A Dingo's got my Barbie!!!

And that's the difference.

As you would be aware, pets, like people, have distinctive personalities. Here are two clips (both boring in the extreme, but at least they're really short) that illustrate the difference between Bentley and Belle.

There are two major differences between the dogs (we won't include Buddy because he is entirely different to the beagles):

• While Bentley is food-driven, Belle is adventure-driven.
• Whereas Bentley is amazingly gentle, Belle is 'crash through or crash'.
• Both have amazing perseverance, but in different areas.

I had some mango ice cream the other day that came in a bucket which required either an engineering degree, or access to Lara Croft (tomb raider) to get the damned thing open! In fact I almost gave up eating ice cream out of frustration before I even tasted the stuff. It has one of those lids that was almost impossible to see where join was, so obviously I was interested to see how the dogs would handle the problem. I must add that it was empty by the time I gave them their turn.

This first clip is of Bentley trying to get into the carton, it had been rinsed so there wasn't much of a scent. If I had put some dog biscuits in it he would have kept at it until he had the goodies, rather than just pushing it under the table and simply leaving it there.

I figured that he would go back to it in a while, and as long as he was interested in it, Belle would keep her distance (she's scared of him, with good reason). So I went to watch a bit of TV. I had only been on the couch for no more than a minute or two when Bentley showed up, so I thought I better go see how Belle was doing with it. This clip is what I found. I didn't see her actually open it, but I can assure you that there would have been no finesse involved.

A little night music.

I know some of you like words (I'm more of a picture guy myself), so here's a post with lots of them...

Ok, I see how it works around here. A guy pulls up at my front gate around lunch time, beeps his horn, and on getting no response (on account of me being totally immersed in my research*), comes in and leaves a package on my front verandah, and yet the dogs see no reason to get of their fat, fart emitting arses to either check out the situation for themselves, or let me know so I can. But if a twig breaks at 2:00am somewhere (anywhere) in the approximately 20,000 acres of cattle country that surrounds me, they're all over it!

*And before you get all pedantic about it, porn is too a valid use of the billions of dollars worth of time and effort that's gone into the construction of the Internet, as well as the development of state of the art search engines. Yes it is...is too...ah ha...is too...is too (infinity) so there. Oh, and I know footnotes should at the end, but it's so annoying to have to go back and forth.

Anyway, as I was saying before I was forced to justify myself to you non porn loving cretins, here I was getting into some heavy duty R.E.M. (the sleep function, not the band), when all of a sudden my bed is transformed into a maelstrom of canine frenzy (now that's what I call prose! eat your heart out, Tolstoy). It was like a scene from 'Cheaper by the Dozen' but instead of kids jumping on the bed it was dogs, and instead of giggling with glee, they were barking and growling. Ok, now that I see it written down, it's not really much like a scene from that movie at all, but you get my drift.

In a flash (no, we're not still talking about porn, keep up will ya?) they were off the bed and racing down the hall to attack the door in an effort to get out and bark at (I'd like to say attack, but I know my guys too well for that) whatever it was in those cow paddocks, my guess would be cows, but what do I know. As the ever alert frontiersman that I am, I laid there waiting for them to get bored and come back to bed. This plan would have succeeded too, if it hadn't been for the fact that we're talking about dogs here, they've been eating the same crap at dinner for 7 years now, so they have a pretty high boredom threshold.

Pulling the covers over my head works great for monsters, but apparently not dogs, I could still hear their little doggie feet clattering on the wood floors as they raced up and down the hall between the front door and my bed and back again. And even worse, despite the three layers of blankets I had covering my head, I could still sense them starring intently at me from about an inch away, specially Bentley (he's pretty eerie like that). So I did what I had to do, I yelled out "Shut the fuck up you stupid bastards!"

This only served to send them into an even greater frenzy, I guess they figured I was yelling at the cows. So it was that with great reluctance that  I extricated myself from my feather filled cocoon and let them out. The next 15 minutes were spent listening to them howling, growling and barking with the occasional break to play Keystone Cops (this is done by simply running in all different directions and crashing into each other as they try find whatever it is they're looking for).

Finally after the aforementioned 15 minutes, there was silence (except for Buddy banging on the door to get back in, he's such a mommy's boy). Normally, I'd just leave them out for the rest of the night, but the last few times I've done that, it's only resulted in dogs going missing for days, so I went to the door and called them to come back inside (except Buddy, he was already back in bed within a fraction of a second of me opening the door).

