Welcome Home

Wilbur and Dumpling are very pleased to see us when we arrive home, even if we've just been out for a new minutes.

Henry, Tinkerbelle and Petal are slightly less excited (Petal got off the bean bag just as I was about to take the photo)

Dumpling is a lot more spiritedly on her feet now, and she trots around. I think that she is quite cautious when she doesn't know  where she is, and regards sitting down as being her best cause of action. She is also very good at jumping, however all her jumps are the same hight regardless of the step, so occasionally there's be a small fluffy object hurtling through the air.

It's going to rain today, which is the first time for a long time, the weather forecast is showing a yellow warning for heavy rain, but that doesn't fill us with the dread - or fill our house with the water - that it used to.

Yuck

Last night Tinkerbelle ran into the bedroom, headed under the cover and was promptly sick - over me, over the bottom sheet and over the cover. Having stripped the bed, I washed myself down and took the sheet outside the back door to shake off the unpleasant half digested dog food, which I got wrong and ended up shaking it out so it blew back over me. I then had to re-shower only to find we had run out of gas so it was a cold shower.

Tinkerbelle is better now and I showed no ill signs from nocturnal cold showers so all is well today...

Normal Service is Resumed

Here are a few pics of normality here, starting with a photo of Larry with his new pomegranate, a gift from my mum. We're used to him screaming at all new items that are added to his home, while he spends at least half an hour flinging them around. Hence it came as a somewhat pleasant surprise that he quietly nibbled away at the pomegranate. We'll definitely have to ensure that we keep a stock handy to keep him quiet.

Anubis and Pixie continue to get on well and play. Well, hopefully they're playing.

This blurred ball of fluff is Dumpling. She's quite adept at standing on her back legs and seeking attention.

And finally Pirata kicks off his day by going online to check out how his stocks in John West are getting on.

Let's Play!

Anubis and Pixie appear to be great chums, probably because they are both the same size. They are funny when they play as they demonstrate some of the key differences between cats and dogs. While Pixie runs round in circles trying to get Anubis to chase her, Anubis just waits there and punches her on the nose at each passing.

Anubis will also hide and jump out on Pixie, a bit like Kato in the Pink Panther films. Anubis will sometimes try to get Pixie to chase her, but it all goes wrong soon as Anubis jumps off the ground. I remember when Bob was a puppy and he'd try to follow the cats, wondering why he ended up head butting the wall, as they gracefully jumped up onto a surface.

I've also seen Henry and Alfie try to play for the first time, but that wasn't terribly successful as Alfie is not as nimble on his three and a half legs as Henry. Not being able to see what's going on out of his non-existent eye didn't help either.

And Dumpling had a go at playing too. Unfortunately, her playmate was a cushion which wasn't giving her much of a response. She was shoving it with her nose, trying to get it to move, but to no avail. She does like to play, and it is easy to forget that she is only really just out of her puppyhood, however she'll need to get more confident with her direction before she is much of a play partner for the others. She's tried playing with Pixie too, however Pixie is too fast for her. I think that making Pixie a jacket covered in the bells we got Pirata may be the way to go...

Oh yes, I've worked out that she probably doesn't get a lot closer to other animals than normal, it's because she has no snout to speak of and a very flat face, that she appears to be getting close. 

How Does Your Dog Smell?

I'm wondering if Dumpling has a bad sense of smell, which is why she has problems orientating herself. I notice that she gets very close to the other animals to sniff them, which Alfie finds most distburbing. She gets so close her nose is virtually touching them. Of course, that could just be her way of making friends.

What I have noticed is that if there is a puppy stampede - for example when they all head outside at teatime - she follows, so there are some things she picks up on.

She's an exceptionally sweet little dog, a bit like a teddy bear!

Dumpling's Direction

We've noticed that Dumpling has a pretty awful sense of direction. She's not deaf and her hearing doesn't appear to be too bad, however when we call her she finds it very difficult, if not impossible, to find where we are. She wags her tail, so we know that she has heard us, however she's then inclined to start walking in random directions. Her bad direction is very noticeable when we compare her to the others. Even little Herbie, being deaf and blind, had a better sense of direction.

It's not a problem, and certainly nothing  that worries her, it's just something that's a little strange and for us to be aware of. Our challenge now is to try and find away that we can help her sense of direction, perhaps she will react so some sounds better than others. Luckily I still have the 100 bells that I bought for our socks when we got Pirata, I wonder if they'll finally be used...

