Doggie Paddle

I’m loving this underwater dog series from photographer Seth Casteel that’s been doing the rounds on Facebook. Do click through, check it out and give him some virtual applause.

 

 

 

Christmas Tree

It had to be done. When you wake up to big ol’ fluffy flakes of snow cascading down over the back garden, you must acknowledge the magic of the season. So here is a Christmas tree with some of the best presents ever! Of course such presents bring with them much joy and excitement as well as unavoidable ‘accidents’, hence the little widdle 🙂

Season’s greetings everyone!

Introducing Lily!

It’s been almost a year (a very well documented year) since we were graced by the presence of our very own resident superstar – Lily. She’s going to be a regular feature here so I thought we’d start at the beginning – these are from her first week with her new people.

It is hard to believe that when we brought her home she was a very sick puppy. The previous owners did not tell us about her condition and so we were pretty blind sided. She was unable to poop and when she tried, it was just blood, mucus and the vilest odour (sorry if that grossed out anyone). Multiple visits to the vet were inconclusive and alarming – they said it could be Parvo, or some other infection – in any case they didn’t hold out much hope for her.

But in spite of everything else she never lost her spunky spirit, which is how we knew that she’d be just fine with some care and attention. Being the keen ‘googler’ that I am, I found a number of people online who had dogs facing similar issues, and in most of those cases it was a particularly nasty type of worm. It turned out that she hadn’t been wormed properly and so that was step one. Her food also didn’t seem to suit her, so we switched her to home cooked meals and alternated food ingredients till we isolated white rice as being particularly upsetting to her system. She couldn’t eat more than a tablespoon at a time so she had to be fed at regular intervals.

Eventually though, she recovered and is as fit and boisterous as they come and now eats everything you put in front of her. She’s also a bit of a ho, soliciting attention from everyone that passes by the house and is well known and loved by all the neighbourhood, and it isn’t unusual to find all manner of people leaning over the fence cooing over and coddling her at any given time.

Garden Visitors – An Assortment

The wonders of the English country garden do not cease with the bird life. We have seen many other critters come and go over the last year including, but not limited to, a fox, a hedgehog family and various cats in search of a tender morsel or two. Aside from the little birds we had some ducks drop in and I had a close encounter with a sparrow hawk, which  I have no photos of unfortunately (mostly because once it fixed its eye on me I found myself unable to move – more prey than predator in me I suppose).

Some of these comings and goings were documented, I hope you enjoy them:

A Mallard – Lily was desperate to have a go at duck hunt, but had to watch from afar.

The Incredible Mr.Fox – since we got Lily last year we have had to stop encouraging this nightly visitor in case of an encounter, but he was a pleasure to watch.

Mr. & Mrs. Hedgehog would come by around dusk every night for a plate of cat-food. Contrary to popular belief, feeding them bread and milk is not a good idea as it makes the little critters very ill. 

And where there are fluffy little fledgelings, there is a a hopeful cat waiting by the bird feeder for a little smackerel of something. This one has had to be chased off a few times, but often we’d see him hiding in the nearby bushes anyway….hope springs eternal.

Named ‘Shooshoo’ after failing to respond to that command repeatedly, this cat is a regular in our neighbourhood and always ready for a cuddle. A neighbour was smart enough to bell her as she is quite the avid tree climber/bird killer herself.

Lily now keeps the yard free of predatory cats, but occasionally decides to pull a predation herself (ref. The Pigeon Caper).

Dog Running Free

Our Westie, Lily, has open run of the garden but these days is usually limited to the front end of it in order to keep the back garden quiet for the fledgling birds.

Unfortunately a number of people leave our little gate open when they come in (usually the newspaper delivery guy and assorted sales people) and so we have to keep an eye out all the time in case Lily decides to make a run for it (she knows the directions to the dog park and feels she can easily walk herself there, thank you very much!).

So today’s five minute project was to put together a basic poster to print out, laminate and stick on the tree near the gate to ask people to keep the door closed (that’s a little Lily silhouette there). If you could use it, feel free to print it out for yourself.

Download A4 sized PDF here – Dog Running Free Poster

And you can always contact me for a more personalized and happening version as well!

Puppadums

It seems strange not to have any sign of my pack on the blog – this is being rectified right away. Starting with the lovely Ms.June, Handsome Henry and my ever faithful Ollie.

Coming soon: Lily.