Mighty shitey - our new canine house guest

"I don't bloody well believe it!"

I looked at the steaming pile of mustard-coloured runny dog poo on the carpet. The second Louie had done this morning, and he'd had a walk in between where he relieved himself of a similar squittery load. That made three. Three!

Louie isn't ours. He belongs to my friend V and we're minding him while V and her husband and extended family take themselves off on a cruise for nearly two weeks. I say 'we' but it's mainly me this week as G is away.

"He's a good dog," V said, "He won't poo in the house, he'll go to the door and tell you he wants to go out. Or he'll jump on the bed at night and lick you and ask you to take him out." (I winced at that last bit of news; Ellie has learned to sleep through the night and yawns and stretches herself awake at whatever time we do.)

Yeah, right. Our house, with its new carpet, is starting to resemble a dog toilet. Thank God the carpet is pet proof and stains etc come out with cold water.

Louie is a worry. He's been with us a week and didn't crap at all for the first two days, earning the nickname of No Shit Sherlock. Nerves, we thought. Now we can't bloody stop him, and I wouldn't mind if it were solid turds easily collected with toilet paper. Nope, it's runny. Nerves. Again. Even though he came to us with a bottle of Rescue Remedy to pop on his food to keep him calm.

He did the first of the runny jobs yesterday, in the living room.  I found it at breakfast. It was small enough and in the same sort of place that our toy poodle Ellie sometimes poos if we're out and not home in time. So I didn't know who to blame. Ellie looked guilty (which means nothing, she knows if I see a turd on the carpet I shout a bit in general) but I said nothing to either dog and simply swore under my breath as I cleaned it. When I took both dogs for a stroll yesterday afternoon it was clear that Louie was the one with the squits. The mustard yellow, pungent squits. Great.

This morning's job was clearly Louie's. Our poodle girl couldn't have produced that massive mound and that mustard colour gave it away.

The second of today's indoor turds lay steaming on the floor of our rumpus room, greeting me after I went out this morning for a mere hour. By then Louie had had a walk and cleaned himself out so I thought he was 'safe' in the house. Silly me.

I had a big debate with myself - and the dogs - yesterday about what to do for the evening, aside from take Louie out last thing before bed.

Louie sleeps indoors, you see. He's about the size of a large cocker spaniel, and suffers with separation anxiety if he's locked outside. I tried shutting him in the kitchen during the day as a means of containing him on a floor that would be easy to clean but that lasted five minutes. Even with a doorstop behind the sliding door he'd opened it quick as a flash and joyfully came into my office with a happily waving tail and a look of accomplishment on his face.

I decided in the end I'd leave the door to the balcony open overnight. That way if he got caught short in the wee small hours he could wander out and lift a leg or squat. Every dog we've owned and every visiting dog has peed or worse out there and it's easy to hose off. The whole balcony probably smells beguilingly of eau du chien if you're a dog, so the temptation to add his own smell would encourage Louis to do it there.

With a slight worry about burglars - but thinking the sight of Louie and possibly Ellie out on the balcony barking would put them off - I went to bed and couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned until 1am, with three storms between 9.30 and then, and Louie getting upset at each of them and occasionally racing onto the balcony to bark then coming back inside with wet, dirty paws (sob!! First the shit, now the mud!!!).

So you can imagine my delight when I found the poo in the living room this morning, after leaving the door open for the bloody dog to use.

I hope his bowels settle by tomorrow as he was still doing mustard on his walk after dinner tonight. We have him for another week. All I can do is feed him plain food and keep taking him outside, but oh dear, the nights worry me. I don't want another seven nights of shite. When I stumble to the loo myself barefoot at 3am, eyes mainly closed, I don't want to tread in anything squishy and smelly and probably warm (would cold be better? Probably not.).

Louie now has a new nickname. Bluey. Not just because he's chestnut coloured and we Aussies call redheads Blue to be contrary, but because he has a new last name: Zarzoff.

Dog days

It's winter in Sydney, and what a winter! Bright, sparkling sunny days, warm and delicious in the sun, cold at night so you can snuggle under a duvet without getting too hot.

