The longest wait

There is a certain time of evening when the humans disappear into the Dog Free Zone in the kitchen and certain sounds are heard. The chink of china bowls. The fridge door opening. Sometimes the slice of knife on chopping board, sometimes the sound of tins being cut open. Always a delicious aroma. Hard to wait patiently for any of it to come out and make it to floor level. Still, wait the dogs must. Snowy thinks staring very hard at the miniscule gap under the door might make it widen, but Georgie knows that the door handle turns and that's the trick.


Being nearly blind, however, means Georgie sometimes gets disoriented and stares hopefully at the wall instead.

And if there's movement! Dogs must get to it, scrabble hard and try to help it happen faster.

But movement doesn't always mean food being served. Sometimes it's a very long wait.

Truck dogs

Georgie and Snowy fancy themselves real sheepdogs when they ride in the tray of the ute through the paddocks. From up here they can lord it over those woolly herbivore things that usually intimidate them terribly and make a laughing stock of their wolf heritage.

Georgie is just tall enough to look over the side. She doesn't like it when SO brakes suddenly and she hits her nose though. It's humiliating. It's also somewhat painful. Some of the larger potholes are a bit rough and hard to take when you're a toy poodle too.

The solution is to use your larger and much more padded companion as a cushion.

Spring days, spring nights

The days are getting warmer and are mostly sunny now, so we let the fire inside go out in the morning. The evening light lasts so long that it's quite late when we come in to light the fire again. By this time it's cold again however, which poses a dilemma for soft beagles used to the height of luxury. Snowy has learnt that if she turns over twice in the same direction she can wrap herself up in her quilt. This will keep her toasty until the room warms up again. She has such a tough life.

Bedded down

We've finally had time to pick up Snowy's magnificent new bed, made for her by her Grandpaw from polished wood and foam rubber from old sofa cushions cut to size. It was too large to fit into his car so it came home on the tray of the ute.
She wasn't sure about it to start with. SO had to show her it really was for her and not another piece of human furniture that she's not allowed to jump onto.
Then she had to check it all out. I had put her old bedding on it to make it smell like home, but even so, it was strange...

and required a thorough investigation and a good sniff around...

and underneath.
A couple of unwelcome visitors had to be evicted. They were trying out the facilities for warmth.

Finally, when the soft furnishings had been dug up and rearranged to her satisfaction, Snowy settled down for the night.

Berry beagle

With all the warm spring sun lately everything is bursting into leaf. Last year's strawberries are hoisting themselves up again and Snowy is quite happy about this.

Snowy loves strawberries. I'm not sure how she discovered this, she had none growing at her old home. We've never actually given her any. She probably just trial-tasted them like she does everything else and having a particularly juicy and sweet one got addicted. Which is understandable.
They don't appear to give her hives and I'm sure if she was susceptible she would have broken out all over. She eats enough of them. Before we realised what she was doing she made her way through an entire bed last summer, eating all the ripe ones the lizards, the lorikeets, the peacocks and the millipedes had left. Sometimes she also consumed the ones the millipedes were currently eating whilst they were still inside. Death by dog. Just slightly crunchy fruit to her. We didn't get many strawberries ourselves, despite once having enough to make jam in the years before wildlife and domestic pets took over the garden. There are no strawberries this early in the season of course, but Snowy lives in hope and continues searching.

Chair for two

Snowy isn't actually allowed in her favourite armchair, which is why it has a makeshift cover in the form of a towel to deflect all her white hair. There's no keeping her out of it when we're not looking. Tonight she even tried to hide behind a cat.

Celebrity dog

Walks with Snowy the beagle are quite often interesting, occasionally adventurous and sometimes eventful. Tonight she collected an entourage of fans in a group of young Murray Grey steers. She was just nosing around after foxes near their fence, one of them spotted her and said something like "Phwoaaarrr, lookit the redheaded dog!" in cattle-speak and they all crowded over to ogle her.
They were fascinated with her. Being adolescents they all had to jostle and crowd and follow her along the fence, calling out comments (which I could only understand as "mooooooaaww!") and asking for her autograph. Snowy declined, donned dark glasses, turned up her collar and held a paw to the camera, shunning fame. She hurriedly took an alternative route along the verge.

The steers continued to follow her for the length of their paddock, peering between bushes and trees hoping to get another glimpse of their idol before she disappeared from view altogether.

Then they went back to grazing until the next interesting thing came along.

.

Make no bones about it

Every time we send a couple of sheep to slaughter we get all the bits of them back. Partly because it's the most wonderful, fresh, tasty lamb we'll ever have but also because we show maximum respect to our charges by not wasting a morsel. The dogs agree fully although probably for different reasons. A whole sheep includes many parts that make really good natural dog food, especially raw meaty bones. They're great for their teeth and gums and keep them busy for half an hour or so. Snowy the beagle and Georgie the poodle don't much care about teeth and gums except what they're used for. They use them to full advantage. Georgie holds her bone down with one paw to gain leverage.

