I'M BACK

Had a huge break over Christmas and New Year but am ready to get back into the swing of things.

Had good and bad Christmas. Had lovely friends, family and food - the three Fs. It was not stinking hot as it can be and we had fun.

On the down side my cat Cous Cous ate my canary Mr Peabody. My own fault. I left the cage door open by mistake and all I found was one satisfied cat and a few feathers. We were calling her "canary killer" for a few days. He was a lovely little guy.

My horse (the aforementioned Piece of Poop) has now been retrained and going beautifully and will be sold. She has been staying with a horse fanatic I met at a book launch. She was the author of a horsey book and when I emailed her about my Piece of Poop she wanted to meet me and we discussed her future. She is too much horse for me but would be an excellent pony clubber or ARC mount so she is on the market. This also saddened me as the outcome was decided the day after Mr Peabody's demise.

Mind you, we still have two miniature horses, geese, chooks and roosters, dogs and the cat. It is not as if I have any shortage of animals around me is it? But is it enough?

The geese, Bruce and Fanny, have me wrapped around their little webbed toes. They are so gorgeous and they love me you know. They are always excited to see me. They wait for me in the paddock if we happened to be walking in the same direction. These crazy geese have a very interesting habit of greeting our incoming or outgoing vehicles by running along side honking and flapping their wings. Apparently our vehicles leaving or entering the property is cause for celebration in the goose world. Our driveway is about 80 metres long and when we arrived home recently in one of our cars they came down to tell us something really exciting about their day of eating and pooing. They ran and flapped and called out to us with gusto but unfortunately they are not very agile. We had to stop the car suddenly to avoid a head-on with these crazy birds, one managed to veer off to the left but the other collided with a feathery thump on the other side of the car. Car and goose were undamaged but they are a bit more aware of the dangers of playing with traffic.

Every morning when I let Bruce and Fanny out to graze for the day I tell them at least two or three times that they are not coming into the yard as we walk together to the gate. Perhaps, four days out of the seven I mean it. They look at me, they talk to me, they wait patiently for me to open that gate for them. Damn it is hard. The best way is not to make eye contact.

We have a rescue greyhound who must not be fast enough on the track. We fostered her in 2006 and ended up keeping her. My daughter wanted to name her Layla (a lovely name indeed) but I like to give my animals names that I would not name a child. Anyway, having short-term memory loss at the time I could never remember the name I had picked and all I heard was my daughter calling her Layla. She learnt her name in one day and so did I.

This dog has been locked up in an old but comfortable shed at night when we go to bed ever since we adopted her. She has a lovely big bed, a biscuit and water. During the day she is with us in the house or in the yard with the other dog. Layla has developed separation anxiety. I don't know what happened but suddenly it was the worse thing in the world for her to go to bed at night. I don't think I appreciated the extent of her anxiety until I inspected the back of the door that faces into the shed. She had bitten and scratched it like a dog possessed. There is now a rabbit size hole in the bottom of the door. Her cot mattress that we picked up second hand for her to sleep on was ripped to a hundred pieces. One of the pushbike tires was removed from the rim and the tube destroyed. Wow, what a woman!

We decided to let her roam free in the yard at night for a few nights which we do not like doing. She is very well behaved but we did not want her bothering any wildlife and she tends to bark at the fruit bats, the possums, the wind, the imaginary axe-murderers, the foxes, who knows what! We lasted two nights. She wanted to come inside as well. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. She is one very loyal but large dog. We would be tripping over her in the middle of the night because she has to be as close to you as possible and that means your bedside.

We had to work out what to do with her. We decided on tough love. Controversial sure, would it be successful? We had to try. We can be tough you know. We have chased foxes through the paddock in the middle of the night to get our goose back. We chained her to her bed in the shed. I put an old piece of industrial carpet on top of her bed to protect it, we moved the bikes and we gave her bones instead of biscuits to take to bed. I even gave her an old stuffed toy. Does this sound tough enough to you? Man we were bristling with toughness. I would give her cuddles, a gentle talking to, her bone and leave the door open in case there was some claustrophobia happening. She cried, she whaled, she barked and then for good measure she cried again. I visited her once and told her to think good thoughts. This was our night time routine for almost a week. She is one stubborn hound. Eventually she eased off and has since stopped altogether. Told you we were tough. She still would prefer to stay in the house but will go out voluntarily now and I still give her cuddles and a little advice and she is back to the biscuits. Just don't look into their eyes I tell you.