"Here Bentley, here Belle" I called. Ok, I didn't really need to put that in, but there hasn't been much dialogue so far, and good stories should have dialogue, or sex. There was no response.

"Fuck!" I said, to no-one in particular, "now I'll have to go out into the cold and get them" I said to myself this time, which makes it more of a soliloquy than a dialogue. Grabbing a torch (flashlight) I went outside to look for them.

I found Bentley first, he was just amusing himself playing with one of the many soft toys he has, the one that looks like a rabbit. Wait..a..minute..we don't have a soft toy that looks like a rabbit...

Oh shit! That is a rabbit, well more like half a rabbit by now. When I went to grab it off him he managed to keep just out of my reach, all the while continuing to chew. "Screw him, he can have his chew toy, I'll just grab Belle and go back to bed" I thought.

"That's funny, I haven't seen Belle" that was also a thought  (you can tell they're thoughts, because there are quotation marks, and yet there's no-one else around). Belle was nowhere to be found.

In case you've been in a coma for the past few weeks and don't know what's been going on around here, let me summarise for you. I've got a dog that was recently hit by a car and had one of her back legs shattered and the other severely lacerated, so much so that she can barely walk. I have to pick her up and put her on the bed, I have help her get up onto the couch because she's so severely injured, I have to give her pain meds and extra loving becasue she's a poor crippled little dog. So how the fuck did she manage to jump the fucking fence!! (She did it again this morning! She is a real piece of work!)

Fortunately I managed to see her eyes reflecting in the beam of the torch, so I was able to go and grab her and bring her back. Sheesh, what a night!

Once a bitch....

....well, you know the rest of the the saying.

But here, let me illustrate with a picture. Despite having a bucket on her head, one leg shattered and the other severely lacerated, nothing is going to stop this bitch making the poor guy minding his own business, miserable...

Oh, and just so you know, we got rid of the bucket last Friday.

There's more than one dog here ya know!

As you would be aware, Belle has been monopolising my attention lately. This has not gone unnoticed by the other critters. They have been acting a little stranger than normal these past few days, and have been doing some weird shit in an attempt to get some attention. Eventually, after a long and concerted effort, Bentley finally got through to me!

I suddenly realised that I had been neglecting the other dogs since Bell flung herself in front of a car for the good of my blog (bless you Belle). I therefore decided it was high time I spent some 'quality time' with Bentley (screw Buddy, he's just a runt anyway). But the more I though about it, the less appealing was the though of frolicking in the meadow with my canine companion. It was unappealing for two reasons a) it seemed like it would entail exercise (entail is such a good word to use when talking about dogs), and b) "frolicking in the meadow" seems pretty gay to me (not that there's anything wrong with being gay, one of my best friends cough*mark*cough is gay, even though he tries to hide it by dating a Canadian).

I thought about it for a while, and like a splash of ear wash it came to me "Why not squirt some crap in his ears, that's always good for a laugh". So that's what I did, and boy was it fun...for me.

Now I should give you some background before you view the clips (yes there's two, a 'before', and an 'after'). When we first got Bentley from the pound he had really bad ear infections that took quite a bit of work to fix. This involved putting special ear cleaning fluid in his ears everyday for about a month. Toward the end he really started to hate it (actually he hated it from day one, but I rarely get a chance to say 'toward the end' any more). Even though he's been good for a few years now, he still goes funny at the mere sight of the bottle, as you will see. This completely unedited, I want you to see that his reaction is caused by nothing more than the appearance of the evil ear wash bottle...

Geez I sound awful! I don't sound anything near as bad as that in my head, but for your sake, my loyal readers, I have suffered this indignity in order to keep the clip accurate, I hope you appreciated it.

The reason I had to cut was I don't have enough hands to film and squish crap into his ears at the same time, which is a shame really, because you missed him breaking free of my grip after the first ear followed by his mad dash for freedom which ended with him being unceremoniously dragged out from under my bed. I should tell you that some ear washes have alcohol in them, which can sting a little, the stuff I use costs twice as much as them, but has no alcohol or any other stinging substance, he's just a big sook.

So now for the 'after'...

