Stop Thief!

For those of you who WERE following my blog - I apologise for such a long gap - all of two months, which is hard to believe.  A mixture of the house being in uproar whilst having a wood-burning stove installed, Christmas, New Year, a rotten lousy cold, and then a mega-dose of the winter blues has conspired against me.  But, hey-ho, the house is much warmer now, spring is coming (sometime....) and we have had two days of fine weather!

Heat!

Oh Blessed heat!

Forgive the lack of pictures in this post - I need to trawl through the few that I have taken these last weeks, though the weather hasn't really been good for taking pictures.  I'll add them in over the next few days.  Not many of them are really relevant to the text, but it'll add colour!

This is a narrow sound of water which has a lovely view at the other side - normally!

The weather has been appalling here this last couple of months - the wind and rain have been worse than I ever remember in a winter, and it has made for hard work with the dogs.  If they come in wet, but clean, it's a bonus - if they come in clean AND dry - wow, it's like winning the lottery.  Sisko is easy enough to dry, and to be honest, so is Tussock - she is very adept at keeping herself out of the mud.  The two youngsters are quite the opposite - the more muck the merrier.  In fact, River seems to have permanent tag-nuts of mud on her undercarriage!  I should hose them down, but the garden is already a quagmire, and I don't want to make it worse.  In fact, as of two weeks ago, they are banished from the back garden to minimise the damage and the drying/cleaning time.

She doesn't mind being dried - but being washed is another matter!  At my parents house she rolled in something rather vile and I had no choice but to get the warm soapy water out.  The blur indicates the struggle!!

The dogs may have been the cause of a lot of extra work this winter, but equally, they have been the cause of much laughter, too - like Talulah teaching River what fun it is to run round with the dirty laundry, or better still help you to empty the tumble dryer and run off with the contents.

Or getting involved with my various craft projects.  If it goes very quiet it means they are either sleeping or up to something, and I am now sufficiently tuned in to check them.  Sometimes River is "reading" the various magazines I have - I daresay some rather crucial pattern or design information has been digested in more ways than one.

Another favourite is wool craft - I have a lot of wool kicking around - raw fleece, carded, half spun, knitted, etc - their hobby is dissection - see how far we can spread this bit of wool.

River has two favourite hobbies, however - chewing and thieving.  I have never known a dog with such a drive for these occupations.  My 16 year old slippers are now succumbing to their sixth dog.  Various items of furniture have tell tale tooth marks in them, and anything portable is up for grabs.  I do work hard with her on it, but sometimes I am concentrating on work, and she decides that X, Y or Z is far more interesting than her flavoured nylabone.

The thieving is incredible, though.  Anything off the kitchen top is apparently hers, and of course as she grows bigger, her reach is increasing.  One morning she finished her food (she's a speed eater) and when I came back in from giving the others their breakfast, she was up on her hind legs, very genteelly eating my breakfast from the bowl.  She has more than once stolen the chicken breast defrosting for my tea - no chance of rescuing it as it more or less goes down whole.  I have become more and more devious about where I put things.  One day I left a lower cupboard door slightly ajar, and she came waltzing through to the sitting room with the sunflower oil container.  My lovely fireside rug still has the oily mark on it.

However, we do seem to have made progress on the thieving in the house.  Normally I give the dogs (in turn) the empty yoghurt containers to lick out - I buy kilo size.  Once they are clean, the old chewed one is put to recycle and River has a new one to chew.  However, one had been put at the very back of the draining board and hidden from view.  When I unburied it, it was looking a bit foosty, so put it in the soapy water to soak.  A little while later a triumphant River came prancing into the sitting room with the container, complete with soapy water spilling as she went.  I'm afraid I rather lost it at that point - I was having a really bad day, feeling very down, and she got a hard smack on the rump and a foot up the bum.   I instantly hated myself for that, and she obviously got a fright - BUT!!!  She aint been on the kitchen tops since! 

For those that know the breed - she's all Hovawart!

Taken at five months on a rare sunny day

Starting to show true shape.

The other variety of thieving is the outdoor one.  Horse food, bird food, - doesn't matter, she'll eat it.  With the weather being as bad as it is, I have had to up the bucket feeds for the horses and I always have a tub of beet pulp soaking.  I was covering this with an old plastic feedbag.  Now, up until this point, whenever I got up to go to the toilet in the night, River would come down with me, and she would go outside to do her wee.  Then Talulah started going out with her too.  Okay, not a problem.  Except they were taking longer and longer..........and longer.

By the time I went out, shunted them back inside, put the cover back on the tub, dried off the dogs etc, I was well awake, so I made a hot drink, and read until I felt sleepy again.  Just settling down to sleep again when Sisko needed out to the loo.  Ah well, I guess old dogs have an excuse!  As I set off down the stairs, Talulah and River followed me.  The former saw my face (eyes say more than words!) and scuttled back up the stairs, though River needed a foot stamp before she also scuttled off.

Sisko toddled off to do whatever it was he forgot to do earlier.  As he had a history of thieving in his earlier days, I listened out and sure enough, the sound of plastic and he is in the bucket.  There's little point calling him as he's pretty deaf, so I have to go down the path yet again in the cold in nowt but a tee shirt to tap him on the rump.  I can't remember now if I ever got back to sleep that night!

The feed tub now has a much more robust cover - and as if to put a full stop on that particular story, the old fellow has just let out the most enormously loud fart.  Yes, they make me laugh.

Now, many of you will have heard me talking about my dad's reaction to the new puppy.  For those that don't know:  I first mentioned the possibility of a new pup after he picked me up from Min's house after last year's trip to Crufts.  Basically his response was "what the bloody hell do you want another dog for - you've a small house, it'll cost you, too expensive, bloody this bloody that bloody the next thing....." I rather stopped listening, instead thinking that I wouldn't mention that particular topic again.

I did tell my mum about River's impending arrival just before they went off on holiday.  She wasn't particularly surprised, nor as reactive as my dad.  As she put it, I'm old enough to know what I'm doing, but that I would have to "deal" with my dad when the time came!  So when they came home at the end of November, off I went to a visit.  I actually got there whilst they were out, and of course when they did come home, all the dogs were happy to see them, and it was a melee of black dog.  About an hour later, chatting round the table, I saw my mum chuckling to herself.  I mouthed over "what you laughing at?"  She mouthed back "he hasn't noticed!".  A little while later, dad went off to the loo, and on his way back through the sitting room, he suddenly stopped and said "Hang on!  How many bloody dogs have we got?!"  At which point Ma and I couldn't contain the laughter any longer.

The end result was that he thinks "she's not a bad little dog".

Sleep of the Innocent

Not so little now!  She is actually only an inch shorter at the shoulders than Tussock.

Anyway - enough for today, but I promise to get back on top of this!