Aussie and one spoiled pup

So, I've finally gotten around to actually writing something! Have only had one day off work since getting home so there's been not enough waking hours to get things done.

We had a great time away, Ben dropped Pepper off to her holiday destination (with a wonderful lady who takes dogs into her home as daycare and holidays) because I had to work up until when we left, I'm glad I didn't have to drop her off, I hate leaving my animals and I would have been an embarrassing, blubbering mess.

We stayed in Sydney with my brother (also called Ben) and his girlfriend, they’ve just gotten a puppy. I was in a state of shock when I heard this, my brother was never an animal person and his girlfriend is scared of dogs. Charlie is a 15week old staffie.

I’m not a fan of staffies but she had heaps of personality and was very sweet, very trainable too, I got her doing sit, down, stay and paw in two days. (they thought I was a ‘dog whisperer’ it was quite funny). They’re doing all the right things, going to puppy class, have brought books on puppies, booked her in for spaying, vaccination etc. But….. I found it very hard as they feel that she is an “outside dog” at night (allowed inside while they are home) and I really didn’t cope with the fact they shut such a small, short coated baby outside with only a small lean-to for shelter and a wee unimpressive bed that was occasionally wet. There was a big storm one night and I couldn’t sleep for worrying about the poor wee pup. I certainly made my feelings known. Numerous times. But there's only so much you can do when its not your dog.

Anyhow, they live right near centennial park which is HUGE and there’s off leash areas so we took her down there for some socialising, she’s very bold, bouncing up to much bigger dogs and playing, it was nice to be round a puppy again.

We went out for fabulous meals, shopped and also walked around the waterfront of Bondi - saw a bat just hanging out in the trees, so cute.

And of course did all the touristy things - Harbour bridge, Opera house etc.
We then flew over to Perth where we caught up with some friends and went down to the Margaret River area, which is famous for wine, generally spending our time drinking and eating our way through the week, it was great! And I found a Pepper statue!

This is the beach where just two days ago a man died after being bitten by a shark - glad we didn't get in the water.And I spotted a Kookaburra on the side of the road so made Ben turn around so I could take pictures, he was very cheeky.

This is the famous Freemantle prison that we toured around.

There was a not so nice part to the trip - in Freemantle we stayed in an apartment that had an extreme sewerage issue - basically toilet flushings were flowing out from the shower - HIDEOUS! The owners had left no contact details and on getting back we asked for a partial refund (fully justified I think!) and they have just been so rude and unapologetic. Grrrr.

Anyhow, we got back last week, it was so good to see Pepper, I didn't buy anything for myself while away but Pepper got a new collar and lead, a tug toy and a ferret ball (brought from the airport on the way home with left over Aussie coins)

And her sore paw is all healed up now which is a relief.

The poor sore paw

It's been a bit of a miserable time in our household. I got the dreaded 'flu last week and while still feeling pretty dreadful worked a weekend of night shifts (in a busy Emergency department weekend nights can be fairly challenging, trying to look after intoxicated vomiting teenagers while you feel like vomiting yourself is hardly my idea of fun!) followed by having wisdom teeth pulled out on Sunday morning after finishing work. So while I've been moping around feeling extremely sorry for myself, Pepper has just been such a good girl, she just lay around all day with me while I was sick and didn't even complain about not going for a walk for a record 3 days in a row (I'm such a mean owner) I thought she'd go crazy and destroy the house but she just hung around like normal, not a hole dug or a dead shoe in sight.

Well, now she's the one who's stopping us getting out for walks. She has had a wee sore on her front left dew claw pad for a week or so and had started licking it incessantly. Vet recommended just to cover and keep an eye on it which we dutifully did, but she is a determined pup - ripping everything off as if it was a game, and it she couldn't rip it off she'd gnaw a hole in it so she could get her tongue at it. So over the weekend it got worse and worse, and a bit pus-y so off to the vet yesterday for antibiotics, cone-of-shame and super enforced bandaging.

Check out our awesome plastic gumboot! (made out of a used IV fluid bag)
We're off to Sydney and Perth in Australia next week for 10days and I've got everything crossed that it heals up by then, although I'll be worrying either way.

It's raining, its pouring.

It's too rainy in Auckland - bring back summer! We're still managing to go for a short walk a day but it's just not satisfying enough for Pepper! So we've been doing lots of training and playing so she doesn't go completely loopy.

These pictures show how ridiculous the weathers been. The rain photo was from one side of the house and the sun photo was from the other side of the house literally 4 seconds later - pouring down in one place and sunny in the other, it makes no sense!

Even a cool new shark stuffie doesn't make up for a lack of zooming around outside.

Last week Pepper learnt to weave through legs and cottoned on pretty quick, she's much better when you get the ball out but it's hard to train her to go fast inside cause we have slippery wooden floors.