Because it's still getting dark early, I have moved into my winter routine. I stop work around 3.30, gather our two dogs and take them to an off-leash area five minutes' drive from home. I can work then when it's dark until it's time to cook dinner.

I could walk there, but our older dog Rose the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is twelve now, arthritic and easily tired. She's delighted to go in the car to her favourite spot, but doesn't run around with other dogs any more; she simply stays at my side or toddles at my heels and has the odd trot around.

Ellie our toy poodle is eleven months old and is delirious with excitement when I let her out of the car.

Because the parking lot is usually pretty empty on weekdays I park at the same spot, near the entrance and she's down the path and onto the grass before I've even shut the car door.

My, my, she's fast. Our little racehorse, chasing anything that moves. Pestering pigeons in the park, I paraphrase, after the song Poisoning Pigeons In The Park.

A happy soul, she easily makes friends with dogs of all sizes and ages. She has rumbled with a Briard sheepdog four times her size, and has endless fun with Cavoodles, who are apparently the dog du jour around here.  I know at least five different regular Cavoodles who frequent the park.

It lifts my heart to see her have such fun, to watch her lithe body transform from a black ball of fluff into a lean, mean, galloping machine, tail used as a rudder, ears flying back behind her head.

After the first minute or two she'll gallop back to me, do a circle and around me, and be off again. She's always clocking where I am, and always comes back to me for reassurance, pats, the odd treat.

I love doing this in winter as the days are cool and she can run like fury without getting too hot. There are fewer people there in winter and most of them have dogs; the serious dog people. Unlike summer, when you get picnickers, fisher folk, teenage lovers, sailors and heaps of kids.

Summer is a different story; muggy and hot unless the breeze is blowing from the right direction. The dogs pant and I get sweaty when we go for our walk around the point. I love the winter dog days. The coolth. The warm coat, and perhaps a scarf. And most of all the energy of Ellie.

...Not just for Christmas

I'm sitting here in a lounge chair in the living room, and lying at my feet, her head on her front paws and her eyes (but not ears) closed, is our dog, Rosie. Known as Dog Rose, Rosalinda, Rosalita, Rosalie and other variants of her name.

She's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and unlike most of 'em has managed to get to ten and a bit years without a bad heart murmur. The vet was astonished to listen to Rosie's heart and admit there was a murmur there but barely discernible.

Her arthritis is getting her down, though. She has it in her offside shoulder, and now she's on daily anti-inflammatories for it. The vet recommended fish oil and glucosamine as well, so Rosie's nightly dinner now includes a cocktail of goodies to stop her stiffening up and being in pain.

That aside, she has aged. When I walk her she no longer pulls on the leash but lags behind. From the dog she was two years ago who could keep up a pace of more than six kilometres an hour for up to an hour, I now have to take her for her own slow walk and then guiltily leave her at home while I do my power walk.

There's a golden period in a dog's life for going for walks, I think. It's not when they're very young as they pull like mad and don't always want to come back to you when they're off the leash.

But somewhere around four or five years old they are the best walking companions you'll ever have. They don't pull insanely; they keep up with you and trot at your heels, looking up with a happy grin. At eight they are still happy to chase a ball again and again and again.

That's the experience I've had with the three dogs I've been lucky to share my life with.  But at nine, they start to slow. Rosie's interest in chasing balls dwindled. She'd do it once or twice, then give me the 'can't be arsed' look. These days I don't throw balls for her because I don't want her overworking her arthritic shoulder by galloping flat out and twisting and turning. She can do it - but she'll pay for it later and be in pain.

I'm aware that my lovely companion is, in human terms, in her seventies. She may live to a hundred. When I look at her, sleeping a little noisily, there's more white around her eyes than there was last year.

My previous dogs have made it to 13 and a half. I'm hoping Rose does too, or, health permitting, makes it to 14 or more.

Everyone loves puppies; some people forget that puppies grow to be dogs. Even then, they forget that - with luck - one day that puppy will be an old dog.