Living Life Dumpling Style

It is interesting as we look back at how our different blind animals have adapted when they came to us. The have all got their own way of getting around. Wilbur's is generally bouncing off things until he get where he wants, Herbie used to pace to map out his surroundings, Pirata treads carefully and Roland has a jump first, ask questions after policy. Pirata is definitely cautious and will ask for help if he gets stuck.

Dumpling is different yet again. We don't really know her history, other than she was kept by a breeder in darkness which is why her vision didn't form (she had an infection in the eye which is missing as it had to be removed, but I don't know the story behind that). The animal rescue place rescued a few animals from the breeder because of the situation that they were kept in. However it doesn't seem to have affected dumpling's opinion of humans as she trusts us already, and quite happily waits for us to pick her up rather than navigate her way to us. She has, however, started to learn how to get down the steps in the patio, and she is favoring the Wilbs approach, which is to fling himself from the top step (of two). Unfortunately Dumpling has very short legs and a very fat tummy, so she risks grounding herself on the route down the stairs (the rescue place obviously had their own view on dogs weight as all the dogs there were distinctly podgy!). She can get up steps with relative ease, but I think that going down steps is difficult for them as they feel unbalanced.

She's stopped growling at the others now, on the first day she growled when she bumped into them, then she growled if they bumped into her, and now she seems to realise that they are not going to do her any harm.

Meet Dumpling

This is Dumpling, the Shih Tzu, formerly know as Ariane. She's a couple of years old and, as you may notice from the photo, is missing one eye. She's blind in the remaining eye, but appears to cope very easily with it, which isn't much of a surprise following our experience with our other blind animals. She's very friendly with us and, after some early growling with the other little dogs, she's starting to realise that they're part of her new pack and is being friendlier to them too.

Yurt Lush

The blame for this lies fully at Ian's toes. He had an idea about putting a yurt or two onto some land for exclusive camping. And since then the idea has been burgeoning even down to the potential name - Yurt Lush, which admittedly only one of us thinks is a great idea.

The idea stemmed from the fact that some of these houses we've been looking at are likely to be difficult to access via roads as they are off tracks, and therefore 4x4 or boat access would be better. So, turning this disadvantage into an advantage, what better way to market an excusive holiday than by saying it is only accessible by boat and transporting guests from the village to their yurt in a little whally boat. The area that we've been looking at would be ideal for this type of activity.

We're so taken with the idea we are going to look at this place on Saturday. It is on the market for 300k, which is more than we wanted to spend, but we hadn't thought of a business angle before where we could earn an income from the property. This area is protected against new buildings, and our guess is this is an old farm house which was in existence before the reservoir was flooded.

While we're not in a position to do anything at this stage, we are keen to quite literally see how the land lies and then we can do some research as to whether a business like this might be a goer.

We went back to the vet today with Alfie. Ian noticed that Alfie's head appeared to deflate when he pressed it - which was odd to say the least. On closer inspection he seemed to have a bouncy sort of swelling. While we were pretty confident it wasn't anything to worry about we went to the vet to get it checked as it wasn't something we'd experienced before. Apparently it is normal, and it is where bacteria get to the wound and they make a gas which will disperse over time.

Nipped Nose

Poor little Alfie is sporting a nipped nose at the moment. Bentley nipped at him when Alfie went to pinch his food - the trouble is, Bentley is 15 times the size of Alfie so what would have been a tickle to Rosie resulted in a wound for little Alfie.

It wasn't too bad, but it was bleeding then Ian noticed a bit of blood coming from Alfie's nose. It wasn't very much and was quite diluted, however we took him to the vet to be checked up. The vet gave him some antibiotics and stuck some gluey stuff on his nose, which is what the big spot is on his nose. I think this was supposed to seal the wound.

Neither Alfie or Bentley were particularly worried. It was a very different situation to when Basil attacked Henry, as that was a proper fight and Basil really went for Henry. Bentley's generally a gentle dog, and he's quite good around food in general (we can leave him in a room with food on the table and he ignores it, although he will get the cat food if he knows were not home) - however he is not happy when another dog comes to his food bowl.  We're going to start feeding him out the back as Pirata and the other cats aren't beyond helping themselves to dog food too.

THUD

"THUD" is the sound of not-so-little Anubis hitting the ground when she jumps of the table. Her feeding regime is definitely working.

This is the sound of her jumping off the table before

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Coconut

We bought a coconut for Larry. The first challenge was opening it, the second persuading Larry that having half a coconut in his cage is a good thing, as he seems to be treating it with suspicion. However Ian found bits of coconut in Larry's food container and water, so that means he's obviously enjoying picking bits of coconut around, even if he's not eating it.