34 posts tagged “dogs”

What's one thing you can't say no to?

Lost dogs and kittens in pet shops.

I've had to ban myself from walking past pet shops. Once, within a few months we had four kittens. Big Man, Pumpy, Tossy and Marnie. Although Marnie came from the streets. Daz overheard some guys laughing about how they'd found this kitten and how they'd taken it out to the edge of town and tossed it into a paddock. So he went out there and searched for him and bought him home. We offered him to the neighbours but by the time they'd thought about it and decided they'd have him we couldn't give him up.

Then there was Carl. We stopped for breakfast one morning at Carlingford Shopping Centre and he ended up coming home with us.

Now they find me anyway. I currently feed two cats that aren't mine. There was another one we called Roger but I noticed he's living down the road now.

Lost dogs on the street seem to be happy to see me as well. And I can never just walk away from them. So I used to take them home. We had one stay for a weekend once until we found the owners. When I had the three little kids it was harder so then I just started ringing Daz and saying, there's a dog on so and so street, go get it.

Kimba is pretty soft as well when it comes to lost dogs and I think Daz actually abducts ones that aren't lost. Its not unusual to see him driving around with an unkown dog sitting up in the front seat of his truck. Because they love going for a drive don't they. Always look so happy going for a drive.

A couple of weeks ago he sent me a photo of two little dogs he had locked in his office. He'd even been to the butcher and bought them mince. They had tags with their phone number and address but no one was answering. So when it was time for Daz to come home he went around to their house, found the hole where they'd escaped and fixed it.

I think I can say no to just about anything else.

Have you ever experienced a natural disaster? If so: when, where and what happened?

Well yes thanks for asking. Only a minor one. But we were declared a disaster area so I guess it counts. It was a hail storm. About 10 minutes of massive noise and blustering winds and great destruction.

I was home with the three kids. They were all very young then. They would have been 2,4 and 6. There were two very loud claps of thunder and I just had time to go out and lock the dogs in the laundry before it started. We live in a house thats over a hundred years old so it had a tin roof then and the noise was tremendous. I sat us all in the middle room of the house because I thought the wind might smash the windows. And it did in some houses. People were finding pieces of glass stuck in the walls opposite the windows.

Lucky for us the room we were sitting in was the one where the piano was, and Lizzie (who was 2) decided it would be a great opportunity to impress us with her piano playing skills. This involved a lot of random bashing of many keys. So that made a tremendous noise as well. At the time I thought it was a bit like the band playing as the Titanic went down. But it was distraction I guess because we couldn't talk anyway over the noise of the storm

When it all ended we tried to go outside but the doors were jammed shut because the hail was piled up so high. When we got outside it was blue sky and sunshine. And a lot of water. And smashed up cars everywhere. I had this old black jaguar and it had holes smashed right through it. So that was a pretty sad end for a nice old car.

Our house held up well. The ones that were really hammered were the ones with tiles on the roof. My tomatoes and other trees in the backyard were just stripped. Just sticks. And lots of dead birds about. And some cats drowned under peoples houses.

But everyone in town got a new roof so that was good. And heaps of people got a new car out of it as well. Well, so long as your insurance was up to date.

It was our dog Billie who came out of it traumatised. She was a red cattle dog and she was terrified of storms after that. We couldn't go away for the day and leave her in the yard. Even if we were home, first sign of a storm and she'd scramble over the fence and run away. It was very annoying.

Daz missed it. He was out of town working. His apprentice had left his car outside our house and it was hammered and just about floating away. I rang them up and said - errr, I think you'd better come back to town. But he misses all the disasters. He missed the earthquake as well.

43 to 49

Just another example of an Australian winters morning. I took this at 6.30am last week and already the sky was a beautiful blue

 

 

An old servo we drove past. It still operates

 

 

Chicken Little - you may remember Kimba rescued her from the pound after she'd spent 8 months there.

 

 

I went to The Dr Seuss Secret Art Exhibition - amazing man

 

 

Breakfast at the foreshore

 

 

Kimba and Chicken Little. The sky is not falling anymore.

 

 

Early morning at the foreshore. The ferry had just rolled in.

 

Betty has been for her yearly checkup and was told that she was the healthiest staffy of that age the vet had ever seen.

She's coming up to 10 years old, so not ancient, but no spring chicken anymore either.

Apart from her dodgy leg she's good. When she was about four she leapt off the top of the cubby house and did a huge mash up job on her knee that required surgery and its been a problem for her ever since. Now she has arthritis in it and spends most of the time with it held up. If you have a dog with arthritis though, the vet told us to give her an aspirin a day. Just normal aspirin. He said to try it for a week and see if it helps.

He also said walking will help but thats not a problem because Daz and Betty walk all the time. I told him they should be doing a walkathon to raise money for some cause. One day a guy stopped him on the street and said

don't you get on with your missus?

yeah, why?

because you're always out walking the bloody dog.

 

So even though she has a few grey hairs

 

 

And worn out old paws

 

 

She's never feeling too old to play the sock game

 

 

Vinnie

 

Charlie

 

 

And girlz in the hood

 

Chicken Little

 

Betty

 

Today is Old Stuff Day. Show us some old stuff that's been lying around the house.

