

### A tail of our doggies  
By John Lee

Copyright © 2012 by John Lee

Smashwords Edition  
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### A TAIL OF OUR DOGGIES

Grab a cup of tea, sip a glass of wine, or just sit back and relax.

I invite you to enjoy a true story about our canine friends:  
sometimes funny, often unbelievable, at other times downright ridiculous.

Join the Lee family in their quest to become bankrupt.  
Is it wrong to name a dog "Direct Debit"?  
Can a dog be charged with rape?  
Would you like to learn an amazing way to cure a Tapeworm?

If so read on . . .  
My story starts with the tale of two Great Danes,  
Firstly Charlie (the black Great Dane rapist),  
followed by Nero, the gentle (but somewhat clumsy) giant.  
I then go on to write about other pet dogs we have owned over the years.  
Also included are a few lines about the arch enemy, Spider the cat.  
Is it possible for a cat to do a burn out on the Mother-in-Law's head?  
I know not if the madness and mayhem is peculiar to my family,  
But I am sure that fellow pet owners will get a good laugh at our expense.  
Please read and enjoy

John Lee

Special thanks to

The Lee family – Thank you, for being you, and for sharing the love of our four legged friends

Helen Townes – Your tireless assistance is greatly appreciated, yet, amazingly, we are still to meet.

### Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 Charlie

Chapter 2 Nero

Chapter 3 Duck

Chapter 4 Judy and Snowy

Chapter 5 Roxanne

Chapter 6 Casey Lee

Chapter 7 Spider Lee

Chapter 8 Bee Lee

Chapter 9 Rusty

Chapter 10 Xena

Chapter 11 Bubble (Miss Annie Bubble Lee)

Prologue

The following Tale is a true story; it begins about two Great Danes.

The first part of the story is about a Black Great Dane, known as Charlie.

(This part of the story was penned with great contempt and loathing).

The second part of the story is about a completely different Great Dane called Nero.

(This part was typed with great love and affection).

If you were to describe chalk and cheese, then these two dogs would make a great example.

These dogs were completely different in every way imaginable.

It's important the reader realizes that this is a true story (or should I say true stories?) for even my warped imagination could not make up such a disastrous tale.

I will digress a little once the story has been told, and include some of our other pet dogs over the years.

* Please note some of the names mentioned in these stories have been slightly altered for reasons that will become clear. Others, such as my wife and I, will be named, as will my dearly beloved and departed parents.

Grab yourself a cuppa or a glass of wine,

Sit back, relax, and have a giggle.

Mans best friend,

Unconditional love,

Always happy to see you,

Be you gone for a moment, or even a week,

The greetings always the same,

Uncontrollable heartfelt happiness,

The love starts from the tail,

And works its way forward

Until it encompasses the entire body –

Snuffles and snorts,

And sometimes even yelps.

Imagine if family and friends,

Wore their emotions on their sleeves,

What a wonderful world it would be,

(Perhaps we could leave out the bottom sniffing part though).

CHAPTER 1 – CHARLIE

### Where to begin my tale?

Perhaps I could start by introducing myself: Hi my name's John, at the time of this story I was probably aged around 21, I was and still am married to my lovely wife Lyn, and it has been 34 years since this story first unfolded.

My wife and I were not long married, and we had just moved into a little unit in Lalor a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. However at the time we met Charlie we were minding my wife's parents house whilst they were away

We were considering getting a dog, on reflection perhaps not the smartest of ideas at the time, and had we had a little insight into the future, I'm sure we would have had second thoughts. But Lynnie and I are impulsive people, and we tend to have a great knack of learning the hard way.

We discussed what sort of a dog we would like; I personally have always liked Border Collies, the black and white type. Lynnie had other ideas, namely along the lines of a Great Dane. Good friends of ours, Jack and Anne, had a Great Dane, and their dog was one of those lovely placid, massive fawn coloured dogs, his name was Caesar, and he was possessed of a lovely nature, very loving, relaxed, and NORMAL.

These so called friends talked us into getting a Dane.

At this point in my life I worked as an Orderly at the Austin Hospital, I worked mostly nights and afternoons in the Casualty Department.

I had just finished night shift this particular day, and I was just off to bed for some long lost sleep. Just as I settled down my wife Lyn popped in and said "just before you go to sleep darls, I've found this ad in the paper, Great Dane Free to good home, if I like it, can we get it?" All I wanted was sleep, so without much thought to the subject, I said "fine".

Now people should not ask such questions when one is tired, they should wait till you're fully awake, perhaps with a cup of coffee, and a clear head.

So with that final word "fine" I drifted off to sleep.

My wife Lynnie set off on her adventure to pick up Charlie, I say adventure because Lyn's sense of direction is not the greatest, and because Charlie was located in the suburb of Springvale, which is a good 30 kilometres away. In all honesty, (I didn't really expect to see Lyn again.)

### I meet Charlie

I had slept most of the day, and was just starting to wake from my coma. The bedroom door opened and Lyn entered with "THE THING". I was lying flat on my back with my eyes closed. I thought I heard the words, "Johnny say hello to Charlie".

I suppose most people have heard the saying that when a person has a near death experience, their entire life passes before them – I found this to be true.

Charlie launched onto the bed landing with both front paws in my nether region. My crown jewels did as my family had done 40 years ago – they emigrated – except whereas my family sailed south across the ocean to Australia, my Crown Jewels headed due north up around my neck region.

I sat bolt upright, all the air expelled from my lungs, and I didn't draw a breath for ten minutes. There, right in my face, was the muzzle of a Black Panther, huge, hideous, and blocking out the sun. He had the breath of a camel's armpit, and this fetid smell he inserted into my nostrils, a breath that would not have been out of place in a septic tank.

Needless to say, Charlie and I had not gotten off on the right foot.

After what seemed an eternity, I managed to draw a small intake of air into my lungs, and with this, I started to swear and blaspheme in a very high voice.

I must mention at this point that my wife Lyn, and her entire family, have a very strange sense of humour. I say this because the more one hurts oneself, the more they laugh. Digressing for just one moment I will give you a quick example.

One day myself, Lyn, Lyn's sister and my mother in law, were standing in the sunroom. It was pouring rain outside, and Lyn's father decided to dash out to close the garage door. The door was one of those heavy metal cantilever types. As we watched, pop pulled down on a leather strap, the garage door came down fast, right in the middle of his head, and, to add insult to injury, water cascaded down all over him. It was a very heavy blow, and Pop was truly staggered, he was visibly wobbling.

The reaction at our end was warped to say the least, all three women in fits of laughter. Now I tried not to laugh, but laughter is infectious and reluctantly I joined them, rolling around on the floor. To ask an injured person if they are okay, when you are laughing your tits off, is not a good thing. It seems very insincere to say the least, and needless to say pop was not impressed.

Now back to Charlie and the laughing policeman I call my wife. As my vision returned to normal focus, I looked at this thing my wife had brought into our lives.

He was not a pretty dog, jet black, 8 foot tall, and as wide as a small car.

Okay I am exaggerating a little, but he was huge, and butt ugly. He had a massive square head, he was bull-chested, and standing on all fours he was taller than my waistline. I am 5 foot ten in the old scale, so this may give you an idea of the bulk of this thing.

It was not really my idea of an ideal first meeting. I was not kindly disposed to Charlie, and had I had an inkling of what lay ahead, I would personally have shot him. (Unfortunately me not owning a gun, stabbing would have had to suffice.)

My first meeting with Charlie

When I met Charlie for the first time, he landed with both front paws on my crown jewels, and like my parents before me, who emigrated South across the seas to Australia, my crown jewels migrated due North around my neck region, not the best of first meetings

Charlie was not a young dog; he was perhaps four years old, in his prime so to speak. Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to have a strange look on his face when looking at my wife.

No, it couldn't be, I'm getting carried away . . .

• • •

Let the games begin

Lyn and I were staying at her parents place whilst they were away on holidays, a lovely home, everything in its place, neat tidy, lots of antique-y type things. Things like a Queen Anne bookshelf. I mention this bookshelf in particular, and we shall come back to that later.

The rest of the day proceeded without incident, Charlie spent most of the day with Lyn with that strange look on his face, Charlie and I keeping our distance.

About 7 pm that first night, we had visitors, good close friends (well, they used to be), but all that was about to change.

Aleesh was a lovely woman, hour-glass figure, petite, blonde, and tiny. Her husband Kelvin was of similar build minus the hour glass figure. We welcomed them in at the front door, in through the foyer, one step into the lounge room,

(Then it began)

Charlie launched himself at Aleesh, standing on his back legs, and towering over the lot of us, he wrapped his front paws around Aleesh's shoulders, grasping her in a Great Dane version of a bear hug. He then proceeded to 'do his thing', and try as we may we couldn't stop him. Fortunately for Aleesh she was wearing jeans, and a dogastrophy was averted.

Kelvin meanwhile was helpless with laughter, and literally rolling around on the floor, but try as Lyn and I may, we couldn't get Charlie to let go, or stop.

Aleesh was in shock, blonde hair dishevelled, face flushed; Charlie, satisfied and sated, released his grip, and stood there like he wanted a cigarette. We were all dazed from what we had just witnessed, and just when we thought things couldn't get worse, they did.

