More blocks for Chris

Yesterday I posted Chris's blocks.  The colour combination of the red, aqua and white is lovely.  The contrast produced by the three colours gives a clean, sharp look to the block.  It is going to be a great finished quilt.  The late summer weather here is beautiful and when I took the photo of the blocks I also took a photo from the balcony of my house to show you all Switzerland at its most lovely.

 

 

The man who comes to help in the garden got in the way.

Linsay



Puppies 5 Weeks Old

Anne-Marie's puppies are 5 weeks old and she says they are all healthy and friendly. Apparently they were taken out to the back yard at the weekend and they all froze with the shock of the big, wide world. They are becoming more adventurous everyday. We can pick our dog up after we come back from our holiday in Western Australia. Calum's favourite is a blue (grey) one with a small white patch on the backside.

Today at our craft group Jan was telling us about her little dog which is a cross between a schnauzer and a poodle. She hadn't been grooming the dog as much as it needed and when the groomer came the other day, the dog had to have all her hair chopped off, right down to the skin. Jan says the dog looks terrible and is shivering in the cold weather; her children have declared that Jan can't take the dog for a walk because people will laugh; and her husband refers to the poor dog as 'the rat.' The dog's hair had matted so badly that there was no alternative to cutting it all off.

Ushi and I were laughing our heads off as poor Jan felt guilty about letting her dog get so matted.

Puppies are born

Lisa's whippet, Zest, had six puppies on 30th May. There were two boys and four girls and they are all mostly white with brindle patches on their heads and backs, unfortunately Calum doesn't like the look of their coats very much. I thought that they looked very sweet but that may have been due to their tiny size and their pink noses.



In her email Lisa said that she had an order for a show dog male and that it was early days to start allocating dogs to people. I wasn't exactly sure what she meant but after a few emails I think she means that I may not be able to have one of her dogs. Calum had a word with Toni at work and she immediately suggested another breeder who has just had a litter of whippets too. New whippet breeder Anne-Marie has four boys and two girls and has not promised any of them to anyone yet. In the photos Anne-Marie sent me the puppies are mostly blue or brindle with white marks and Calum likes them a lot more - phew.



In the meantime I have been reading loads of dog books. 'The Dog Whisperer', 'The Dog Listener' and 'Cesar's Way' have all been great, the later two were lent to me by Ushi and I must say she has a very nicely behaved dog. Having read all these books has obviously made me a dog behaviour expert, when we are driving along in the car I say to Calum, 'That dog thinks it is the leader of the pack.' when we pass some poor soul being dragged along the street by their dog. When I visit someone's house and the dog jumps up I think, 'Dog trying to assert its dominance over me.' Calum says that I'm just reading all these dog books so that I can be a know-all when the dog arrives.



I realise now that our Jack Russell, Corrie, that we had when I was a teenager was completely untrained and acted as the leader of the pack her entire life. We were always wondering why she wouldn't do anything she was told, she always did exactly what she wanted and never paid any attention to us at all. I suggested to Calum that they had the same experience with Selkie, their Vizsla, he was horrified and insisted that Selkie was a well balanced dog, despite biting the postman; dragging someone off a moving motorbike and always barking at fat people. Yesterday I was taking to his mum about dogs and she said, without prompting, that she would adopt a completely different method if she ever got another dog because they didn't get it right with Selkie.

dog park

Arabella was off at school camp and Flora went for a play date with Tara. I said I would meet up with them at the dog park. The children play on the equipment and Jenny takes the dog into the fenced-off dog park so I thought it would be nice to have a chat with Jenny.

The dog park was busy and overwhelmed by great dane. It was only about 18 months old but it was, of course, massive and intimidating. One little old lady was too scared to let her small dog off the lead. We had a very nice chat about Edinburgh and then she decided to give up. Jenny was so busy directing dogs and owners that she didn't chat at all. I found the whole thing rather fraught and I don't think I'll be using that dog park too often. I thought dog ownership would be a relaxing element in my life.

Later the children joined us in the dog area and Flora had a nice time throwing balls for dogs and patting them, when Tara started moaning I decided that it was time to go home.

thinking of a name

Once Arabella and Flora were aware that we were planning to get a dog, they wanted to think of a name. Flora can think up a name in an instant. One example of Flora's naming abilities is her name for a plastic horse she owns. It is called 'Double Eck Doo'. I have absolutely no idea where that came from.

The conversation on dog names went like this;
Flora - Can we call the dog Coco?
Me - We are not having a dog called Coco.
Flora - Can we call it Loco?
Me - There's only one thing that is loco round here and it's not a dog.
Flora - Can we call it Moco?
Me - No.
Flora - Can we call it Oh-oh?
Me - No names with Oh-oh in them.

A few days later while we were eating pizza in a cafe the name Zephyr popped into my head which I thought was good for a dog which runs like the wind and Calum agreed. When we got home I checked my 'Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art' which is one of my favourite books. When I looked up Zephyr it said, 'See Flora.' I read the entry for Flora and it said that Zephyr had chased Chloris, and once he caught her flowers spilled from her lips and she was tranformed into Flora. 'Primavera' by Botticelli depicts this moment. Thats great, I like a good classical allusion, so we will call the dog Zerphyr. I tried to tell Calum but he was watching Manchester United play in the European Championship so he didn't want to listen - fair enough.

I have begun to tell people that we are going to get a dog and they always ask which breed. When I say whippet there is a deafening silence. Elise said that she didn't think they were much fun with kids, based on Brendan's ex-racing greyhound showing no interest in playing with their boys. Ushi mustered up the most positive remark by saying, 'My Uncle Lucky has always had whippets.' A few days later she told me that she had never liked Uncle Lucky's whippets very much. I'm sticking to my guns, I'm sure this whippet is going to be adorable and be plenty of fun for the girls and Calum will be very happy with a dog which wants to cuddle into him.

The dog is due to be born on 1 June which is only 10 days away.

The beginning

We have decided to get a dog. We have persuaded the landlord that it would be a good idea and checked through endless websites on selecting dogs. I was beginning to think that a spoodle would be a good family choice since is is Australia's most popular breed these days and the puppies are incredibly cute but I was never completely convinced. They just look so scruffy.

Then one day I was chatting to a friend who said that she had recently got a whippet. 'Interesting', I thought. They are not scruffy, in fact, they are sleek and elegant. One of Calum's criteria to determine how appealing any animal is, is to assess how pattable their heads are and whippets have very pattable heads. They are also hounds which is the kind of dog that Calum is drawn to.

On Easter Sunday there was a whippet show at Castle Hill Showground. When we got there we discovered that a number of breeds were having their own distinct dog shows at the Showground. We looked at them all, the very noisy dachshunds, the grumpy pugs, the amazingly vacant red setters and the gentle, curious, sweet whippets. Calum recognised one of the whippet show officials, she had just joined his office. She breeds whippets but wasn't expecting any at the moment, but she did know Lisa who had a pregnant bitch. We went to meet Lisa and Zest, the expectant mum. Zest had been sent all the way to Hobart to meet Oscar and to get busy. We had a chat with Lisa and put our names down for one of her male pups, due 1 June 07. Today Flora asked me how many days it is until we can get our dog, it's 56, we worked it out.