Dogs are for life, not just for Christmas, as the saying goes. I treasure my old dog. I love her to bits. I hate it that one day she won't be there any more. She's as dear to me now as she was when she was a puppy straight out of a Disney movie.

She'll need care with her arthritis. She's rather deaf (a Cavalier mystery as a lot of them go deaf for no discernible reason). She's precious beyond belief.

Dogs are from Mars, Cats are from Venus

There are dog people and cat people. And then, there are people who behave just a bit like dogs and cats.

I always joke that I am part cat; I share a cat's liking for my own company, I prefer peace and quiet to parties, elegance and order to chaos, and the opportunity to have a thorough bath/shower every day and feel well-groomed. I have a regrettable sense of schadenfreude that any cat would appreciate, and my night vision isn't bad either. There are times when I don't want to be touched; if I had a tail it would swish with annoyance then. I am a cat person.

That being said, I also own a dog whom I love dearly - I have had both cats and dogs in my home since childhood. But I relate better to cats than dogs when all is said and done.

My husband G on the other hand has something dog-like about him. When I first met him I was reminded of a jaunty terrier, cheerfully sniffing around me. If he had a tail it would wave plumily and happily. Many men are like that; they're like dogs sniffing for a bitch on heat. G is gregarious, and enjoys human company far more than I. He's bigger than I both in height and width and when he walks in the door at the end of the working day the house seems much smaller and less spacious. It's a small place anyway but suddenly, like the cats, I'm having to weave around furniture and G to get from point A to B.

You've all seen that joke Diary of a Cat and Diary of a Dog. The cat's diary tells of plots and plans of escape; it is complex, while for the dog everything except a bath is simply "My favourite thing!"

G reminds me of the dog's diary every mealtime. Even if it's only bacon and eggs for breakfast, or a simple steak and veg for dinner, or even just crackers and cheese for lunch, he responds the same: "Oh Wow!" When I present him with a divine and powerful curry, or a dish that has taken a couple of hours to pull together perfectly, it's still "Oh Wow!" My favourite thing! I have to laugh. (And he eats like a dog too, shovelling food into his gob as quickly as humanly possible!)

Like our dog, G manages to position himself in my path when I'm trying to do things around the house. I do most of the cooking because I truly enjoy it, and it's a creative release at the end of the working day - that or the opportunity to take my frustration out on food with a big, sharp knife! Whichever cupboard I need to open, I can guarantee that G will have moved himself in front of it, arms hanging gormlessly at his sides.  If it's not him, it's our dog. With the dog, I can point to the door and say "Out!" and she'll give me That Dog Look and move to the living room. With G, it's a constant, polite "Excuse me," as I move him from in front of the cupboards time and again, until he gets the message and stands next to the dog! (The cats, meanwhile, have found themselves high perches out of the way.)

G loves me with a dog-like devotion. This is a good thing, as my previous relationships were mostly toxic, with me being the one doing all the loving. He has had very high-maintenance, cloying women in his past and when we first started dating he used to ring me from his home interstate every night. I mean every night. Sweet as it was it could be a bloody nuisance if I was going out with friends; if he couldn't get me on the home phone he'd try the mobile, worried that I'd be annoyed if I didn't hear from him. When he's on business travel he tries to ring every night and I've told him not to when his itinerary is a full one. I am very understanding having had jobs in the past myself which involve quite a bit of business travel and won't get cross or feel abandoned if the phone doesn't ring. Like our dog, I think he suffers a bit of separation anxiety when he's away from me!

Still, I am blessed. I have two beautiful and loving cats (really! they are!), a lovely dog and a great husband. Love my own company and my solitude as I do, I suspect I am better with him in my life than I was before I met him.

So, can you draw a cat or dog parallel with your partner - or yourself?

Housanality

Ok, what's Housanality? Well, people have personality, houses have housanality. OK, I just made that up. But think about it, it works, doesn't it?

This is the context I'm talking about:  In our group of 8 townhouses we find that certain types of people live in certain houses in our complex.

