Where Was I........

About this you should know two things…
My youngest daughter (D3) picks my dogs…and names them.
To this end I have two English Fox Terriers named Narla (Lion King) and Roxy (Sports wear).
Narla’s a little over middle age with failing eyesight and a ball fixation, she will bring you a ball even where they don’t exist.
It doesn’t matter where I choose to walk her, she will come back at some stage with a ball. I have close to one hundred balls in my house, car, in the garden and even in the bushes and trees in the yard. It’s not all bad news though, after she strips the fur off them and eventually bites them into pieces just big enough to choke the vacuum cleaner, I can then throw them away…while she’s not watching. (Shhh! Don’t let on)
Roxy is smaller, perhaps ten inches, not yet middle aged and killer of all things small, with no interest in anything she cant chase and kill. I do not encourage this hunter trait, but after all, Foxies are hunting terriers. Roxy is quite a contradiction as you will soon see.
Her biggest kill so far is a large chicken that she silently dispatched in the time it took to walk the length of my mates driveway behind her. The young chicken was over twice her size, blood smeared and panting she smiled broadly to show how good she was…it did not go down well. Thank goodness his kids (who raised her from a chick) were not there to see what she did…I bought them another chicken because, as their dad said, their chicken had flown away to find a husband and have a family. . .(gotta love a happy ending)

My grandkids love both dogs, Narla for her ball games and Roxy because she’s so very sweet and gentle. The neighborhood kids always stop to play or pat them as they do their rounds, in fact Roxy is the perfect dog for getting scared kids used to dogs.

D3 was staying with me toward the end of her pregnancy when Roxy was still a pup, the dog would lay on her belly, and as the baby grew, she would lay wrapped around the baby bump. It was obvious that there was something going on and when Zach was born the dog would comfort and guard him all the time. When they were together Zach was always relaxed and calm and unlike most babies Zach was always gentle with her, the two continue to share a ‘thing’.

What else?... Oh Yeah,

These dogs LOVE the car, they stare fixated at the scenery rushing by…and all those passing smells, the smells, the smells!
The best smell of all…. apparently, is the beach. They start whimpering within miles of the beach and love to run the deserted beaches running from smell to juicy smell.
The only time that becomes a problem is after the annual Giant Cuttlefish breading season here. Many die after breeding (like Salmon) and wash up on our beaches for a few weeks… Now let me picture this for you
Where you live, Squid will be available. .A Giant Cuttlefish body, without tentacles can be three feet long but are usually less than two feet. Picture a very heavy set Squid that size… now kill it….then leave it in the sun for a week… then place it, and up to one hundred more of them on our one mile long beaches.
Fortunately this happens in winter when you wouldn’t be caught dead going into the water anyway, but it denies access to everyone except the brave icebergers, tourists who want to ‘see’, and dog walkers…

I’m extremely vigilant on our walks in winter, but even so, eventually I will slip up and miss guarding one of the now crispy brown, bloated, maggot bags in amongst the seaweed and other derris on the shoreline….and the dogs will roll in it.
You can see the expression on their faces, a kind of elation as they smear the ink and goo over themselves, occasionally you can see maggots flick off as they shake upon getting up after I yell at them to “Git ***** outa there.. *******” (*#@&*)

Those are the days that the dogs come home in the boot of the car…
Those are the days when, no matter how cold the weather, it’s straight into the bath for a double scrubbing.

Its Autumn, winter will be here soon… the Cuttlies will be here then, and through June and July they will be washing up again…. Oh Joy!!