard on the train, and he chuckled at me as I couldn’t hand him my ticket due to my paws. On leaving the train when we got to our stop, quite a bit of the passengers hadn’t realised I’d been there, and so as we came into the station, there were quite a number of people turning round from their seats to have a look and causing some amusement to some of the passengers. Shame the day came to an end so quick, but all in all it was fantastic fun!

*wags*

This post ought to have been posted a while back, but I’ve only just got round to editing the images!!!! … …

With my job, finding time to meet up with friends is often not as easy as it could be – with evening and weekend work a given. However, at the end of March, we had arranged to visit F0rester up in Leicestershire, along with Marbles and Acey. What we didn’t know when we arranged it though, was it would also be a chance to head off to Birmingham for the Pup Social.

The afore-mentioned work issue meant that we weren’t able to arrive at a normal time on the Friday night, instead arriving around 1AM in the morning – although everyone was still up, they were in the process of retiring to bed. Only the essentials were unloaded from the car – my dog cage and a bag with clothing in it! As we set this up, I had a need to go to the toilet and while I was up stairs, I went and jumped on the bed, as puppies do, with poor Acey – who insisted I had far too much energy for 1AM!

We retired to bed, and over a leisurely breakfast the next morning, we made arrangements for going to Birmingham. For ease of space, it was decided I’d drive as I have the largest car. We set off, and arrived in Birmingham, and while I put the contact lenses in which have become part of the Spot image, the others (Colin (my owner), Marbles, Acey and Frosty) went off to find a cash machine, and by chance, met up with Scamp and Rex while loitering on a street corner 🙂

We all headed off to Boltz, and to the Pup Social, where we arrived and started getting changed and after that immediately joined in the fun playing with squeaky toys! Fuga joined us later on as well, and was enjoying playing with the toys. The great thing was, there were loads of pups there, but in the main, we were all playing together, batting toys around and generally making a lot of noise! A small paws (sorry, pause!) occurred while BossBear presented a pup with his collar, and we all sang “Happy Birthday”. After this, play continued, and with a few drinks consumed, the 5 hours of the main part of the afternoon was soon over!

We all headed out to a local “All You Can Eat” Chinese restaurant and had dinner, while my group debated whether we’d go back for the evening bit. We eventually decided we would, but only for an hour or so… 2.5hrs (nearly 3 hours!) later, we were still there getting ready to leave! Although there were less pups in the evening, the same good natured atmosphere continued with pups playing and having fun. At one point, we changed one pup in to a game of “Puparoo” as we loaded all the squeaky toys on his back!

Marbles also encouraged us all to do some dancing, so a group of pups ended up doing The Timewarp, YMCA and generally dancing to other songs… on all 4s!

All in all, the pup social was a fantastic event, and given it’s all organised free of charge, I think it is a credit to the organising team… as circumstances permit, we will definitely be going back again.

Again, Sunday started as a lazy day (getting home at 2AM and having the clocks change to 3AM, due to British Daylight Saving time, wasn’t quite part of the plan!) where we enjoyed some breakfast… then we got started on the other aspects that we wanted to do, with Forester wanting to do some experiments with gunge, and some UV plans. As we got the room set up and others started mixing up gunge, I took the opportunity to “test” the UV (nearly 1kW of UV lights in a small room!) and the camera by doing some test shots in some Lycra, which have come out really well. You can see the pictures of this at the end of this post.

We then carried out the gunge experiment, but didn’t have time for the artistic UV that was originally planned – so I guess we’ll just need to arrange another time to go back 😀

As we cleaned up, a nice social discussion around the table with Pizza meant that the weekend drifted to a nice, comfortable conclusion – and we had to set off home again.