Charlie then strolled in a nonchalant fashion over to the Queen Anne bookshelf. He then cocked his leg and proceeded to empty the equivalent of Port Phillip Bay all over the shelves and books.

I tried in vain to drag him away, but he was immovable, and the place was awash.

Aleesh and Kelvin left shortly thereafter and Aleesh assured us she would not return whilst we still had the four legged rapist in our care.

Lynnie took Charlie out the back and locked the door, whilst I tried to mop up the small lake Charlie had provided for us. I was in two minds: should I keep mopping? Or just buy a couple of ducks? We took all the books and pegged them out on the washing line, and dried off the bookshelf as best we could.

Needless to say, days later, the tarnish came off the bookshelf, due to the acid in Charlie's pee; but I did a repair of sorts using brown boot polish.

We never did tell Lyn's parents about this, and I must say, the books took on a yellowy sort of antique look. Lyn's mum would pass this area with her nose crinkled up, but never really found out what the peculiar odour was.

Could things get worse? Apparently yes.

• • •

Charlie meets my mum and dad

My parents were very funny people, born and bred in the North of England; they possessed that typical English humour. My mum, Annie, was a tiny person, not a lot taller than 4 feet in her stocking feet, yet if you mentioned her height she would always add an extra half inch. My father Andy wasn't a great deal taller, he had little bowed legs, and I swear if they were straight he would have been six inches taller. They have both since departed this earth and their warmth and humour is sorely missed. I feel I needed to describe them, firstly because I miss them both, and secondly because even now I don't know why we visited Charlie on them.

Picture the scene, my mum and dad lived in a new rental property in a suburb called Thomastown. As you entered via the front door, the lounge room was to the left, and accessed via a large double door archway. As you entered their lounge, they had a lounge suite with its back to the doorway, and past the lounge in the left hand corner was a colour television. Both my mum and my dad were sitting with their backs to the door watching television. Lying in front of the TV was my parents dog, a lovely placid sandy-coloured Kelpie cross, called Duck; she was minding her own business and unaware of the mayhem that was about to ensue.

Lynnie and I let ourselves in, I had Charlie on a short but strong chain lead that had a leather grasp handle.

Charlie slightly preceded me into the hallway, and due to his great height he spotted Duck beyond the lounge suite. Without warning he launched himself into the air, ripping the lead from my hand, he sailed over the lounge suite like the black eagle of death, and virtually landed on poor Duck. Charlie tried to rape her, but Duck was quick, and with a terrified yelp, she took off outside.

As Charlie came around in hot pursuit I grabbed the chain, he then proceeded to drag me along, Lynnie grabbed me round the waist and then we both got dragged round and round the house.

Poor Duck raced back inside, and I can't remember in the madness of the moment who had the foresight to lock Duck in one of the bedrooms, and with this things calmed down momentarily.

My fathers words I cannot mention here, but they went along the lines of "what the f#*k is that thing you've brought here?" I couldn't answer due to massive amounts of breathlessness. As if this wasn't enough Charlie spotted me little ol' mum and Charlie did what he does best: he raped her. It was horrific; we couldn't stop him, and God forbid, had she been six inches shorter, he would have had her eyes out.

I remember years later, when we reminisced about this incident, my little mum's way of describing what happened, "Eeee 'eck, that big black bugger did it to me, and I couldn't get away like". My parents' dog Duck, barked with a stutter for years after this incident.

Charlie's got me mum.

The trip to mum and dad's was a disaster Charlie's got me mum and we couldn't stop him. I remember thinking "we have to get him off her before he has her eyes out".

• • •

Charlie meets Caesar

Lyn and I were in shock, we had a mental massive rapist in our care, in the form of a Great Dane, and without too much discussion we decided he had to go back to his original owner urgently. Before setting off however, I hesitated, and then I rang my good friends, Jack and Ann, and told them of our dilemma.

I was expecting a little sympathy from Jack, but all I got was "you're not being firm enough with the dog". I tried to explain the situation to Jack, but he insisted we bring Charlie round to his place.

Now Jack was a big bloke, a carpet-layer by trade, strong as an ox and broad across the shoulders, but I knew even he couldn't stop Charlie once his ardour was aroused. We arrived at Jack and Anne's place around 6 pm that night. I must admit I let out a bit of an insane giggle as I handed Jack the lead. I warned him in no uncertain terms that Caesar would be brutally raped, but Jack would have none of it.

We entered Jack's place, or the crime scene as it was later known, and we passed through to the back door, and as Jack opened the door Charlie spotted Caesar.

Jack was dragged across the garden on his face, and needless to say Caesar was raped.

We gave Charlie a cigarette, and then at Jack's insistence we headed towards Springvale at a rapid rate of knots.

Poor Caesar was bug-eyed after this incident, and always tended to look over his shoulder as he walked.

• • •

Charlie goes home

The night we took Charlie back I was supposed to be on duty at work, but we couldn't keep this dog a minute longer. Springvale was a fair drive from my place, and we headed off with Lynnie driving.

By the time we reached Springvale it had become dark, but we were desperate to get Charlie home. He sat in the back of the car like a large black version of Jekyll and Hyde, glancing out of the windows for prospective victims, male or female, man or beast, it mattered not. Nothing could go wrong now, or so I thought.

Lynnie took a wrong turn, and we were travelling at a rapid rate of knots, both in a bit of a panic, truth be told. At the last minute I cried out to Lyn. "It's a dead end". She slammed on the brakes, and Charlie in a last parting gift to me flew from the back seat into the back of my head, I then launched myself into the dashboard with my forehead. I cannot repeat the expletives that I used here, but I was almost crying by the time we found where Lyn had first picked up this maniac.

We bounded out of the car and stormed up the pathway. The original owner of Charlie met us halfway down the garden; we were greeted with "Oh! Charlie's back, that's the third time this week I've given him away". She finished her sentence with, "he's the most randy dog in Springvale you know".

I was horrified; I said "you mean to say, you have inflicted this dog on others?"

She said "Ooh! Yes, but I think I will have to have him put down". In my mind I was thinking along the lines of pass me the needle.

Just to top the episode off, the lady said "you're lucky you've caught me; I was just leaving for three weeks holiday". Lynnie and I ran off, we even left Charlie's smokes behind.

CHAPTER 2 – NERO

I meet Nero

My first meeting with Nero, he sat looking rather pathetic beneath the Budgie cages. I felt more in danger of being savaged by the the budgies than by Nero.

It was my turn! Ah yes, I would get to choose our new family pet. I would look for a Great Dane again, this time preferably fawn in colour, and first I would check to make sure there were no bowling balls hanging off the back end.

I'm pretty sure it was my good mate Jack who put me onto Nero; he told me he had spotted a nice looking Great Dane in a pet shop, in a suburb called Murrumbeena. I set off by myself to check out this dog, I finally found the pet shop, and sure enough, there he was, sitting looking rather frightened, under the budgie cages.

He looked terrified; I felt I had more chance of being savaged by a budgie than the dog. I asked the owner about him, and he gave me a bit of a story, true or not we will never know.

Nero had the last couple of joints of his tail missing, and when I asked about this, the pet shop owner told me Nero was from a circus, and had had the end of his tail bitten off by a Lion! What could I say? It was so far-fetched, and my imagination was so out there, that I believed him; well I mean it really did made a good talking point.

I also noticed if I approached Nero he would cower and tremble, not a good sign, but yet again the pet shop owner told me Nero was afraid of men, because he had been ill treated. Maybe I should have walked away, but Lyn and I are the same in this regard: we are suckers for a sob story.

The asking price for Nero was $150, not bad really; he was approximately two years old, and very very tall. The owner slipped a collar and leash onto the dog and led him out to my car. We placed him in the back seat, where I did a quick check to make sure he wasn't hiding his crown jewels, well, I mean, no way could we risk another Charlie. After reassuring myself I set off for home.

The car I was driving was an old HR Holden; it had bench seats front and back.

As I looked in the rear view mirror, I noticed Nero pressed hard back against the seat, as far away from me as he could possibly get. I spoke to him in a quiet reassuring voice, and then I made a huge mistake, I tried to reach back and give him a pat. How my back window stayed

in place, I will never know, he threw himself backwards, and seemed to cram himself into the parcel shelf, not a bad effort for such a big dog.

I made a mental note, go slowly with this dog, he is terrified. The rest of the trip was uneventful, except for the shaking; I didn't know if this was from the dog or from my car.

• • •

Lynnie meets Nero

Once I arrived home, well when I say home, we were still staying at Lyn's mum's place, I went in and told Lynnie perhaps it might be better if she was to get the dog out of the car. When she asked why, I replied he is absolutely terrified of me. Lynnie has a way with animals, it was love at first sight, and he took to her immediately and was completely at ease, just as long as I stayed as far away as possible from him.

Nero really was a beautiful looking dog, very tall, so tall in fact, as we found out later, if he stretched up on his back legs he could touch the ceiling. But more on that point later, he was a lovely fawn colour, and had a slightly darker muzzle, he was a very gentle soul, and we both fell in love with him straight away. I figured that given time he would learn to accept me; meanwhile I had to put up with this giant dog hiding behind Lyn's skirt trembling every time I glanced at him.

The other obvious thing about him was that he was rather thin, thin to the point of his ribs showing, his coat wasn't very glossy, and at first glance we assumed he had worms. It took just one day before we realized, we had purchased the dog-world version of Frank Spencer from "Some Mothers Do Av Em".