For example, house number 2 attracts noisy people. The tenants before the current lot screamed and argued with each other on a daily basis. We were tempted to call the police once or twice when it threatened to become physically violent but luckily they backed off. Often outside, too, in their courtyard, so they could share the hate with their neighbours. The courtyard is number 2 is a bit of a noise amplifier because of the shape of it, we think. Every shout is magnified.

The current tenants in number 2 are loud, too. Like the previous tenants they are from India or Sri Lanka. It seems many Indian women have LOUD voices. Maybe they have to shout to make themselves heard above city noise in India. I'm not trying to be racist here. But most of our neighbours are Indian or Sri Lankan, and the women have voices which can clear blocked drains. Fact.

Anyway, our neighbours in 2 have a toddler, and they play, at loud volume, a CD of nursery rhymes in English, but with an Indian accent. We can hear them clearly in our own house. These songs become ear worms for me; I get "to marrrket, to marrrket, to buy a fat pig" stuck in my head for minutes at a time. It's worse when the child's mother, who we call Gobbler (more on that soon), sings along. She shouts loudly and tunelessly; the funniest song is Baa Baa Black Sheep, when Gobbler bellows, "YES, sir, YES, sir, thrrrree bags FULL!!!!"

The kid cries and screams a lot as all toddlers do, and then Gobbler gobbles to him. Yes, she could be mistaken for a turkey. She does an amazing turkey imitation, heaven knows why, and I swear that kid is going to grow up believing he's raised by poultry. When she's not gobbling, or singing, she talks to him, either in Hindi or parrotting back his own baby noises at high volume. Needless to say whenever it's not raining all the action takes place in their courtyard, so we hear every gobble whether we want to or not.

Then there is number 5. Number 5 attracts noisy dogs. The owners had two dogs there a few years back before they bought a bigger place and moved out, and their dogs barked and barked and barked and barked and barked. At nothing. When the owners were at work and I was busy working at home I wasn't above turning a hose on the bloody animals to shut them up. Now the place is tenanted and guess what, a noisy dog lives there. He barks and barks and barks, but usually for a reason, ie someone is walking down the street 25 metres away. His bark gets higher in pitch the more excited he gets until he sounds as if he's being strangled. When the maintenance men did the lawns today I thought he was going to choke. Thankfully, unlike the previous dogs, if you go out and say his name gently and tell him to be quiet, he'll look you in the eye and shut up. He's nice. If noisy.

Whoever lives in number 8 is scared of dogs. The previous owners were petrified of our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, who does have a nasty habit of rushing out of the front door and barking at people from a distance. We're trying to get her out of it but she's determined to protect us from our neighbours, all of whom she knows well and likes. On the lead she's fine but off lead she's a wolf. So we try and keep her on the lead when we go out front. But... a few weeks back we'd been out in the car with her and we let her  jump out of the back seat. G went to open the front door of the house thinking she'd follow him but our dog spied the new guy in number 8 and went galloping up to him, barking, tail wagging frantically. Harmless but loud. Poor guy - he's scared of dogs and he ran to his car and jumped onto the bonnet, then the roof. I couldn't believe it! I was mortified. Poor bloke! He's Indian and I've met many Indians around here who are frightened of dogs. I had to grab our dog and apologise profusely. Inside our house G and I collapsed in cruel laughter as jumping on your own car was like something from a movie.

So there are the personality traits of a few of our neighbouring houses. Numbers 3 and 6 attract quiet people; we've seen a couple of families come and go in each of them over seven years and we've never heard a single shout. Numbers 1 and 7 I can't make a comment on, as the people in them have lived there longer than we have; will number 1's future owners have a penchant for white fluffy dogs and twee garden statues? Will number 7's future owners be outgoing and friendly?

Who knows? The local council is likely to rezone our entire street to high density housing, and if developers make us owners an offer we don't want to refuse, our houses, and their housanalities, may be gone forever in a few years, replaced by an apartment block. That's a sad thought as apart from KFC on the corner this is a quiet street, a neighbourly place, a sleepy hollow where houses sit on quarter acre blocks and kids still play cricket in their back gardens. Once land is gone, it's gone. And so is a way of life.

