Dog TV

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DAY 414



A cool start to the day, it had rained again over night, but the general feeling is that it is not enough to make a difference to the dams.

After breakfast Andy and I head off to feed Jasons chickens and dogs. They are all waiting with eager anticipation when we arrive, especially the puppies who are all over me yapping and vying for my attention, I am really starting to see their little personalities develop, some puppies are looking a little bigger than others no doubt taking more than their fair share of food. One or two of the puppies are more timid than the others and seem to hang back a bit.

Once the dogs are fed and watered I go and help Andy with the chickens, it is an easier job today with a little bit more confidence of what needs to be done, I was watching the hens in the one coop, they appeared to be giving one of the chicks a hard time, it looked as if they were bullying the chick, on taking a second look I thought that there did not look as if there were as many chicks as yesterday, but thought “How can that be?” There is nowhere else for them to go, however we were to soon find out on opening the door, sadly a dead chick is floating in the water bowl.

I wondered if the other hens had driven the chick into the bowl and then it drowned, their behaviour towards the chicks is weird.

In the next coop along we find a dead chicken sitting on some eggs, we have since learned that it may have died from heat stroke, it happens to chickens when they are brooding on their eggs and do not want to move.

Andy deals with the dead ones thankfully as I am not sure that I could, well ok I would if I had to I would.

It was another drizzly day so it wasn’t very pleasant to be out in it, but the work needed doing and then off we went back to the homestead to get clean and a hot cup of tea.

Well, it was going to be a fairly quiet day, everyone was beetling around doing their thing, Andy and Helen played a couple of puzzles, I played a couple too, but was more engrossed in my new Professor Layton puzzle game on my Nintendo, how addictive it is, I played for ages.

Uncle Athol and Auntie Mary reappeared mid afternoon with David and Jenny who took them to Canberra to be with family for Christmas day, they left their car in one of the farm sheds and have come to collect it. They al came in for a cup of coffee and a chat, I thought I would do the teas and coffees so worked out exactly who wanted what, it was going well until Mary came in to chat and confused the hell out of me, I then had two too many coffees and then suddenly I didn’t have enough coffees and one person missed out on the tea. I have no idea how she did it but she did. They stayed for a while but it was time to move on again.

As it was another cool day again, when I say cool I do still mean its late 20’s, but of course there is no sunshine just good heavy cloud which makes it nicer to take a walk, so I decide that Tiny and Toby need to have a good run as some of the others are out on “Sheep Business”.

I head up to the yard where Kimba and Tiny are kept, Tiny is excited to see me and is virtually hanging off the gate with anticipation, I see that Kimba is busy looking at her “Dog TV”, the metal panel that should block the view to the chicken and duck yard is rusting away and with a little help from some paws there is a sizeable hole (the pens are still separated by chicken wire) Kimba is just sitting and watching through the hole with one beady eye, not daring to move.

I seriously worry about Kimba, I think she has obsessive tendencies, if she is not parading up and down the veranda protecting her territory she is sat in one spot staring hard into the shrubbery looking for geckos and now she has found “chicken run” on the TV, I suspect strongly that she has not even noticed me come and take Tiny out of the yard, she will probably turn around and wonder what happened to Tiny!

I go and get Toby off his chain, but before I could steer him in the right direction he made a bolt for the house, I let him run off and then shouted at him to come back, he soon got the idea that he was coming with me and Tiny, so back he came and headed off down the lane.

I had to keep shouting at Toby to come back to me, I was worried that if he headed out of earshot then I would lose him, but obediently he stuck around at one point running into the dry river bed, I lost sight of him completely and then he reappeared behind me.

Tiny of course in her eagerness probably walked 3 times as much as me and Toby, she would run off in the distance and then run back to me, jumping up at me as soon as she got to me, then she would run off again and then come back again to jump up at me, unless of course she found something more interesting in the paddock to play with like a dead animal in which case I had a job to get her to “drop it”.

We walked around 2 of the larger paddocks, I saw no snakes, but soon we were back and I had to get Toby back onto his chain, however he would not come with me so he was playing around at the front of the house, Helen asked me to put some cream on his hears as the flies are irritating them. Toby very obediently sat while I rubbed the cream in, I think he was enjoying it actually. Soon I had him following me across the paddock so that I could put him back on the chain (only because the city dogs were out and about and they don’t mix very well), but he heard a car, so decided to run back to the house.

What makes me laugh is that Rocky the city dog, was trying to rule the homestead and got feisty with Toby, however Toby told Rocky who was boss (I should think so too, this is Toby’s home!) Helen had ushered Rocky indoors while I sorted out Toby, but from behind the fly screen a brave Rocky sat there and growled at Toby, I don’t think he would have been quite so brave if he was outside.

A quiet evening was to be had by all, Helen cooked up some fritters with the leftover meat and vegetable from yesterday (Christmas Day), Susan even put the HP sauce out on the table for me, she did try it herself but very quickly went back to ketchup. I guess HP sauce is the same as the marmite/vegemite thing.

We sat and watched some TV, but everyone gradually drifting off to bed, Robert first followed soon after by Susan, Helen lasted a little longer but Andy and I stayed up until about 11.00 before retiring.

Andy looked outside just before heading to bed, there was lightning in the distance, he saw Rocky stand on his hind legs and put his front paws on Andy and whimpered, we wondered if the lightning was upsetting him, but he settled down ok after that.

I promise not to talk incessantly about the Kelpies on the farm, as gorgeous as they are I am sure you don’t need to be inundated with dog stories!

Oh, just one more thing, Andy reminded me that as of today, we have now passed 45,000 hits on the blog.

Boxing day is nearly over for us, goodnight.

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Comments

[Darryl and Sarah]

Ominous sky
Beautiful photograph Caroline (sorry Andy but I'm assuming the good lady was at the controls!). Good to hear you've passed 45'000 hits on the blogs - awesome! Talking of dogs we met a beautiful French Bulldog called Syrup the other night, bless his heart! The two Blue Heeler guard dogs on the small holding we went to today looked less friendly!!! Great to see that things are going well, they'll make farm hands out of you yet!!! Ha Ha!! all our love WW x x x