• • •

Let the Games Commence

We fed Nero in bulk, the equivalent of a small cow a day. It was just Day 2, before our first incident; well let's call it an accident.

I play guitar and sing professionally, and would practice most days of the week. I was sitting in the lounge room at Lyn's mums; Nero was sitting across from me near the window. Now, the window consisted of two side opening sash windows, and a solid centre window six feet square.

I strummed my first chord, and was amazed to see how petrified Nero was.

I called out to Lyn to come see, and as I strummed my second chord Nero leapt backwards, straight through the six foot solid centre window, there was a unified shout of "Oh! Shit" from Lynnie and I, as we dashed out to see if the dog was bleeding to death, we found he had suffered not a scratch, he was standing trembling on the front lawn. It was time to kill the dog, but I knew it was my own fault, and though the window cost us a fortune to repair, what the heck, after all it was only money.

Ha ha, what a silly saying it's only money, as time went on, we seriously thought of changing Nero's name to Direct Debit.

Great Danes are placid animals; they don't need a lot of exercise, they are happy to lie around as long as their owners are close at hand. Feeding Nero was no mean feat: we would pile the food into him, then a few days later he would be showing his ribs again. This was a bit of

a puzzle to us, but a little later down the track we would solve the mystery. But more on this subject a little later.

Lyn's parents also owned a dog, a very feisty little chap called Danny; Danny was a sort of Staffordshire Terrier/Bull Terrier Cross – I say cross because he was an angry little bugger; he suffered from 'small dog syndrome'.

Every time Nero came near him, Danny would attack. One particular morning it appeared Nero had had enough; I was sitting in the lounge room, having my breakfast when all hell broke loose. I could hear the sound of dogs fighting, followed by the sound of my wife screaming. Lynnie was screaming so loud, I thought my God the dogs have turned on her. I dashed out and was greeted with this scene. Nero was standing in the middle of the back veranda, Nan's dog Danny was hanging out of his mouth, Nero had his jaws in the centre of Danny's back, but the real noise was coming from Lyn, who was banging Nero on the head with a fluffy slipper yelling, "spit him out Nero, spit him out". We separated the dogs, calmed Lyn down, and half a dozen stitches later, Danny was ready to fight again.

The commotion outside was terrible, my first thoughts were "the dogs have turned on Lynnie" As I stepped onto the back veranda I was greeted with the sight of Lynnie bashing Nero on the head with a fluffy slipper, she was yelling at the top of her lungs, "spit him out Nero, spit him out" Half a dozen stitches later, and Danny was ready to fight again.

It took a few weeks before Nero began to accept me, and gradually he changed completely and really became my dog. We were living in a little unit in Queen Street, Lalor; the only problem was they had a rule: definitely no dogs allowed.

Nero was such a quiet soul we figured we could hide him, and take him for walks at night. This worked well for a little while, but the landlady was becoming suspicious. One afternoon she came to visit us. It was a couple of days before Christmas; I had been doing nightshift and was having a bit of a sleep when the landlady knocked on the door. I quickly jumped up and threw on my dressing gown. I opened the front door slightly whilst trying to push Nero back with my foot.

The Landlady said, in broken Italian English, "Merrya Christamasa", and with this she stuck her hand forward presenting me with a fly strip thingy for the front door. As I reached out to take it, the wind blew my dressing gown open, exposing my lack of underpants, she let out a scream of Mamma Mia, and threw the Christmas gift at me, and took off at a hundred miles an hour across the car park.

Well at least she hadn't spotted Nero. Phew!

About one week later Lynnie and I had been invited to a party; we locked Nero in the lounge room, speaking to him as we do to all our dogs, "now be a good boy, and look after the house for mummy and daddy, and no barking", well, who knows . . . maybe he understood.

The party was enjoyable, and we returned around midnight to a strange sight.

All the residents of the units were formed in a huge circle in the car park and standing in the centre of them was Nero. We looked at one another and said" Oh! Shit". One of the residents came over and said "is this dog yours?" "No" we replied in unison "we've never seen him before". With this Nero spotted us and bounded over, tail wagging, obviously happy to see us.

The game was up; two days later our Italian landlady was back with our marching orders.

• • •

We need a house

It was obvious to us we needed to find a house to rent, and with this in mind we headed off to the estate agent in Thomastown. Our luck was in; there was a nice three bedroom house to rent in Central Avenue, Thomastown. I thought it best to mention that we had a dog, but the agent was adamant that this was quite alright.

I said "perhaps you should see the dog first" but he insisted on saying it was fine.

I said "hang on a minute", and ducked out to the car; two minutes later I came back in, with Nero in tow. The guy visibly shrank, he said "dogs are fine but you can't have horses", we signed the lease and moved into our new premises. We will come back to the agent a little later.

Nero by this time was out of his shell, a lot of his old fears had gone. Great Danes have a peculiar way of showing affection, we called one of these affections 'Love Nips'; if Nero was happy he would do this nibbly thing right up your arm – it always reminded me of someone nibbling on corn. Now this is fine but every now and then, he would nip a bit of skin, and boy did that hurt. Another peculiar trait typical of Danes was he would sit on a chair or the sofa, with his bum and back legs on the chair and his front legs on the ground, sort of like a person really.

Nero was becoming playful, I would take him out in the garden, and we would play. I would always come back inside injured; Nero was a very big boy indeed. He could easily stand on his back legs, and rest his chin on top of my head. Playing in the garden with Nero was dangerous, he liked to leap towards me with his front legs splayed apart which gave him a reach of about ten feet, hard to avoid when he was coming flat out, and I would end up inevitably flat on my back, with Nero slobbering all over me.

The expenses from Nero kept on rolling in: I don't know how, but he jumped out of the wash house window one day, the window was shut, it was a tiny opening, yet still he managed not to injure himself. And the upside to this was, I was becoming a handy man repairing things.

I recall one day Nero decided to stretch in the living room, his paws reached up to the cornice on the ceiling, pretty impressive really, except when he came down, he came down via the brand new floor to ceiling Venetian blind on the front window, ripping the whole lot down. This blind was 7 foot high by 8 feet wide. Oh what a mess! My handyman skills didn't cover this, but $250 later the damage was fixed. Chicken feed when you think about it, must have been bloody big chickens though.

Nero also accidentally knocked my stereo speakers off their stands; "it wasn't his fault" Lyn would say "it was just an accident".

I remember we were driving home one afternoon, we had locked Nero in the house, telling him to be a good boy and not to break anything please, and he nodded as if he understood.

As we approached the house, I said to Lyn "I have a terrible feeling something's happened at the house". No sooner had this left my lips, than we spotted Nero sitting in the driveway. "Wasn't he locked inside" I mumbled. Lynnie nodded, and as we turned into the driveway we noticed the solid steel fly-screen door in the middle of the lawn, twisted and bent like some modern art sculpture, gee wasn't Nero a clever boy then? We never did find out just how he undid the dead latch on the front door . . .

At this time Nero used to sleep in our bedroom, he had his very own giant dog bed. This had to be stopped however, especially after one night in particular we had just settled down to sleep, all of a sudden I heard Lyn say "psssssst", I said "what?" She said "pssssst". I said "what?" Then Lyn said "what's wrong with you?" I said "what's wrong with me? You're the one who keeps saying pssssst". Then we both heard it, "psssst" followed by this horrific smell, the entire atmosphere had left the room, and ornaments were floating as if by magic. Bloody hell I yelled, we are being asphyxiated, poor Nero had wind, but the good thing was he got his own bedroom after this.

• • •

The Ki Si Mien Incident

My wife Lyn is a wonderful cook, especially when you consider I am such a fussy bugger with my food. Meat and three veg being my staple diet, Lynnie would sometimes try to introduce something a little more interesting. We had tea at Lyn's mum's one day, and Nan had made a batch of Ki Si Mien, I reluctantly tried it and found that I loved it. Eating the last mouthful, I concluded with Lynnie, "You should learn how to make this". A week or so later Lynnie took me up on my suggestion. She rang her mum and asked for the recipe, which she noted down. Now Lynnie never does things by halves, and instead of making enough for one meal, she decided to cook enough for six weeks worth, with the idea of freezing the bulk.

Lyn availed herself of a huge metal casserole type pot, she then began to introduce vast amounts of vegetables (truckloads really), cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, then she added peas, corn and beans. Minced meat was added and chicken soup. A large pond of water was added, this was topped off with curry powder. There was enough Ki Si Mien to feed the five thousand.

So far so good, all this was lifted by crane onto the stove, the gas was on a low light. All that was required now was a wooden spoon and some stirring, but if the truth be known, a concrete mixer would have been struggling to mix this lot.

Lo and behold the wooden spoon couldn't reach the bottom of the pot, and it began to burn. I was in the bedroom at the time unaware of the disaster about to unfold.

Lynnie decided this batch was ruined and would have to be discarded.

Picture the scene, the kitchen in this house was quite old, and the floors looked like they had been taken straight from the Flash ads on TV, (black and white vinyl tiles, sort of like a chess board). Lyn poured the entire contents of the pot into a black plastic garbage bag, not a great idea as the contents were hot. As she lifted the bag, it let go its contents all over the kitchen and as Lyn tried to get out of the mess she fell on her back into the slop. Now, hearing the racket, enter Nero at full gallop. He skidded out of control across the kitchen. At the other end of the kitchen, we had a pot stand with various pots and frying pans. Nero hit this at speed, and fell on his side.