The 'after' was a little on the tame side, plus I cut it short, it goes on for another five minutes or so (but who wants to watch that for five minutes?). He normally manages a few howls and some growls while he's trying to rub the whole nasty experience out of his memory and onto the carpet (I think he was trying to be brave in front of Belle). That carpet surfing reminds me of when we got him from the pound, I must tell you about it one day.

A real quick update.

I had planned on telling you the whole story of what happened yesterday, but on top of everything else, my computer just died. It's back up again now, but I don't know for how long, the switch mode power supply is cactus.

Anyway, a quick update before I lose the PC again...Belle has a dislocated hip, severe lacerations, and her leg is broken in three places; at the knee, at the hip, and in the middle. Which means we won't need that expensive plate any more, we need some even more expensive, specialised hardware. Oh, and we need to send her a hundred miles away to the specialist who can perform the operation.

Sound expensive to you? Me too, and an initial quote indicates that it will be at least twice the amount quoted yesterday ($1000), and she'll have to be kept in a cage for eight weeks.

I'll leave it there so I can post this before the pooter dies again.

Beau could be famous

moar funny pictures

Bentley 87 - WT 86

I'm only guessing the scores, but they would be pretty close.

Anybody see Uno win the Westminster Dog Show? Not only does he look like Bentley, he also has that same reserved nature that beagles are renowned for. Not. That's just a brief glimpse into life with a Beagle, they are utterly irrepressible, but a hell of a lot of fun.

We're all familiar with Bentley's great escapes, but he's gone crazy the past few days as the foxes and rabbits have been very active. I've had to patch the fence three times in the past week.

This is escape number 87...

But wait, I'm not out of the game yet...

Me and the crew got that baby patched right up! The scores are tied...for now.

Belle can't understand why Bentley goes to all the trouble of making a hole in the fence when all you have to do is jump over it. She doesn't know that Beagles don't jump. Funny thing is, she won't jump the fence unless Bentley has gone under it.

The saga of Bobby (ii)

For those of you who seem to only look at the pictures, I must remind you that all this happened a year ago...

Bobby spent a glorious two weeks with us, running along the beach holding hands, enjoying picnics in the forest amongst the quaint woodland creatures and spending idyllic nights sipping French champagne and eating beluga caviar. He was proving himself to be a better pet than either of the two ungrateful, unresponsive and downright dumb bastards that actually were my pets.

He was way more affectionate than either Buddy or Bentley, because he would come and hangout with me even if there was no promise of food. And as for responding to commands, well let's just say that he did and the other pricks didn't. Without even realising it, I was starting to favour Bobby over the others. Ha! of course I realised it, do you think I'm stupid? This eventually led to some ill will between Bentley and Bobby. Buddy was ok with it though, he's used to being the low dog on the hydrant.

This period was not without it's laughs, you see, Bobby was a Border Collie, so the fence that kept the other guys in, except for when they made holes in it like this (which is pretty often, I'll tell you about it in detail one day)...

As I was saying, the fence is only waist height, and while that's fine for beagles and pugs, border collies just laugh at it, in fact Bobby could jump it without even touching it. So I had no way of keeping him in, which didn't seem to matter as he would always come back anyway, which is where things got really funny.

Whenever Bobby would jump the fence, Bentley would do is darnedest to keep him out. He'd go to wherever Bobby was about to jump back in and position himself roughly where he was expecting Bobby to land, and just bark at him. Bobby would counter this by running to another spot on the fence-line, but  Bentley would try to block that entry as well. This could go on for an hour or more, and it probably would have been a good idea to get a picture... d'oh! The closest I got was this one...

This is an actual photo of what I just described, unfortunately they were too quick and Bobby was out of frame to the left. Sometimes they run the entire perimeter many times, and other times they just go back and forth along about 50 feet of fence. They'd do this until one of them gave up. It if was Bentley who gave up, Bobby  would just go a few feet down the fence and jump back in, if it was Bobby who gave up, he'd just wait until Bentley came inside, then he jump back in.

Everything was fine, until one day Bobby simply didn't show up after I let him out at around 4:00am to have a pee...

What a coincidence.

Something came up in yesterday's post that a couple of you seemed interested in. It will be a another multi part post, not becasue there's any suspense involved, but there are actually a couple of different stories interwoven. When I went to refresh my memory, I was struck by the timing, it was a year to the day since the story began.

I'm not meaning to be cryptic, in fact I'll cut to the chase...this is Belle's father, and the beagle mentioned in the original post was her mother.

