When will it ever stop...

It's been raining since Sunday, and the first proper rain we've had this year - however, already Ian and I are sat shivering and moaning 'when will it ever stop...' - we seem to have become very lightweight in the past few years!

In fact, we have become so lightweight, we lit a fire last night, which is the earliest we have lit a fire since we've been here. But, that was largely to do with the fact we got rained on during our morning walk  and it started raining at the furthest point from the house - so we returned wet and miserable and couldn't really get warm for the rest of the day and couldn't get our clothes dry.

Daisy, who is generally quite a fearless dog, was actually scared of the fire, and spent much of the evening outside the door, occasionally peeking in to see if it was still there.

Sam continues to be odd. I think he is probably coming close to the end of his days, however he generally still has a good quality of life, but with definitely odd episodes. But, he generally surprises us and I sometimes wonder if we will be here in five years time, still having the same debate about him. 

Whose Parrot Is It Anyway...

If this isn't already a highly successful TV game, it most certainly should be :)

The panel listen to three talking parrots and listen to three families and then guess which parrot lives with which family.

Ludvig's talent for imitating barks, meows, plus the way he mimics us, would make it pretty clear which household he lives with.

Now, all I need to do is to find the commissioning editor for parrot programs...

Sam and his echo

Poor Sam is looking, and probably feeling, his age. Over the summer he has turned into a proper elderly dog, a little unsteady on his legs and generally just looking more senior. We're not really sure how old he is, but, thanks to the blog, I know exactly when we found him https://pullens.blogspot.com/2007/12/stray.html

I wonder if the frailty in his legs is a throwback to his original injury when we found him.

It's difficult really to tell how Sam is, as he's always been an odd dog and while he's only had one seizure we're aware of over the last several years, he does definitely have periods when he is exceptionally odd.

Last week he took a tumble and gave a painful sounding yelp when he moved. Of course this coincided with a national holiday so we weren't easily able to get him to the vet. But fortunately, with some rest, he was soon much better.

I don't think the situation was helped by the fact that Sam would insist on cramming himself into a tiny dog bed which I'd got for Horace - when he later would unfold himself out of the dog bed, he'd be even stiffer than he was originally.

However, since then, Ian and I have been kept on our toes by Ludvig, who does an unnervingly realistic rendering of Sam's yelp. More than once he's set us off on a trail to find Sam and see what's a matter with him, only to find him sleeping soundly in the improbably small dog bed.

Ludvig picked up Sam's yelp very quickly as he only did it a couple of times on the day he took his tumble.  There's obviously some noises he picks up on and learns quickly.