The Ki Si Mien Incident

He skidded through the mess right across the kitchen and collided with the pot stand at the end of the room. I raced into the kitchen fully expecting to see a plane had crashed.

I dashed from the bedroom, I honestly thought a small plane had crashed into the house, Lyn was sitting in the middle of a sea of Ki Si Mien, Nero kept trying to stand but his legs were slipping from under him. Finally, when he found his feet, he galloped off all through the house with bits of carrot, cauliflower and other condiments flying everywhere.

In all fairness to Lynnie, she did however master the Ki Si Mien (I won't mention her first attempt at a home-made apple pie though).

• • •

Why does Nero lose condition?

Nero always had a problem maintaining his weight. I would get large garbage bags of meat, with plenty of fat from the hospital kitchen at work. We would pile up his dog bowl, and he would eat every morsel. He would fill out and look magnificent, but it would only last for a day or so. The reason for this became apparent one day whilst I was play boxing with him.

Nero and I were in the kitchen, and I was lightly cuffing him on each side of his face, he in turn was bashing the crap out of me with his huge paws. All of a sudden he gave a huge cough, and this thing came out of his mouth. To describe this, if you imagine a piece of spaghetti dangling from his mouth, except the difference being, this thing was white and as thick as your little finger. It hung about six or seven inches from his bottom jaw. I was horrified and called Lynnie to come have a look. I grabbed a pair of metal barbeque tongs, and grabbed hold of this thing. As I pulled Nero gagged, the thing didn't break, and when I let go it slid back down his throat. There was nothing else for it but to go to the vet post-haste. The vet listened to my description, and immediately gave us the verdict: Nero had a tapeworm.

The solution to this problem involved more great expense because the only way to treat this was by giving him a tablet every day. The tablet doesn't kill the tapeworm, but it does prevent the tapeworm from stealing all the nourishment. This worked a treat, and our boy grew into a magnificent specimen, his coat gleamed, and apart from our dwindling bank account, things were much better.

I must digress a little if I may . . . my sister-in-law Sharon came over one day, and when we told her about the tapeworm, she said she knew how to get rid of it.

She told me this cure in all seriousness, and I had trouble not to laugh. She told me what I needed to do was to starve Nero for a few days, then cook a meal he really loved (such as a lamb roast). I was then instructed to hold onto Nero's collar, and Lynnie was to hold the lamb roast under Nero's nose. I said "what then?" Sharon said "walk slowly backwards away from Nero and the tapeworm will start to come out following the scent". I said "but Sharon these tapeworms are upwards of thirty feet long". Unimpressed, she said "that's ok; just keeping walking backwards until the entire tape worm has come out". I said "what then? She said "bash the worm to death with a blunt instrument". I couldn't help myself, because I had pictured the scene, bits of mangled tapeworm all over the house.

I don't wish to appear ungrateful to Sharon because she was genuine in her offer of help, but I must mention however I had heard a joke prior to Sharon telling me about this tapeworm cure. It involved two mates standing at a bar, and one of the chaps was scratching his bottom vigorously. His mate said "what's wrong?" To which the itching chap replied, "I've got a bloody tapeworm". His mate replied "that's ok, I know how to get rid of tapeworms," he said "come over to my place tonight, and bring with you a dozen boiled eggs, a hammer, and a Violet Crumble".

Feeling a bit dubious the afflicted man did as he was told. His mate said "ok this is your first treatment, remove your pants and jocks, and bend over facing away from me". The fella was reluctant, and kept glancing suspiciously over his shoulder. His mate then placed a boiled egg near his bottom, and fiercely hammered the egg home, this he repeated another eleven times, finally hammering in the Violet Crumble. There you go he said "that's your first treatment, now come back for another six days for the same treatment and on the seventh day I will administer the cure". The treatment all went to plan and finally the seventh day arrived.

The treatment went ahead as usual, whack, whack, whack, till all twelve eggs were in place, then the guy hesitated for a minute. After a moment or two the worm popped out and said "where's me Violet Crumble?" The worm was then dispatched, with a blunt instrument.

I have to apologize for this little interlude, but it was all a part of Nero's story, and still tickles my fancy to this very day.

Things went fine for a few weeks, nobody was killed or injured, and nothing was broken, but as I have stated earlier Nero was now a different dog, his old fears long gone, he was my dog, and no longer shook if we had visitors. I recall one day the estate agent called in for an inspection. He wasn't the tallest of men, and apparently he had been knocking at the front door for a while. We had music playing and failed to hear him. He apparently let himself in, and a few moments later we were attracted to the sound of Nero barking at the top of his lungs. I raced into the hallway, and this was the scene I was confronted with.

The estate agent was standing with his back to the wall cowering, Nero was standing over him with his feet splayed towards the ceiling, he had his muzzle right in front of the chap's face and was letting out these almighty WOOFS. I called Nero off, and with this the estate agent shot out the front door, and set some sort of land speed record as he raced up the street. We never did get another inspection, and wasn't Nero a clever boy, he had become a guard dog.

After this incident I bought one of those beware of the dog signs, and hung it on the side fence. The owners of our house lived in the same street, and they maintained a fully stocked veggie garden in our back yard. I had asked the estate agent previously to please call us if the owners wished to access their veggies, at least we could then put Nero in the house for a while. The only problem here was that the owner's mother spoke no English, and she would turn up at our front door every second or third day, dressed head to foot in black, and always seemed to be munching on a raw onion. She would knock, and when we answered she would give us a bit of a talking-to in pure Italian, and then would amble off through the gate into the back garden, she would take no notice of Nero, he would just stand there looking puzzled. Who knows? Maybe it was the onion that put him off. The lady would fill her apron with veggies, and then amble off. We gave up in the end, and would just smile and wave her in.

• • •

Great Danes cannot swim

Now I don't know if this is a true statement concerning all Great Danes, but it certainly holds true for two out of the three we have owned. I didn't know if Charlie could swim, and what a pity I never got to find out.

Lynnie and I, Nero, and our now adopted dog Duck, headed off for a nice pleasant day trip, to a place called Eildon Weir. It was a good two and a half hours drive from our place, but we were well prepared with a packed lunch of sandwiches and coffee. Eildon Weir is a lovely spot set amongst rolling hills and it stretches for miles in all directions. Eildon has a thriving boat harbour, where you can hire houseboats and other pleasure craft so we hired a pontoon type craft, a flat boat on pontoons; it had small rails around the sides, and two seats at the back, with a small outboard motor in between the seats. The front of the boat was flat and exposed to any larger waves. The day we set out on our little adventure it was slightly overcast, and a bit windy. Lynnie sat herself up towards the front, whilst I sat in the seat to the left of the motor; it was controlled with a twist hand throttle that also acted as the rudder. Nero sat to the right of the motor and Duck was next to him.

We headed out of the harbour, straight towards an island in the middle of the weir, and it was here disaster struck. I don't know how, or where, but Nero had silently fallen overboard, when I glanced to where he was sitting. All I saw was Duck, with what appeared to be a sly smile on her face. Looking back over my shoulder I saw one of Nero's paws sticking vertically out of the water. "Oh! Shit!" I shouted to Lynnie, "Bloody Nero has fallen overboard". I quickly changed places with Lyn, and got her to steer and meanwhile I lay face down at the front of the boat, as Lynnie turned us around. The waves were crashing over me, and it was bloody freezing. We got to Nero as he was going down for the last time, just the tip of his paw showed above the waterline. I managed to grab it, and using every last bit of strength dragged him back on board.

He looked pretty lifeless and I said to Lynnie "I think we have lost him". "Press on his chest" yelled Lynnie, I did and lo and behold! He spewed out a heap of water, and then started to come round. Thank goodness he didn't require mouth to mouth. What do you do with a dog that cannot swim? Answer: you try to teach him.

• • •

"Nero's killed me dad"

We had this fantastic idea of teaching Nero to swim, and where better than at the local lake? We headed off to a place called Edwards Lake; it was a pretty area, lots of lawns and a boat launching area that was concreted. There was a small bluestone wall around the lake, and there was a drop of about one foot down to the water.

We also took with us our adopted dog Duck. Duck was a great swimmer, and would leap as far as she could in pursuit of a tennis ball thrown for her. Nero however would not go in the water, so reluctantly both Lyn and I forced him to the edge, and with a mighty heave threw him in. He naturally panicked, obviously thinking we were trying to kill him, he floundered and spluttered, and tried to swim with his paws straight up and down instead of the traditional doggy paddle. Just as all seemed lost he stood up, and found he could easily touch the bottom, with his entire back, head and shoulders out of the water. This was all he needed. Once he knew he wouldn't drown, Nero bounded out of the water, and stood on the edge with his bum in the air, and his front section crouched. He waited till Duck got about ten feet from the edge, and then he launched, and landed straight on top of her, she came up coughing and spluttering, and swimming in a panicked fashion.