Only 363 days till NEXT Christmas...

So now we're knuckling down to consuming turkey leftovers for the next few days. The cats think it's heaven and so does the dog. We had a good Christmas Day at my mother's house, where Birman Boycat amused himself by removing some of the Christmas tree decorations and batting them around the floor, then to make sure we paid attention to him jumped on the dining table. Luckily we'd finished eating. He doesn't dare jump on the table at home but takes enormous liberties at Mum's house. He simply turns those big blue eyes on her and she melts. Dog played politely with guest dog belonging to our friends and Birman Girlcat said "Bah, Humbug!", ignored everyone and slept through the day.

My ear, nose and throat bug is threatening a return, and I felt less than good yesterday. Scottish husband recommended a whisky cure last night so I had two nips followed by a hot toddy, and while I feel better today I still don't have the energy to go cycling. Which is annoying because it's stopped raining. Yes, we had a wet Christmas rather than a white one, and very grateful we were too in this droughty old land.

Never mind... I have eleventy gazillion new books to read courtesy of family and friends, which I can indulge in while my cough goes away and my ears return to normal. At the moment I'm reading a new bio of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir, and it's riveting. The evidence points towards her well and truly being framed by Henry's cohorts and henchmen, who convince Henry she's been unfaithful and treasonous. With Jane Seymour already in his lustful sights Henry is all too willing to believe it...

Another hot toddy tonight and Penelope or Petunia should be able to have some exercise tomorrow, even if it's only a ride to the shops. Meanwhile, Tudor England beckons.

'Tis the season and all that

Did the last, the very last, of the Christmas shopping today as well as stocking up on so-fresh goodies at the local farmers' market this morning. Not that we'll get much chance to sample them this weekend. We've been deluged with invitations to parties.

Firstly we're off to a BBQ tonight with friends I've known for about 25 years. Sadly our spaniel (below) isn't invited. She used to be when she was a puppy but then she made the awful mistake puppies make when they're a bit nervous with shrieking kids running around them and did a small puddle on their carpet. I was mortified but heck, the two kids in the house had done a lot more damage than that over the years. Anyway, poor pooch, she's on their blacklist even five years later. Even though the party is out in their backyard and there'll be other dogs there. Makes me feel a bit unwelcome as all our other friends like our dog and she certainly doesn't pee indoors any more. I guess we're a bit different as we treat our animals as family members rather than pets whose place is firmly outdoors whatever the climate and weather, which is how these particular friends view their two dogs. Our spoiled lassie sleeps on her own bed in our bedroom. Our cats sleep wherever they want - usually on our bed :-).

And then there's the shoe thing. You have to take your shoes off at their door. Makes it bloody cold in winter when you visit them, and in summer I'm confronted with bare feet en masse, and I'm not a foot person. I guess I haven't seen too much of these old friends in the last few years for these two reasons; I feel a bit uncomfortable in their house. I could understand the shoe rule if they had a posh marble floor or valuable carpets, but it's a suburban house much like ours and has polished floorboards and rugs stained with fruit juice and other stuff the kids spill.

Tomorrow we have a lunch with friends of t'other half, who have become my friends too. Dog welcome. Another BBQ. Far more relaxed than tonight's I'm thinking! These two are a bit bohemian,which suits me fine.

And tomorrow night it's another friend's birthday party. Surprise - it's a BBQ. Dog welcome as their dog enjoys the company.

By then I'll be BBQd out! We grabbed low alcohol beer and wine this morning to take along to these parties to ensure we don't end up with the hangovers from Hell come Monday. I'm on holidays from Monday so am planning plenty of cycling for next week - hurrah! The weather is forecast to be Just Perfect for most of the week.

And finally... a cheerful Christmas wish to everyone from my Birman boy cat... aka Santa Claws in this case. Corny I know - we used this pic for our own Christmas cards to family and friends this year as he has such a cheeky expression.