Originally posted 20th Jan 2007...

In other news, it seems like I've got another dog. I almost had two but the other one (a beagle) wouldn't come into the yard and just took off. He looks like he's been on the road for a while and is the skinniest dog I've ever seen, hopefully I'll be able to beef him up a little. He doesn't have a collar so I'll be taking him to the vet's to check for a microchip. More on him later.

I love ICHC

There's a link to this site in my sidebar.

No you can't come in the car!

Now get out of the way and let me open the door!

Even though they are all legally deaf (according to them) and cannot hear me calling them from two feet away, no matter how quiet I try to be when taking the car keys off the hook, and no matter where in the house they are sleeping (because that's what dogs do) this is the scene that always greets me whenever I try to sneak out. Like most dogs, they love the car, but I can't really take them shopping with me for the next few months because it's too hot.

OK, how about his one, "NO, you can't have my sandwich"...

What about a magic click (click on the photo to reveal the surprise)?  Now that Beep is no longer with us, Belle has decided to make use of the cat kennel...

See you Monday (my Monday that is). Sorry for the confusion, I'm not going anywhere. I'll explain everything tomorrow.

A Belle Update

I promised earlier that I would give you a quick Belle update, so in the manner of a business document... 

Overview. Bell is on the mend. She is walking pretty much normally and, after spending several hundred dollars and many hours driving back and forth to the Veterinary Clinic (see picture below), the risk of necrosis is now negligible.

Background: Several weeks ago Bell escaped with Bentley and was caught in a severe thunderstorm. While Bentley made it back, Belle didn't. She had somehow managed to get tangled up in some wire and it was almost four days before she was discovered under a neighbouring farmhouse. One of her rear paws, while not looking too bad, had been severely injured by the wire.

       
Initially the paw didn't appear too bad, and pressure could be applied to it without her reacting at all. However there was significant swelling (Fig A). After waiting several days for the swelling to go down, I began to be concerned that there seemed to be no improvement, so I took her to the vet where she was given a general aesthetic to allow the wound to be cleaned and the damaged tissue to be cut away. The paw was bandaged and she came home that night (Fig B).

         
For the next two weeks I've had to make the 35 mile round trip every other day to hold her down while Vet cuts off the old bandage and inspects the paw, cleaning it when necessary (Fig C), if you look closely you can see the damage caused by the wire as well as where some of the skin was cut away by the Vet. There is additional damage between the toes and on the pads. Once the wounds have been cleaned a new bandage is applied (Fig D).

Present Position: She is walking and running pretty much normally, ironically as I write this, she has escaped once again with Bentley and has been off in search of wabbits for the past two hours. Oh wait, someone is scratching on the door... I'm back..grrrr, she has been swimming and the new $25 bandage that has to stay on until Friday is not only saturated but is caked with mud as well!

I had another picture planned for here, but I might as well use one I just took. In what can only be described as the ultimate irony, after spending the last three years in total drought, we've had torrential rain on and off for the past two weeks, meaning it has been virtually impossible to keep the damn bandage dry!

In case you're wondering what that thing on her foot is, it's a sunglasses' case and it works well for keeping the moisture out when she runs around on the grass, but it does bugger all when she plays in the creek!

Conclusion: Belle is a fuckwit! (I'm not even going to proofread this, I've had enough of that stupid dog).

Free dogs can be expensive.

No Good News (update)

No words... About ten minutes ago the people from the next farm brought Belle back. The reason they didn't call me was because they didn't know she was there. I went there to ask them to keep an eye out for her yesterday.

For all those of you who suggested she might be stuck in a shed, or caught up in something you were right, apparently she was caught up in some wire under their house, but as they have working dogs, Belle was scared and kept quiet so that no-one would find her. Eventually hunger got the better of her and when she heard some humans talking in the yard, she started whimpering and a guest who was there crawled under the house and got her out.

One of her back paws is a bit swollen but she doesn't freak out if I touch it, and she can put some weight on it, so it can't be too bad. If she still won't put her full weight on it by Monday I'll take her to the Vet, but there's nothing stuck in her pad and as I say, she doesn't squirm when I squeeze it lightly.

Phew! Thank you all for you concern. There will be a post about this in a couple for days, but tomorrow I have a rather special Sunday Service that features the guys re-enacting a religious event.