I must mention now that my father had decided to come with us to the lake. It was a lovely sunny day, and my father liked nothing better than to sip on a long neck bottle of Melbourne Bitter beer. He sat in the middle of the paved area having a quiet swig, watching our antics. Nero was going berserk, jumping all over the place, and generally having a good time. I recall my father's last words before the accident. He said "Eeee i'nt he a right good dog".

With that Nero leapt sideways colliding heavily with my dad's head. His beer smashed, my dad was out cold. I thought he was dead, but slowly he sat up, he wore glasses, the ones with the thick black rims, these were at a 45 degree angle on his face, his nose bleeding heavily, he was soaked in beer and looked dishevelled, his next words were not very complimentary, and I cannot repeat them here.

Oh! Shit Nero's killed me dad

Nero bounded back and forth, as my father enjoyed drinking a long neck of beer. My father's last words before the incident (well accident) was, Eeee in't he a right good dog, and with that Nero jumped sideways and flattened him.

• • •

Canoeing on the River Yarra

Perhaps we are gluttons for punishment, but we decided to make one last attempt with Nero's swimming career.

We headed off to a lovely spot called Yarra Bend; here you can hire row boats, or Canadian style canoes. The Yarra River is a lovely meandering river, which reputedly flows upside down. By this I mean all the silt and sediment seems to float on the top, whilst underneath it is clearer. I don't really know why, but we opted to hire a canoe. My brother Andy and a female friend came with us and hired a second canoe. Lynnie and Nero sat on the bank a little way up the river, so that we wouldn't attract too much attention to ourselves when we tried to get Nero on board.

Amazingly things went smoothly for once and with Lynnie in the front seat, me in the rear, and Nero lying full length in the centre, we set off. Finding a nice secluded area, we offloaded Nero, then putting his collar and lead on; we walked him into the water, then with Lyn hanging onto his lead we paddled off. Nero was a bit wall-eyed but he seemed to be getting the hang of things. After about an hour of this our canoe hire time was running out, so we headed for the bank and got Nero to lie in the middle again. I said to Lynnie "let's just paddle straight to the boat landing area, and offload there". I must mention it was a magnificent day, sun shining, and unfortunately for us hundreds of picnickers near the boathouse. As we paddled in, someone yelled, "Mum look at the big doggie", and with this Nero stood up and shook himself. The canoe tipped first one way, then the other, all the time more and more water poured over the side, until inevitably we sank, to a rousing sound of cheers and clapping.

We dragged ourselves red faced and dripping wet from the water, and amazingly Nero managed to swim to the side so perhaps it wasn't all a complete waste of time.

The sinking of the Titanic

As we approached the bank Nero decided to stand and shake himself. Water poured into the canoe first from one side then the other, and gradually, to rapturous applause and cheers from the hundreds of onlookers, we sank. Nero did however swim to the side.

• • •

Nero loved the snow

I feel I must relate a little incident, well when I say incident, it should read accident involving Nero. Lynnie and I decided to take Nero for a little adventure trip to the snow. We headed off bright and early for a place called Mount Donna Buang. This is not one of the more popular snow resorts; in fact it is mainly a sight-seeing and cross-country skiing area. It was about a two hour drive from our place up the Warburton Highway, it's a very scenic drive, lots of Mountain Ash trees and ancient tree ferns along the way. On reaching the township of Warburton you make a sharp left turn, and then start to meander up the mountain. I found later that there are signs everywhere saying "No dogs allowed" but at the time we failed to see any of them.

We put Nero on his lead and headed up from the car park to the top of the mountain, Nero was very excited and was bounding around, and when we reached the summit we went to an area where people were using toboggans, and ski's etc. I thought this would be a great place to let Nero have a bit of a run, oh dear, what a fateful mistake. The second the leash was undone Nero was off, absolutely flat out all over the place. As luck would have it, or perhaps I should say bad luck, two young Italian chaps decided this was the time to go hurtling down the hillside on their toboggan, at the very same precise moment Nero decided he would run at full gallop across the mountain, "where is the video camera when you need it?" The collision was horrific; the Italians were splattered all over the hillside, Nero cart-wheeled through the air and landed metres past them. We were in shock, and truly expected that one or both the Italians would be deceased, but fortunately we heard the words "Mamma effin" Mia", followed by other expletives that I failed to recognise. Nero bounded back to us, and we very quickly high tailed it back to the car. Our trip to the snow was deemed a complete success, (but never to be repeated).

The Italians were mangled, Oops a daisy

It was not a pretty sight; the two Italians hurtled down the hillside on their toboggan, and meanwhile Nero arrived at full pelt from their right. They knew not what hit them, a truck in the snow? It can't be but when they had regained their senses, they let fly with a tirade of abuse, fortunately we spoke no Italian, and when Nero came back we scarpered quick smart.

It was a great day out at the snow, but one never to be repeated.

• • •

"Someone help, there's a Lion loose"

I just had to mention this minor incident; it is one that always springs to mind when we think of Nero.

I headed in to work at the Austin Hospital one day, with intentions of withdrawing some cash from the Credit Union. It was a coolish day, so I had no qualms about leaving Nero up at the car park; he was locked in the car, windows slightly ajar. I recall saying to him now be a good boy, and don't break anything, he nodded. I made my withdrawal and as I left the Credit Union I heard the biggest commotion outside. In the centre of the Hospital was a roadway that ran past the front of Administration and the 'A' Block Wards. I heard someone yell "there's a lion loose in the grounds", and I saw people dashing everywhere in a panic.

I then spotted Nero galloping all over the place; fortunately he came straight to me when I called him. I grabbed him and things calmed down a bit. Now, I don't know where the Jack Russel Terrier came from, but I fear he may have been related to Charlie in some way, he mounted Nero's back leg, and as we walked this terrier humped Nero's ankle the whole way, all the way back up to the car park, and this bloody little deviate never missed a beat. Sheesh what next?

• • •

A trip to Portland Victoria

We decided to go away for a long weekend to the seaside town of Portland. It's quite a long drive from where we lived, maybe four hours or more.

Our good friends Aleesh and Kelvin would be joining us. We loaded up our car, I was still driving my old HR Holden, and Kelvin was parked behind me in our driveway. Aleesh and Kelvin owned a lovely HQ station wagon, quite new at the time; it was Kelvin's pride and joy and he always kept it immaculately polished.

The weekend started off disastrously, we had Nero in the back seat, and as a result of this I couldn't see out of the rear view mirror. I heard Kelvin's car start up, and I thought I heard him reversing out of the driveway, I let the handbrake off, put the car in reverse and let my foot off the brake, we moved two feet, before hearing and feeling an almighty crash, followed by a tiny shrill angry voice yelling "we are still bloody here". Oh shit! Everybody jumped back out of the cars, followed by an inspection of the damage. Fortunately Kelvin's car suffered not a scratch, but mine had a slight dint in the back, never mind, off we go again.

The trip to Portland went without mishap, but on arriving there we found the place was packed, all the caravan parks were full, and most didn't allow dogs anyway.

But our luck was in, one of the caravan park owners sent us to a little old lady who sometimes provided accommodation when the park was full. We introduced ourselves and the lady fell in love with Nero instantly. The accommodation however wasn't quite what we had expected. It consisted of a small bungalow out the back, twelve feet square with two single beds and a small table in between the beds.

Ah well, it would be a cosy night, and with Nero stretched out in the middle there was no chance of falling out of bed. We all had a few drinks too many, then crammed into our single beds, we headed off for the land of nod.

As the still of night settled upon us, we heard "Pssssst". Oh! Bloody hell, here we go again.

The next morning sporting hangovers and methane poisoning, we headed off for the township of Port Fairy.

Port Fairy is a lovely seaside town; it is one of the oldest settlements in Victoria.

As we arrived in Port Fairy, we were lucky enough to get a caravan in a nice park. At the front entrance to the park was a large fenced-in trampoline area. There was a cyclone-wire fence around the area, about 12 feet high. There were at least six trampolines, set into the ground about 4 feet apart. We watched an amazing scene unfold. Kelvin, who was only a slight chap, decided to see if he could leap from one trampoline to another. Unfortunately Nero decided to follow him, nipping Kelvin's bum on each bounce. The unfortunate part was as he moved from one trampoline to the next Kelvin got higher and higher, and couldn't control his forward motion. By the time he hit the last trampoline it catapulted him straight over the fence. Well it left him dangling astride the top of the fence, and Nero crashed into the wire and with this the owner of the park came out and gave us all our marching orders.

As Kelvin leapt from trampoline to trampoline, Nero was right on his heel nipping at Kelvin's bottom. Kelvin finished up astride the top of the fence, and Nero crashed into the fence below him. The owner of the caravan park came out, and sent us on our way post haste.

• • •

We say a sad farewell to Nero

A few months later Lynnie and I decided to have a weekend away at a place called Warrnambool; this is a good three hours drive away from our place. This time we decided not to take Nero with us, instead we left him with my mum and dad, much to their dismay, although I must admit they were rather taken with him now – he really was a lovely looking and placid dog now.

Lynnie and I headed off and had a great weekend, but when we returned to my parents place, they looked crestfallen. My mum explained that Nero had been killed outright in a head-on collision with a car. Apparently he had escaped out the front door and he had spotted a cat. He took off in hot pursuit at full gallop straight onto the main road, a chap driving a Ford LTD car collided head on with Nero, Nero was killed instantly though he didn't have a mark on him and the car was also killed instantly.