Snowy however favours the lollipop method more.

Extending the olive branch

Or rather, checking no olive branches have been lost in the wind squalls. There are quite a few olives about the place because the pips are dropped by birds eating the fruit and saplings result. In some cases here the olives take over as a woody weed, the Dept of Environment have removal programs in National Parks that target olives and they are a declared pest plant. Most of our rogue saplings could be called weeds, but not this veritable old chap, given scale here by Snowy the beagle.

It's trunk seems to have once been much broader, it has lost limbs over the years and grown new ones, a rather useful trait to have with this climate. The first settlers planted olives to harvest the oil as a replacement for machinery oil which they couldn't get regularly and was very expensive, coming so far from their British and European suppliers by tall ship. As a result there were olives on most old farms and if you're lucky no-one's cut them down in a fit of green fervour. They are good shade trees, don't need much water in our "Mediterranean" climate and the sheep trim any leaves they can reach as a green addition to their diet during dry times. The only reason this old man's trunk still has shoots is because the grass around him is green.

Best of all, the olives are delicious. They are not commerical size or even a commercial variety. They're probably some old Italian variety that's been around for donkey's years. They are sweet and fruity and go so well with our sun-ripened tomatos, roast capsicums and fetta cheese. The dogs love them too but are sadly not allowed to eat too many due to the fat content. This doesn't stop them trying. Pleading. Begging. When that doesn't work, scavenging under the trees for the windfalls themselves.

We asked an Italian uncle if we should water or feed the tree to get larger olives? He waved his hands, declaring "No! No! No! Only whata God giva dem!", explaining the best, most flavoursome fruit comes from the natural weather undiluted by false growth or too much water. He is right. Snowy's favourite tree is thriving after about 120 years on what nature provides alone.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my father's 70th birthday. He didn't want a party, or a family dinner, or indeed any celebration at all. This is pretty typical, he's fairly low-key. Except when he sings. His one concession to celebrating his birthday was to try a Thai laksa soup for the first time. He'll go to the football this week as usual, although he won't play golf on Sunday as it's Father's Day. Actually, he would have played golf as he always does (he even played golf on my 40th birthday), but being secretary of his club the rest of the members threatened mutiny if he scheduled a game on that day. So he'll garden instead or fix something or build something.

That won't be unusual. He's always gardening, fixing something or building something. I don't think he even noticed the ramp down from retirement - it just meant more time to work hard at home. I don't actually have many photos of him looking at the camera as he's always busy. He's a mercurial bundle of ideas and energy moving from project to project like a swarm of worker bees. We've learned to harness this energy, my mother and I, or it can get out of hand. She wanted a shadehouse in the garden. The shadehouse he built is beautiful but you need a cut lunch to traverse it and it's taller than the actual house. It even includes a series of fishponds. They took to keeping and breeding birds and needed an aviary so he built eight or nine. His suburban block has a show quality garden that changes constantly but flowers all year round under the sheer force of his will and must have elastic fences to contain all his plans.

His own house and garden doesn't exhaust him so he works on ours as well. I just mentioned the front steps of our house had crumbling mortar. He re-built the entire front veranda wall and repointed it. Mostly in the blazing sun. SO mumbled something about taking the wheelbarrow around the long way to get from the garden shed to the compost heap so Dad built a little stone bridge over the creek, complete with parapets. He used stones he collected from the paddocks by hand.

He's on call for us 24/7 when disaster strikes and never seems to complain. He turns up whenever help is needed and works like a navvy. He clears weeds like a locust, prunes shrubs like a hurricane and makes a good third person for working with sheep as his diverse life has given him many rural skills and all sorts of useful knowledge. He is a former dairy farmer, market gardener and abattoir manager among many other things. We got used to him meeting people he knows in all sorts of locations including mountain tops, fishing ports, tropical rainforests, various other states of Australia and running into an old mate on one occasion in a natural cave complex about 100 feet underground. He's still making new friends.

He doesn't have any human grandchildren so he calls himself Grandpaws and makes things for the pets instead. They all adore him. His current project is a wooden bed for Snowy the beagle but true to form we have to collect it with the ute as it won't fit in his car.

He is the salt of the earth, a force of nature and a cheerful, modest and friendly man. I have dozens of stories of his thoughtfulness and kindness. He's always turning up with presents for us, tools, plants or things that might come in useful. Our work here would not have progressed nearly as quickly or as well without his help and we are so grateful for it all. Happy Birthday Dad.

FBI cats

I don't know what these cats are up to, but they posted on either side of the driveway and as soon as Snowy the unruly beagle had gone obliviously past, they exchanged a meaningful glance...

...and turned to follow her. The Feline Bureau of Investigation.

They're either monitoring her movements closely or they are now her bodyguards.

