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by Cody Jones
Hiya mates, how 're they hanging? (horrible Australian greeting with the best possible intentions!!)
Well, the boss has been terribly crook with the flu and I've had to keep this place in order all on my lonesome--what a responsibility. Penny, you've just gotta believe me when I tell you I just haven't had a minute to myself--I've been Pyr-fectly flat out, so to speak. So I'm dying to have a wongie (aboriginal for a chat).
I think I might condense the life history a touch here so everyone doesn't "drop off the perch" (die) with boredom. After my puppy pool episode I decided I was never going to get a berth in the Olympic Games 200m butterfly. It might well have looked like that's what I was doing at the time, but it felt a lot more like I was drowning. I just lost all interest in swimming there and then and it's only now, nearly three years later, that I have decided it's safe to venture back in the water--just to wet the tootsies mind you, nothing too daring. Now don't get me wrong. I still enjoyed going to the beach with Mum and the racehorses, but I often disgraced myself by disappearing just at the wrong time (for her) and becoming selectively deaf once I was out of sight. I was Pyr-tty popular. I would vanish about when I knew that the truck was nearly loaded with the eight horses. I'd figure that even though we had been there for two hours already that I had better just check out what was over that one sandhill I hadn't quite got around to yet. I could always time it just right for maximum effect--quite a legend in my own lunchbox!! We don't have the nags anymore but we still go down the beach a lot. Although it is my only time off the dreaded lead, Mum can't understand why at three years of age I still just have to do my own thing.
After the horses went last April the horse truck and the Range Rover were sold, which seriously affected my mobility. Mum replaced these two with the Merc and I am not allowed in that. Party pooper--what's the matter with a bit of drool on the windows and the odd white hair here and there? My mode of transport became one of Dad's vetmobiles which I had to share with the gromit Whitney (the black poodle). That little crawler managed to go for a ride every day with Dad whilst Mum and I had to stay at home. We went for walks a lot but it was better at the beach 'cause I can run free. It's often really windy so I just simply can't quite hear what Mum is yelling at me, whilst gesticulating wildly--sounded like numb, dumb, yum. Couldn't possibly be come--could it? Each evening Whitney always told me of her day's adventures, trying to make me feel like a second class citizen. I was so sad because I couldn't go with them very often, mainly due to my hearing disability. My Mum, who just knows what I am feeling most of the time and really loves me, did a terrific thing and bought me my very own car--so who's a second class citizen now then, Miss Whitney smarty pants?? If you have the ROLO advert on TV over there, the one with the elephant, you'll know just how I felt. Naughty aren't I? Now I sleep in the back of my Mini Moke (beach buggy) all day in case I miss out on a ride (click here for photos). We go to the beach every day almost, and to dog classes on Sunday mornings and Monday evenings. I try really hard to teach Mum things at classes but she's soooo dumb. I even get to go into town now and help with the shopping. I'm glad to say that I haven't lost any of my Pyr-appeal, as my adoring fans still flock to see me as they did when I was a little star.
I have yet another responsibility to cope with now. I have adopted a little black kid. Dad brought him home from the vet clinic. I was terrified of him at first--honestly, I had never seen anything that small that was actually alive--but worse: it wasn't scared of me. It kept following me and trying to touch me. I just kept running away. It dragged itself around the house after me. I kept moving, but it never gave up. It just wore me down eventually and I surrendered, but not unconditionally, of course. The little rat has to share his food with me. In return I act as electric blanket, personal washer and mincer. The basis of a great symbiotic relationship, don't you think? His name is Junior Landy (click here for photos). No one knows how old he is. He was taken to the vet clinic by his family with a badly broken thigh when he only barely had his eyes open. The first time I met him he was bandaged up in a three inch wide white bandage and all that protruded was a head and two front legs at one end and a tail at the other. Legend has it that he should have died from shock, because his leg was badly broken and he was not even old enough to feed himself. He lived on yogurt for a while. He didn't even know how to wash himself--still doesn't do it that well, so either Fuzzy (another of my family--a Garfield double, big, fat, self-opinionated Persian chinchilla furball it is--thinks she's the Queen of Sheba.) or I have to do it. After ten days at the clinic, Junior would pull himself up to the top of the cage with his front paws and just hang there yowling until someone picked him up. He had to have a bath and hairdry each day 'cause he would get into the bowl to eat. He was too little to stand on the outside and reach in. Consequently he would wear as much as he ate, but didn't know how to wash. His family abandoned him--they just never came back. Hope they tread in a really big Pyr-a-poop. But he was one of the very rare few who had wheedled his way into Alan's affections with his fighting spirit, so he was spared from the green dream and cat heaven (which comes straight after the green dream) and came to live with me and my family. Mum's friend Barbara, a school teacher who had just come back from a trip 'up north' with her husband Pete, christened the kitten Junior Landy after a black kid they met at an aboriginal mission school in Katherine.