When we asked my mum for further details, she said "the chap was lovely", he told her "don't worry about a thing; he would take care of everything". And he did, a week later we received a letter from a solicitor, entitled Schofield vs. Lee. It was a bill for repairs to his car to the total of $350. Seeing as we had never laid eyes on the car, I rang him to see the bill in person, and we made arrangements to call at his house, and he ushered us into his office. It was then the penny dropped. Mr. Schofield was a solicitor, and this would be Nero's final parting gift to us. When I looked at the bill I was horrified, the full cost was $3,000, his car required a new bumper bar, new grill, new radiator, new bonnet etc, the $350 he had originally billed us for was only his third party excess. Without further ado we agreed to pay the $350, and we took off from there with our tails between our legs.

• • •

It was all worth it

We said our goodbyes to our big fella, and if we could do it all again, we wouldn't hesitate. Nero was clumsy but he was also the most loving faithful dog anyone could wish for. To anyone contemplating getting a Great Dane, we would both say, "Go for it" BUT: save up first for damages.

CHAPTER 3 - DUCK

Who would name their dog Duck?

Let me introduce you to Duck, a sandy-coloured Kelpie cross.

My brother found Duck buried up to her neck in the sand on Scarborough beach, near Perth, in Western Australia. She was only a tiny puppy at the time, perhaps 6 or 7 weeks old.

Some heartless swine had decided to dispose of her in this way. She was right at the edge of the water line, and it would have been just a matter of time before she was drowned. They say it takes all kinds to make this world, and the perpetrator of this act was obviously one of the less desirable kinds.

Who would call a dog Duck? Well that was my brother Andy off course; I would expect nothing less of him. A story about my brother would make interesting reading indeed, and it would be guaranteed to make you laugh.

Duck became the family dog, she loved to swim, and her most favourite thing was to retrieve a tennis ball or a rock, and it did not matter a jot to her who the thrower was. I can say in all honesty, the thrower would tire of the game before Duck would.

Duck never did a bloody thing she was told, from the moment we found her to her last breath. You might say she was a free spirit, with a definite mind of her own.

My mum and dad had Duck for many years; they had made a few moves to different locations, until they settled at a place in West Heidelberg. Things were fine here for quite a while, but Duck had a bit of a bad habit of barking at the top of her lungs. Especially when she was partaking in one of her favourite pastimes, and this involved revving up the blackbirds and doves at the end of the garden.

Unbeknownst to us the next door neighbour was a local Councillor. He had apparently reported us to the local dog-catcher, who in turn gave us a notice stating we had to do something about the dog's barking, or alternatively have her destroyed. Mum and Dad were shattered, Dad wanted to thump the Councillor, but in the end they opted to have Duck debarked. I believe this practice is now frowned upon, but at the time the local vet had no qualms about performing the operation.

Duck was kept at the vet's overnight, and our instructions on picking her up were to keep her quiet. Personally I thought this a strange thing to say about a dog with no bark, but I then realized he meant don't let her get too excited for a while.

The first time we let Duck out in the back yard for a pee, she went through her usual routine. This involved running flat out, towards the blackbirds and doves, whilst at the same time barking her head off. The only difference was this time as she barked, no sound emanated from her mouth, so the birds just sat and watched her. Duck then turned around and ambled back with a puzzled look on her face.

The lack of a bark never really seemed to bother her, although later on she did recover a sort of yipping noise when she barked. I am sure these days a vet would refuse to perform this operation, but at the time it was either opt for this, or have the dog put down. Duck did however go on to a ripe old age.

I recall a trip across the Nullarbor Plain; our whole family was relocating from Western Australia back to Victoria. We had just pulled into a place called Mundrabilla Homestead; basically this was a service station out in the middle of nowhere.

I remember as we pulled into the service station there were chickens pecking around between the petrol pumps. As we opened the car door Duck shot out in hot pursuit of the chickens. The funny part of this story, if you can picture it, was the sight of my father chasing the dog, the dog was chasing the chickens, and my father was yelling "Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck". The people witnessing this scene must have thought we were two sandwiches short of a picnic.

As my father yelled Duck, Duck chased the chickens.

The middle of the Nullarbor, as we opened the car door Duck shot out in hot pursuit of some unsuspecting chickens. The situation looked really strange, the dog chasing chickens, and my father chasing the dog yelling "Duck, Duck, Duck". We really must have looked three sandwiches short of a picnic.

Whilst my parents lived in West Heidelberg, Duck became something of a local celebrity. It was nigh impossible to keep her in, and she would head off for an adventure with her trusty tennis ball. The first phone call we received came from the local primary school; it was one of the teachers enquiring "do you own a dog called Duck"? On confirming Duck was ours she went on to say "Duck is a lovely dog and she's made hundreds of new friends with her tennis ball, but would you mind coming over to pick her up, the kids won't go back to class".

That same week, we received another call this time from the stationmaster at Heidelberg Railway Station. The conversation followed the lines of the previous call, "do you own a dog called Duck?" After once again confirming she was ours he said "she is a beautiful dog, but she's creating havoc with the passengers getting on and off the trains, could you come get her please?"

It was not an unusual thing for Duck to fall asleep with her tennis ball firmly clenched in her jaws.

I suppose the final straw was when we got a loud banging on the front door. It was a Telecom man and not a happy one at that. I said "what's the problem?" Pointing out the front, he said "is that dog yours?" I replied, "yes she is" and he said "we are working in a bloody big hole out the front, and the damn dog keeps dropping rocks on our heads". It didn't help the chap when we laughed at his plight.

A short time later Mum and Dad moved into a Housing Commission flat, and couldn't take Duck with them and so it would seem Duck would live out the rest of her life with Lynnie and I.

By this time Lynnie and I had bought our first house in a little country hamlet town called Flowerdale. It was a lovely place to live, perched on the side of a hill, towering gum trees all around, State forest opposite, and a lovely stream across the road, called Silver Creek. What a great place for a dog, which doesn't come when you call her, to live. Our son Troy had been born and he grew up with Duck. If you found one, then you would definitely find the other; they were inseparable. This turned out to be a godsend as time went by. I recall Lynnie and I were standing on our veranda one day, Troy had gone over to the neighbour's property, our properties connected by a small track through the scrub.

As we watched Troy racing flat out back towards us, Duck suddenly shot around him, and dispatched a large black snake, which was curled up on the track. She did another similar thing, weeks later, as Troy ran up our driveway, this time Duck disposed of a fairly decent sized Brown snake. This was a job well done, as brown snakes can be quite aggressive

Duck lived to the ripe old age of 13, but her health deteriorated after she was clipped by a car out the front of our place. Arthritis set in to the injury, and the pain she suffered was too much for her to bear. We opted to have her put to sleep, and asked the vet if he would mind letting her have her tennis ball in her mouth. We like to think she passed away happy, and is probably annoying the crap out of an angel somewhere.

CHAPTER 4 – JUDY and SNOWY

Mother and Daughter

Blue Heeler dogs are a breed apart: once they attach themselves to a person and a property, that's it, they are loyal for life. They are a fearless dog, and make quite a scary sight when they run towards you with their hackles up, and their tails held in a rigid arc. We have had numerous dogs over the years, and are always pleasantly surprised by their vastly different personalities.

Let me introduce you to Judy. My sister Patricia had bred her own Blue Heeler, Bonnie, and Judy was one of her pups. My sister gave her to me, and I took her home as a surprise for Lynnie. Blue Heelers are born pure white, and their colour comes as they get a little older.

I must admit Judy wasn't the prettiest of puppies. I loaded her into my car for the hour's drive home, she sat on the front seat next to me, and she was fine for all of ten minutes, upon which she threw her boots up all over my car seat. Great, what a start, things could only get better, or so I thought. The reception when I got Judy home wasn't quite what I expected. I took her inside and said to Lynnie, "surprise, here's your new puppy". It was definitely not love at first sight; in fact Lyn's words shocked me somewhat, when she said "I don't want it, it's bloody ugly". I was at a bit of a loss, but fortunately Judy sorted the problem out for all of us.

She firmly attached herself to Lyn instantly, and never left her side. This was something of a win for Lynnie, because she always wanted her own dog, but they all seemed to attach themselves to me; here was her very own dog, and Judy remained that for the rest of her life. We had Judy for about 14 years; she protected our property with her very life. One thing is for sure: if you have a Heeler inside your house, you will never get robbed.

Judy was a very stocky dog, in fact one of her nicknames was The Stock Cube; she was as wide as she was long, yet still very fit. Our other pet name for her was the Policeman. We called her this because it was near impossible to raise your voice in her presence, if you did she would get between us and bark at the top of her lungs until we talked quietly. Maybe they should include a Heeler in a marriage guidance counsellor's repertoire. The other thing is that Heelers have an ear piercing bark, so the sooner we could shut her up the better.

Judy was deceptively quick, as I found out to my surprise one day. We used to feed Judy using a plastic 4 litre ice cream container, and as meal time approached, she would pick her container up, and drop it at your feet. I made the vital mistake one day of tipping this ice cream container upside down, and placing it on my head. Like lightning Judy flew through the air taking the container off my head in one fell swoop, also taking a divot out of my forehead with her tooth. As I rolled around the floor in agony, Lynnie joined me rolling round the floor with laughter.