She's got her paws crossed hoping that it will stop raining soon!

We had a friend come and stay for the night last week - Sode is a 3 year old lab cross, her owner is my friend Kate who is going away to be a Dr in a war zone for a few months (scary!). Sode's like a small black ball of muscle and was immediately the alpha dog, the second she came in she collected up Peppers toys and balls into a corner and wouldn't let her near them. Pepper is very submissive and just accepted this and carried on wagging her tail and watching Sode systematically destroy all of her rubber chew toys.

And finally, have you ever heard of anything so stupid? I got Peppers new registration tag yesterday and while trying to bend it into shape (they're really stiff) it fell out of my hands and into the heater. Honestly, it could only happen to me. So it was well and truly stuck inside and to make matters worse its the only heater we have and it was freezing! It took me nearly three hours to extract it and I can tell you it was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.

We love the beach!

It's a gorgeous day here today (which is nice after seemingly endless days of rain) so we went out to a beach on the North Shore, just a 15 minute drive from our house The beach is gorgeous and all off leash and also has a great man made walk thing that goes round the bottom of some cliffs to link up two beaches.

There was a bird (a shag I think) that was swimming around not far from shore and ducking under, popping up in random spots. Pepper spotted him before I did and was off swimming after him (I thought she would swim out to sea and never come back!)

Speak!

We've tried to teach Pepper to speak for a while but couldn't find anything that riled her up enough to get her barking, until Ben discovered last week that blowing at her got her going, so now she speaks on cue, although the cue is a little odd - a pursed lip and quiet blowing noise.

There's also a shot of her zipping through her new tunnel - its way too ridiculously long and hardly fits in our yard but she loves it - I'm going to try and chop it in half because two 5 metre tunnels will be much more fun than this one giant one.

And heres a couple more birthday pictures - we had to wait for Ben to come home before she had her cake of course, so thats why we didn't but these pictures in the last post. It's a veal muffin with cream cheese topping, she went nuts for it!

Happy Birthday to Pepper!

Today is Peppers 1st birthday!

Obviously she is highly embarrassed about being made to wear a party hat, and rightly so, she looks ridiculous. Oh the shame.

We went to a shop we have just discovered, Miss Maggies and got some cookies and a liver muffin (we wanted to get a cupcake but they didn't have any today) We found out that they sell Possyum - a possum meat dog roll that we used to use for training treats in Wellington, its really stinky and holds together well when in small pieces so is ideal for training but we hadn't found a place to buy it up here - I'm so happy to find a place that sells it and they're just down the road too.

We went for a walk in Waiatarua Reserve and as I let her play in every muddy puddle/bog/stinking water hole that we came across. She made the most of it too and ended up smelling like a toilet. But she was a happy toilet so that was ok. We also went to the "Big King" for the first time and climbed up a wee hill to look out over Auckland. It was cold but a nice walk and great view plus lots of other dogs to play with.

So my wee funny looking puppy is now a dog, still (almost) as cute though!

Meeting Snoopy, Arrow and Kaha. And some naughty goings on.

Today we were invited to go for a walk at Craigavon park with another blogger friend Helen and her two dogs, Snoopy the rescued pig dog and the ex speedster Arrow the greyhound. Helen's friend Leilei also came with her dog, sibord Kaha. When we arrived Snoopy and Pepper hit it off straight away - the two of them tore around in large circles playing chase, with Pepper displaying her extremely embarrassing high pitched squeals and yelps. All the dogs got on really well, although Kaha did take a little too much of a liking to Pepper towards the end! (this is a common problem for us with male dogs - we think probably because of her issues with her reproductive bits)

Go Kaha!
There was another dog playing too - he was a sibord like Kaha.

Craigavon park has some permanent agility equipment - tunnels, tyres, a wee dog walk, and so we played with the dogs around the equipment.

Snoopy struting her stuff on the dog walk

And Pepper through the tyre.


And out of the tunnel


Snoopy making herself smell delicious!

And I didn't get any pictures of the beautiful Arrow (except for the half one above) so we'll have to meet up again so I can papparazi him too!

We also wanted to show some incriminating evidence. Pepper is normally very mellow and "well-behaved" when it comes to being left at home alone, or in the car or in the yard. The only time she ever seems to do "naughty" things is when I'm working night shift and sleeping during the day - she must get so frustrated that I'm not getting up and playing that she takes to mischief! This is from last weeks efforts. I was woken mid-morning by a pair of extremely muddy paws bopping me on the face (not to mention the linen) and then this is what I discovered - excavation work had begun.

The dirt was flung for miles on either side of the hole. The time before she dug up three out of four fern-y type plants and shredded them to pieces Obviously she hates night shift nearly as much as I do.

You'd think butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Not quite.