Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Feeding my dog; and my wife

We had a scare with our pup Milly late yesterday. She got hold of a tube of green watercolour paint which one of the kids had left on the floor. She'd punctured the tube a few times with her teeth. I got an urgent call from the kitchen to help rinse her mouth out with water. Milly didn't like that process. She still had a slightly green tongue by the time we had finished, but she doesn't seem to have suffered any ill effects.

She's a terrific pup even though she still has the occasional toilet 'accident' in the house. We deal with those okay. That's one of the simple facts of having a new puppy. She'll eventually get the hang of things.

Milly is an omnivore. She likes, carrot, apple, banana, lettuce, cheese, cus-cus, rice, raw chicken necks, canned cat food, canned pup food, stale bread, cat kibbles and cornflakes. My wife told be she'd read that pups are not supposed to have egg yolks or grapes. But she's happily eaten them too, before I was told she couldn't. I need to verify why they shouldn't be eaten. I know chocolate and onions are bad for all dogs - bad like in death.

Milly's becoming the vacuum cleaner of the house as far as food is concerned. About the only thing she's not fond of is dog biscuits. You know the type, the ones which are shaped like a bone. I just checked the brand - its Purina. Any dog which could read the blurb on the packet would be convinced they are vital for a happy, healthy life, but they get a thumbs down for from Milly. Maybe it's because they have a disgusting looking pink colour. I wouldn't eat them.

My number four son and his teacher companion have a female golden cocker spaniel too - a cousin of Milly's called Bisharn. She's about eight months old and comes to visit us every couple of weeks. She's definitely not an omnivore. They've raised her to be a fusspot. I've heard they cook very special meals for her and they eat the leftovers . Now she refuses anything less than four star quality. They also let her sleep on the settee, something she'd like to do here on her visits. We who are older and wiser insist that even prima donna dogs entering this house must stay at floor level.

I took a photo of Bisharn during her last visit. We'd been asked to babysit her for a few hours. My son loved the photo, but his companion implied that her sister took better ones. That's too bad because I was intending to get a framed print done for them. Anyway I've put the rejected picture in the 'Dog and cat' folder at my Picasa website. I still reckon it's a terrific picture, even though the mutt is a bit haughty.

In the same folder there are a couple of pictures I took yesterday afternoon of our Milly. One is of her having a swim in our small backyard pool. What a champ. She's swimming to the shallow end and has learned exactly where she should climb out unassisted. We are very aware of the danger from the pool. We have a pool cover which must be in place whenever the pool is not in use, and because the pup can still walk through the bars of the pool fence, she's not yet allowed in our back garden without supervision. Soon she'll be too large to fit through the fence and we can all relax a bit more. Meanwhile she gets to practice her swimming, usually several times every day. I've put up a second picture of Milly I took yesterday at one of her favourite stations in the house - the cool tiled floor in front of the fridge.

I've also created another folder on the Picasa site simply tiled 'What we eat.' The first picture is a meal I prepared for my wife last night after the ingrates had been fed and packed off to watch TV.

Last night I fed my wife steak with a selection of fried chips, tempera vegetables, (broccoli, mushrooms, celery and boc choi leaves) plus some tempera Shark Bay prawns; all washed down with the usual bottle of cheap, but for us, quite acceptable French bubbly. (Cheap in this case is still less than $5 and we peasants don't know any better.) The table setting was on the back verandah of our house, beneath a canopy of grape vines which are still loaded with grapes. One of our wannabe panthers is expecting the shell tips from the prawn tails. Oh, and that's another thing Milly the omnivore eats. What a champ.

Now I was just about to post this edtion when my wife brought in something she'd just confiscated from Milly as she was ratting about in the back garden. I've put a pic of it on Picasa too. Milly looks cute, but she is just a dog at heart.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times 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!