Another day our neighbour called in. I had warned him on several occasions to knock before walking in. He ignored my request and just ambled in. Judy, who was in the back bedroom, greeted my neighbour at speed, and, coming from behind, she nipped his ankle and drew blood; she then raced through the kitchen into the lounge room, and was approaching from behind to give him another nip. Fortunately for my neighbour, he had yelled loud enough for me to come running and thus prevented a repeat serving. My neighbour was not well

pleased, but I did point out I had warned him many times to knock and wait. A tetanus shot was administered by the local doctor, and all was well, and the neighbour always knocked after this incident.

I loved to stir Judy up – her bark was horrible. I would get her going then say "who's your favourite band Judy?" And she would reply in that ear piercing bark "Abba, Abba, Abba, Abba". I would also say "what are condoms made from", and her bark sounded like "rubba, rubba, rubba, rubba". Or perhaps that was just my imagination . . .

When Judy turned three we had her mated with a friend's Blue Heeler. We waited anxiously for the birthing day; Judy went into labour and started to give birth to her first pup. She was having terrible trouble giving birth to this pup, and, unfazed, Lynnie assisted her. After this another six healthy pups emerged. Judy was a wonderful mum, and reared her brood like a pro. We had already decided we would keep one pup, but couldn't make our minds up which one to choose.

We were amazed how territorial these dogs are, and could not believe some of the punch-ups these pups got into. From the earliest age they were fierce; the runt of the litter was a tiny pup that we had called Spot; he was pushed out at feed time and was really struggling. We decided to keep Spot separate at feed times and would bring him in without the other pups. The amazing thing with this was, this tiny pup had decided he was to be the only one who came inside, and would fight all the other pups to prove his point. Perhaps on this point alone we should have chosen him, but what I did was bring each puppy in one at a time to see how they would react.

I was sitting at the kitchen table; and I would bring in a pup, and watch what it would do. When it came to a little fat puppy we had called Snowy, she took my fancy straight away, for no other reason than she seemed a bit loopy. As I placed her on the floor, she raced around the kitchen table and collided heavily with the glass sliding door. This she repeated twice, and it tickled my fancy. "Let's keep this one" I said.

It was not a great idea for us to breed Judy, because there comes a time when you have to say goodbye to the pups. One after the other, the other six pups found good homes, and as each one left, it was a torrent of tears from Lyn. It definitely cured us from breeding our dogs.

Let me introduce you to Snowy: we called her Snowy because she was predominantly white in colour, with a blue speckle through her fur. There was nothing really remarkable about Snowy, though she did remind me of a reincarnated Duck. I say this because, like Duck, she never did a bloody thing we told her to, we could get her to sit, and shake a paw and that was her lot. She loved food, loved her home, and that was her.

We later moved to a place called Strath Creek; we were situated on a small farmlet there consisting of 16 acres. This was great for the dogs; they loved their new home, but never ever went off our property, even though the fence was only made from strained wires; they stayed on our side, and woe betide anyone who arrived uninvited.

On two separate occasions while we were out, our back sliding door had been lifted out of its tracks, but obviously on both occasions, the would-be robbers hadn't counted on the two fierce protectors on the other side of the door.

I recall one day, friends from Melbourne decided to visit, and our main gate was perhaps fifty to sixty meters from our back door. These friends parked at the gate, and then walked up the driveway. I must mention at this time I was still building the house, and so I had an open electricity cable trench running besides the driveway, this trench was two feet deep by two feet wide. Why would I mention this you ask? Well as my friend's wife, Norma, approached the house the two intrepid guard dogs Judy and Snowy came around the corner.

They immediately assumed the attack stance; tails in a rigid upright arc. The sight of these two scampering at full tilt towards you, and hearing their manic barks, would be enough to scare the life out of anyone. Norma was setting a new land-speed record for running backwards whilst yelling at the top of her lungs, JOHNNN, LYNNN, JOHNNN, LYNNN, and with this she fell backwards into the trench. Now really this could have been quite a nasty accident, fortunately for us Norma had a wicked sense of humour, and when I said "no wonder the dogs were upset, they are called Judy and Snowy, and you was calling them John and Lyn". The incident finished in fits of laughter; these days with political correctness etc, it could have been a far worse scenario

When we first moved to Strath Creek we lived in a caravan, with a canvas annex. This was a temporary arrangement while we built the house. It was a bit cramped with two adults and two kids now, and also two dogs, but we managed okay. One day Snowy was out in the annex when suddenly all the power shut down, followed immediately by an ear piercing shriek. As I raced out to see what was going on, I spotted Snowy running flat out up the paddock, she was yelping at the top of her lungs with her tail firmly between her legs. It only took a moment to realize what had happened. Snowy had chewed through the power cord to the refrigerator. We drove up the paddock and picked her up; she was happy to be placed on a camp stretcher with pillow and blankets on her, she stayed like this all day, and enjoyed the pampering.

Snowy soon took on the proportions of her mother, she was quite lazy, and a little bit shifty really. She had a habit of rolling on things; I don't know where it came from, but we had a kitten for a very short time. For reasons known only to Snowy, she rolled on this poor kitten and squashed it. Unfortunately the kitten did not survive this. My daughter, Cara, and my wife, Lynnie, decided to bury the kitten whilst I was at work; they dug a hole on the side of the hill, then a few days later they decided to make a little gravesite for the kitten. This they did by placing a circle of stones around the gravesite with a little cross in the middle. When I got home from work I noticed what they had done. I asked "what's the idea of the circle of stones and the cross?" To which they replied, "it is a little gravesite we made for the kitten". It was not a laughing matter, especially for the poor little kitten, but I took Lynnie and Cara out to the gravesite, and pointed out they had actually buried the kitten ten feet to the left of the site they had adorned. The spot where they had placed the stones and cross was actually a spot that I had dug previously to empty the contents of a portable toilet. I wonder if this is how the phrase "holy shit" came about.

Snowy's love of rolling on things never abated. I took the dogs for a walk one afternoon; at the back of my place was thousands of acres, lots of kangaroos could be seen here, wild pigs, wombats, rabbits, foxes, and, of course, snakes.

This particular day Snowy and Judy were racing about trying to rustle up a rabbit or two, and Snowy, in her endeavours came across a huge black snake. In total ignorance of the danger she was in, Snowy tried to roll on the snake. The snake was very angry, and was rearing up, its head flattened like a cobra, it kept striking at Snowy, and she kept trying to roll on it. Fortunately I managed to drag her away before she was bitten, silly bloody dog.

Directly across from my place at Strath Creek was a lovely stream called The King Parrot Creek, and I would often go down there to fish; large trout, red fin and perch were in abundance here. Much to my dismay Snowy loved fishing. She would position herself right next to me on the bank, the moment the rod tip twitched she would inevitably fall in, and I lost many a good fish to her silly antics.

She also developed an acute taste for blackberries. On the opposite bank there was a profusion of blackberries and Snowy would waddle into the water and swim across. Whilst in the water she would reach up and eat all the ripe blackberries. We were fascinated by this, and amazed at how she only ate the ripe ones. One thing for sure, this dog would never die of starvation. She would finish up with a comical look as if she had a black moustache.

At night time as we relaxed watching television, Snowy had a habit of getting up on my lap. All very well, but she was hardly what you would describe as a lap dog. She was very heavy, and eventually the circulation in my legs would be cut off. I used to flip Snowy on her back, her head hanging down towards the floor, and would announce, "the launch of the Space Shuttle Snowy, is about to commence, 10, 9, 8, 7" etc, and then I would then slide her off gracefully upside down onto the floor, where she would lay, completely unfazed.

Judy and Snowy both lived out the rest of their days at our property at Strath Creek, they rarely if ever left our property, because neither of them travelled well in the car. The only time they would cross our boundary was if they were going for a walk with me.

Judy finally succumbed to age, and it was a very sad day when we said our farewells. I left the vet's and sobbed my heart out. Snowy also lived to a ripe old age, but passed away from several cancerous lumps that she had developed.

Both Judy and Snowy are buried on the hillside overlooking the road. To anyone contemplating robbing the place, (You have been warned).

CHAPTER 5 – ROXANNE

Our Beautiful Girl

Prior to the demise of our Blue Heelers, Lynnie and I purchased a baby Rottweiler from a friend at work. Lynnie went to look at the puppies and chose our beautiful girl, Roxanne, also known as Rocky and Roxy. We have never really been ones for show dogs, so the fact she had an undershot jaw just didn't really matter. The first thing we noticed about Rocky was she was gentle, very quiet, rarely barked, and on the whole she just wanted to be with us. From puppyhood onwards, she would play with the other dogs, but never get flustered or nasty.

The next door neighbours owned a Jack Russell terrier, and this four-legged terrorist would come over on a daily basis, and beat the crap out of Roxanne. Rocky was terrified of this dog to say the least, and this became a daily occurrence for at least 18 months. It was a rather pathetic sight to see a full grown Rottweiler racing at full gallop for the safety of her house, with this little snappy terrier hard on her heels. It wasn't till a year later that Roxanne suddenly realized she was heaps bigger than this terrier, and she could basically flatten this nasty interloper with one paw. After she discovered this we had to watch her, especially if there was Jack Russell in the neighbourhood.