Battening down

It's rained pretty solidly for the last 24 hours, which is wonderful really. Our tanks are overflowing, the springs are full and the pumps are working overtime. I will remember this come January and wish for it again. Right now it means dashing out when the showers lighten to do jobs outside whilst trying not to get stuck in the mud. Our little valley is a natural waterway but even without interpreting the lay of the land in a geographical fashion the layman could tell by the water flowing over his ankles. The dogs are largely confined to quarters and are largely over it.

They'll get a long walk as soon as we have more than 15 minutes of clear weather at a time. The cats handle confinement much better. They just settle down and wait. Minor disputes over prime sleeping spots notwithstanding.

Smelling like the enemy

We've been walking the dogs, especially Snowy the beagle, around the paddocks and boundary fences in the hope that their smell might deter foxes. So far it hasn't really worked, although our very presence might by sheer chance see off an intruder. Snowy however thinks that we're too obvious and that dunderheaded humans with no sense of smell just aren't aware of how obvious they are. She's attempted to disguise herself by applying a favourite dog perfume, Eau de Vulpes, which is translated as Fox Droppings.


Now this I can smell. Everyone in a mile's radius can. Even the cats run away. I don't think it's going to make it's fashion scent debut this season.


Snowy thinks it will be effective, and is still looking.

Breakfast barrier

When it's really cold SO sometimes has his breakfast in the big room by the fire. To do this successfully however requires some sort of division be used between him and reaching cat paws,


or he'll end up with everyone vying for the contents of his plate.


(Everyone with fur has had breakfast, by the way, they just fancy boiled eggs and toast)

Snowy

"Gayhunter Snowflake" is possibly the worst ever name given to a dog. So we just call her Snowy,

or, when she's pulled one over on us, Snowjob,

or, when she shakes hair everywhere, Snowdrift,

and when she charges about the place, nose down beagle sniffer style, she's Snowplough.

When she's cold and curled up tightly she's a Snowball.

Erupting through the door she's a Snowstorm. Whatever blows your ears back.

Apparently every snowflake is unique. Our Snowflake certainly is.

Bedtime in the morning

Early mornings mean leaving a warm bed for the cold winter dawn to feed the animals and check all is well after the stormy nights.


Jeremy hates to see a warm bed wasted, so he sneaks in when we get up. Here he is breaking at least three CEZ's (Cat Exclusion Zones) being a) in the bedroom, b) on the bed and c) under the covers.


He claims he is not technically c) under the covers, because he is not actually c) covered. Still guilty of the other charges though. Snowy is sitting there quietly hoping I won't notice her in a Dog Exclusion Zone as well. She has the space behind Jeremy earmarked for a nap of her own.

Hang dog

Snowy has a terrible hangover today although she doesn't remember the party at the vet's yesterday at all. She remembers not being able to have breakfast, then a bit of a scary ride in the car during which she didn't throw up. Happy with that, she then met Dr Jenny the lovely vet again. She heard her voice in the consulting room before she saw her and started whining and pulling at the leash to get to her. Favourite vet! Then she stood on a cold, stainless steel table and was looked over and talked about. After that she doesn't remember anything...


After being a breeding beagle all her life last year she was retired. The elderly couple who owned her didn't want her to go through another emergency caesarian section at 4:00am. They probably didn't want to go through it either. They preferred to find her good owners provided they had her spayed. We hope we've been good owners. Snowy might not agree.


Having had the other operation last year made the spay this year a bit more difficult. There were old scars, adhesions and what we shall call middle aged spread. Not puppy fat, Snowy is 6 years old, but chubbiness was noticed and commented on by the vet. Meaningfully. Directed at us. Must be all the good lamb. Her and I both, actually. We'll need to get out for even more walks together.

Meanwhile, Snowy's got to recover. She's being unnervingly quiet and biddable just now. She showed signs of normality at the vet when, after a whole day of being good, her beagleness welled to the surface again and she chewed off her drip line. Now she doesn't feel like chewing anything.


She had a small meal - of lamb again - and a good drink. A short walk outside and that was it. For half an hour, before beagleness resumed. Restless and uncomfortable she insisted breaking all the rules sent home on the post operation information sheet. Snowy can't read so she insisted on trying to get up onto the lounge, a Dog Free Zone, the armchair, another DFZ or go into the bedroom, definitely a DFZ after the incident with the socks.

Eventually we had to go to sleep due to our eyes already doing so. The Orphan Lamb Luxury Apartment was deployed. This is a couple of gates that just happen to fit next to the fire, for corralling lambs who like exploring. It serves a wayward dog just as well.


She kept everyone awake for a while playing harmonica and singing the prision blues. Around 1:00am I moved to the sofa to make sure she didn't chew her stitches or try to break out when her anaethesia wore off completely. Her upheaval of the household complete, she settled down and slept.