Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Milly the pup meets her new family

We took delivery of our new golden cocker spaniel pup Milly late yesterday afternoon. We had to make a 45 minute journey to Wungong to collect her, and hand over the balance of our cash to the breeder.

We'd taken a small cat-transporting cage to bring Milly home. Lucky we lined it with newspaper because about five minutes after we hit the road she decided she couldn't wait any longer. We had to pull over and tidy things up. Yuk!

We'd left all the kids at home, so on the way back my wife took several phone calls on the mobile wanting to know our progress.

The first thing Milly had when she came home was a wash in the bathroom basin. One can only do so much on the open road with newspaper, even with a picture of the federal environment minister Peter Garrett on it.

By the time my wife finished the cleanup everyone had a dreamy look on their faces. Our Milly was going to be lucky if she wasn't loved to death on her first day at home. She is certainly the cutest pup I've ever seen for a long time.

Everyone got to introduce themselves to her by allowing her to smell their feet, even our plumber sons got in on the act when they turned up from work. Milly might be cute, but she's a dog at heart, and that means the smellier things are the better. Actually I jest a bit. Thankfully no one in the family has really smelly feet that any human would notice

It was still a very hot afternoon at 7pm as daylight saving continued to grind away at our body clocks. Milly was fitting in very well with everything, so I suggested we should gently try her out in the swimming pool, with of course someone in the water to help her if needed. There was no shortage of volunteers.

Golden cocker spaniels might be cute, but they were originally bred to be gun dogs. Gun dogs which fearlessly plunge into lakes and streams to retrieve ducks brought down by bloodthirsty shooters. Our eight week old Milly was a natural in the water, not the slightest sign of panic as she paddled about. She went in three times before I decided that was enough for the day.

She was obviously much refreshed. We'll try to let her have a swim every day through the rest of summer. She's already answering to her name too.

Naturally I took a few photos yesterday to share online:

One of the first things she did after she was cleaned up was to inspect her sleeping quarters. These had already been inspected by our three cats and judged to be perfect. Milly has two formal places to sleep, a bean bag and a cane cat-basket. However we know from previous experience that dogs are very good at sleeping just about anywhere, especially floors.

She obliged me by posing for a portrait in the cane cat-basket. She'll soon be too big for it, which is good news for the cats.

She introduced herself to the cats. They've all been pretty calm about the whole business. I've chosen a picture of her in her first intimate moment with our nearly five kilo tabby, Mad Max. He's the boss of the animal kingdom in this house. He doesn't mind touching noses with well mannered dogs, but you can see from the next picture that he's a bit shy of a wet puppy-tongue slurp on the first date.

The final photo is of our new puppy sleeping on her bean bag last night. "Ohhhhh, isn't she cute?" At first we all tip-toed about, but soon realised that was unnecessary. It's a bit like what we discovered with raising our other nine children. Reasonably noisy households are no impairment for babies when it comes to them snoozing, especially after a big day like yesterday was for Milly.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

When there are multiple image links in my essays, it might be easier to simply go direct to the cache at my Panoramio website. All the images there can be enlarged even more by clicking them.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!