 

 

What's the most complicated part of your life right now?

Living in one room of the house with four other people while the floors get done. With one King size bed in it.

I was laying in bed the other night and Lloyd was sitting on the bed playing X Box and Daz was sitting on the lounge playing Playstation on another tv and I said - thank god we never went on a family caravan holiday.

So I've kicked Daz out to live with Kimba and Lloyd has gone to live with Jem and Lizzie and I can live quite happily together in one room.

Chicken Little Update.

Yesterday Miss Little had a naughty day. She fished a used tampon out of the bin for closer examination, she was caught licking Kimba's retainer, and she ran away.

She ran away while Daz was walking her. He said she slipped the harness and bolted. And he said she kept looking back at him then running away faster. He said the only way he caught her was to yell out to a girl up ahead in her front yard to call Chicken (because she loves meeting people). So the girl helped Daz catch Chicken, then the girl remarked to Daz that his face was an alarming shade of purple.

Chicken has been fitted for a smaller harness.

Daz thinks he now knows how Chicken Little may have ended up lost and at the pound.

 

Chicken Little

Yep. Chicken Little is in her new home with Kimba tonight. She has had a long and exciting day. Daz, Kimba, Riley and Lloyd all set off at 6.30 this morning for an appointment with Chicken Little. They all sat in a room and they brought in Chicken Little who, in Daz's words, - carried on like a crazy little freak. She was happy and excited to see visitors. There was never any inclination that she would bite any of them, and they all had to touch her face and her teeth and legs to make sure she was cool with it, but she couldn't have cared less. So then they all took her for a walk and that was that.

The owner of the place liked the fact that Kimba had done the Animal Attending course at TAFE (which you would do if you wanted to work at the Vets or somewhere with animals).

So they set off home on an exciting car trip. Kimba said Chicken Little spent about half an hour running across the back seat from one window to the other looking at everything and then she just lay in Kimbas lap.

 

She has been living at the Doggie Rescue for almost 8 months now. And we're not sure how long at the pound before that. She is so interested in everything. So many sights and smells and sounds to investigate. She's a sweet little girl and will sit in your lap nicely. And every time she sees someone shes so happy about it, even if she only saw them five minutes before.

She doesn't know what to do or look at first. She saw and heard the television and her little ears perked up and she was watching it for a bit then started barking - probably never seen one before. She saw herself in the mirror and did a double take which was funny.

But out the front she was just super alert. Little nose was twitching constantly. She saw birds and butterflies and the neighbours cat Charlie, who just looked at her in disgust then slowly walked away.  I think she is an intelligent little girl. Super alert. Its so pleasing to know that she's out of the cage and having a lovely life now. 

And she will stay Chicken Little.

 

 

Kimba is trying to adopt a dog at the moment from the doggie rescue people. They rescue dogs from the pound that are about to be put down. They're very particular. You'd think we were trying to adopt a child from africa. Kimba thinks they mightn't want to give a dog to a young person. Also they want everyone who lives in the house to meet the dog. Thats Kimba, her friend Riley and Lloyd. Riley said she can't go on Sunday. So I said just send Lizzie and she can pretend she's Riley. Kimba said they couldn't because Lizzie and her and Lloyd all look too much alike and the people would be suss. So then I said ring your friend Kay and get her to pretend she's Riley. So she was up for it. But when Riley found out she decided she could go after all. Lloyd said he'd go as long as Kimba bought him a cd.

So they're going on Sunday for a meet and greet. She's had her eye on this little dog for a few months now but was just waiting until she was settled in her new house. As you can see she's looking suitably pathetic, as all pound dogs who want a home should look.  You have to wonder how someone could send that little cutie to the pound. Arseholes. But she has a couple of others picked out to meet as well just in case she doesn't bond with this one. Chicken Little is her name. She's 2 and it said she was a skeleton when she arrived but now weighs 3.5 kilos. We'll see how it goes.

 

I'll go around and crawl through the dog door.

I'll have to climb over the fence first though.

Thats what I said to Jem when we got home yesterday and found ourselves locked out of the house. When we left I said to Lizzie - are you going out?. No, she says, I'm watching movies all afternoon. So I didn't take my keys. I had my hand on them, then put them back.

So off I went around the back. Betty's always pretty happy to see someone climbing over the gate which makes it more of a challenge. If you had enough patience you could open the gate. But Daz seems to think Betty is some distant relation of Harry Houdini and there are so many bolts and padlocks on it no one can bother.

Then it was off to the dog door. Which looked much smaller than I'd remembered. I knew my hips would go through because they don't exist but it was the shoulders that I thought may cause trouble. So I did this corkscrew technique. Head in, then turn sideways and wedge the shoulders through, keep turnng on to your back, then slide. It was all going well until the back of my pants got stuck on some jagged plastic, so I gave my legs a hard tug and, oh, hang on, thats my leg thats stuck, not my pants. Ouch. Thats gonna bruise tomorrow.

Today it is very very tender. I have to sit leaning to the left so there's no pressure on the back of my thigh. Definitely getting too old for that kind of caper.

But we saw Bolt in the end and both liked it. There were a lot of laughs in it. But I also got all teary eyed three times. I'm a big softie in animal moves, even if they are animated animals.