Well, I'm now teaching Junior the finer points of riding in the Moke. Actually the picture of me where I look really pleased with myself is when I was telling Junior how the inimitable Ms Whitney dared to sneak a ride in my new Moke to the beach and how I fixed her little red wagon. I am tied in when we go driving so I don't get all carried away with myself and jump out, but Whittey Whitless was loose. How did she get in MY Moke, without an official invitation from Moi? Well, she was larking about standing on the side of the Moke when we went over a little bump, doing about 70 kph, so I just helped her to lean forward a bit further with a discreet hip and shoulder movement that I have perfected over the years and out she went, rolled straight into the grass on the verge. Mum wasn't very happy with me and I suppose in hindsight it was pretty mean. Whit might have been squashed (snigger). Oops, I didn't mean it, really. Whitney never had a mark on her and never missed a beat, but now IT gets to sit in the front seat so I can't do anything evil to her. Oh well, I just hold her head under at the beach then roll her in the sand. Does she look like a gromit then or what??
Gotta go soon. My paws are getting RSI and Junior keeps biting my tail and climbing up my leg--the joys of parenthood! What is this world coming to?
By the way, my best cobber Kelly came to stay with me for the weekend and brought her Mum with her. Kelly is the German Shepherd who belongs to the girl who worked for Mum with the horses. I grew up with Kelly and she lived here with us until last April when she moved with her Mum closer to Perth. I really missed her when she first went. It's OK now--but, geez, it was good to see her again. We ran and played down the beach for hours. I took her out in the Moke and we had a noongar (big bone) each with our dinner. I'm really tired today. I think it's Mondayitis and it's only an hour and a half to dog classes. So I really must catch a nap.
Next time I write I will tell you all about the new home Mum and Dad are building for me and the rest of the family. The family includes black cat Barbara. (Yes, you guessed it. She came from Mum's friend Barbara's as a kitten ten years ago.) She's almost a living fossil. You don't cross Black Barbara because she's the boss around these parts. She beats up anything that comes and disturbs her. Midnight belongs to Dad. He was found on the Bunbury jetty as a kitten about seven years ago. He and Barbara have power struggles, but he never wins and he is twice her size. Fuzzy you can read about on Dad's vet page, big, fat, spoilt, lazy thing. Mum loves her almost as much as me--it's horrible. Kelly and her friend Boots the cat (pictured with me in the last issue) and her Mum Natalie are sort of extended family as they lived with Mum for eight years and still visit often. We also have two clinic cats, Casper and Asia, who live in town and were also jetty rescued kittens.
There was a big feral cat problem several years ago at the unused Bunbury Timber Jetty. People just used to dump cats there to fend for themselves. My Dad is now on the "save the jetty" committee. The cats were all trapped by a local woman and Dad sterilized them for free. The woman fed all the older cats and caught the kittens, which were found homes and sterilized. Now there is no longer a feral cat problem, as the old ones have died of old age without breeding anymore and the kittens were found homes. Great, but why can't people be responsible pet owners in the first place instead of dumping animals and letting them suffer? I hate that, don't you? Well, the jetty is now famous. It is being renovated. I think it is a kilometer and a half long and of great regional historic significance. Received a grant of AUD $1M to help with restoration and fund raising has provided a similar amount. Dad's rapt in it.
OK. That's it for now.