As Rocky grew into a large beautiful-looking dog, we couldn't help but notice how gentle her nature was. She never appeared to be fussed by anything – if I was on the computer she would be curled up at my feet. Her favourite thing was riding in the car and one day, whilst down at the local shop, Roxy spotted a John Deere tractor. The driver had just jumped into the cabin, and imagine his surprise when Rocky jumped up beside him in the cabin, it mattered not to her what the mode of transport was.

Her other favourite thing was going for walks. She developed a funny habit at night: if she needed to go to the toilet she would come to my side of the bed, and place her paw gently next to my head, I would feel the downward pressure on the mattress and this strategy never failed to wake me. With this I would hop out of bed in a daze, amble out to the back sliding door, where I would let her out to do her business.

One night, the same ritual occurred, she pressed the mattress; I got out, ambled to the back door and waited, but no Rocky. When I went back to bed and put the light on, there was Rocky in my side of the bed, with her head on my pillow and Lyn had covered her up. I thought to myself no bloody way Jose, and dispatched her back to her own bed, I did however cover her with a blanket.

I have noticed over the years that all our dogs seem to wake me up; none of them ever woke Lynnie. Perhaps they felt as I do: I'm terrified of waking her before she has had her full 15 hours sleep. In fact when I leave for work in the mornings, I make a point of giving Lyn a kiss goodbye, but to do this I use a pair of lips on the end of a long stick – Lynnie is not a morning person.

The memory of Rocky getting me out of bed so she could climb in reminded me of another incident. I leave for work at 4 am most mornings and in winter time at Strath Creek it is really cold at this hour. I would jump out of bed, (I sleep in my birthday suit – perhaps that's too much information, but it is relevant to this next incident).

One particular morning, the alarm rang; I jumped out of bed, and then bending over at the end of the bed I was feeling around for my underpants. Unbeknownst to me Snowy was sleeping on the foot of our bed. Now I can assure you it's a horrible feeling when a dog licks your bottom, it was dark cold and totally unexpected. Needless to say, when I untangled myself from the ceiling fan, and put the light on Snowy was sent packing.

Snowy licks me bum

At four am in the morning, it's not the greatest feeling getting a surprise lick on the bottom, from one of the dogs. Needless to say once I untangled myself from the ceiling fan Snowy was sent packing Grrrrrr!

A short time after Judy passed away, my son and his fiancée turned up at our place. They had bought themselves a miniature Maltese Shiatsu cross Pomeranian. She was the tiniest of puppies we had ever seen; she could easily sit in the palm of your hand, and still have room to roll over. Lynnie and I both felt, as soon as we saw her, that she had been removed from her mother too soon. Sure enough a few days later, my son turned up, with the new puppy, and asked if Lynnie would consider nurturing her till she was a little more robust. As I stated earlier, Lynnie has a way with animals and raised the little puppy past the danger stage. The problem was we had had her for nearly three weeks, and eventually it dawned on my son and future daughter-in-law that they couldn't take the pup back off us because Lyn had become so close to her. Gawd! Not another bloody dog.

CHAPTER 6 – CASEY LEE

Don't Mess with Me!!

Attitude, attitude, attitude – in fact maybe that's what we should have called her: Attitude Lee. Unfortunately my son had already named her, so let me introduce you to Casey Lee.

When we first got Casey, she was almost black with beautiful sandy coloured highlights on her cheeks and paws. Her hair was so curly and her head so small, that it was hard to distinguish one end of her from the other. The first reaction from people was "oh! How cute, what sort of dog is she?" I would take great delight in telling them she was a Miniature Shiatsu, crossed with a Bulldog, and if the person asked really? I would reply, "Yes, she's a Bullshit" ha ha.

Well, small things amuse small minds after all, but Casey, despite her size, was loaded with attitude. In one part of the lounge room, well my music room really, we had floor to ceiling mirrors the full length of one wall. We were shocked and laughed ourselves silly when this tiny little mite spotted her own reflection. She went berserk, attacking the mirror and for one so small she put on a fearsome display.

Casey ruled the roost, and if the other dogs were playing she would be right in the middle of them, yapping and scooting all over the place. She would quite often get skittled by one of the larger dogs, and would immediately shoot off dragging her bum along the ground like a miniature dragster, straight under the house, and out of reach.

Casey immediately attached herself to me, and almost before I could sit down she would be on my knee. How many times over the years I've almost squashed her would be too many times to count. The funny thing about Casey is we still have her to this very day, her attitude is worse than it ever was, in fact she's a right cranky little bugger, and all our present dogs are terrified of her. Casey is now over 12 years old, and her breath would kill a brown dog at fifty paces – we call her "Death Breath" and have her booked in with the local vet to see what is causing this problem.

PS: $600 later, after having several teeth removed, and the rest de-scaled, also a truck load of antibiotics. Casey's death breath was cured.

A small footnote: Lynnie quite often takes Casey in the shower with her, she shampoos her, and uses lots of conditioner, and then spends an hour brushing her. I am not saying Casey is vain, but when she comes to show me, I have to make the biggest fuss of how lovely she looks, if I don't she does the doggy version of cracking the shits, she goes and gets in her bed and sulks for hours. Sheesh what next?

CHAPTER 7 – SPIDER LEE

The Enemy!!

Hang on, that's an unflattering picture of a cat? Yes you are right, but Spider was a big part of our lives for a lot of years. We got Spider as a tiny kitten when we moved to the little house at Flowerdale. It would be unfair of me to tell you about our family of dogs without including their arch enemy, Spider.

Spider got his name from his habit of hanging spread-eagled half-way up the fly screen. I recall one night we were sitting listening to music, the curtains were open and Spider was lying on the veranda. The front of our house was floor to ceiling windows right across the entire living room. As we sat looking at Spider he suddenly stood up, back arched and his fur standing on end; he looked to all intents and purposes like one of those cartoon cats that has just been released from the clothes dryer, a bit like a dandelion gone to seed.

We watched in fascination as a huge brush-tailed Possum climbed up the veranda post and then hopped onto the veranda. We opened the front door and Spider shot in at a rapid rate of knots, closely followed by the possum. This cheeky creature sat in the middle of our lounge room and had a small feast of apples and bananas that we hand fed to it. The time was well after midnight, I wasn't long home from nightshift and, needless to say, Lyn's mum was not impressed to hear Lynnie telling her we are hand-feeding a possum.

This particular photo of Spider was taken at Lyn's mum and dad's place, Spider had his leg in a cast, after he had gotten it caught in a swinging door..

It puts me in mind of a funny incident that happened the same day that Spider broke his leg. That same morning my son, Troy, was messing in Nan's fridge; he grabbed an egg that was a little out of his reach; needless to say he dropped it on the kitchen floor. Now a four year old is smart enough, and quick enough to clean up an egg yolk, but not quite clever enough to know to clean up the egg white as well.

Poor Nan came into the kitchen, completely unaware of the little accident. Nan was a tall lady, very prim and proper, very dignified in fact, but it is terribly hard to maintain one's composure as your legs go over your head. She came down with an almighty crash. Troy tried to disappear behind the fridge thinking he had just killed Nan. Nan survived with just the odd two or three bruises to show for her accident.

A four year old is smart enough to clean up an egg yolk, but not quite clever enough to clean up the egg white. Nan came into the kitchen prim and proper, in her usual elegant way, but it's hard to maintain one's composure as one's legs go over one's head.

I never really meant to include Spider in this story, but the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that he should get a mention.

One day in our dining area at Strath Creek, the whole family was relaxing, Nan and Pop were up for the weekend, and they were both sitting on a cane lounge suite that backed onto the window.

Sleeping on Nan's lap was the intrepid Spider; he was enjoying the petting and was purring contentedly. Right next to Nan was a gas fired heater, the front bottom half of this pulled down to access the heater controls, when, for no apparent reason, this hinged door suddenly fell open. It hit the floor with an ear splitting crash.

Spider went insane; he shot up the front of Nan onto the curtains. I don't quite know why I mention the fact that the curtains were made from lovely dark green crushed velvet. Spider scaled these drapes to the very top, then he let go.

He fell from a great height straight onto Nan's head, landing on all four paws, with (claws extended). Now the answer to the question, can a cat do a burn out on a mother in law's head? The answer is a resounding yes.

We were all horrified at the scene; Nan's hair was a lovely snow white in colour, though now she appeared to have a scarlet rinse. She was in lots of pain, her scalp shredded, but as I have mentioned earlier, this is one weird family, and the incident ended in fits of laughter.

Spider does a burnout

Poor Nan on the day Spider went mental, the bottom of the heater flew open with a resounding crash. Spider, who was asleep on nans lap at the time became airborne. He came down with all four sets of claws fully extended, and proceeded to do a massive burn out on nan's head. Poor nan turned into a cross between a flaming red head, and a strawberry blonde. We were all horrified, but as per usual it turned into fits of laughter.

Spider lived to the grand old age of 17, I never really liked him, and I swear Lynnie had twenty-two clones of Spider hidden around the house, because as fast as I put him out one door, he would come in another door at the opposite side of the house.

I also mention Spider because of another funny incident, we will never know if it was Spider's doing or one of the dogs. In our bedroom at Strath Creek we had a king sized water bed, the type that when I jumped in, Lyn would be launched off into the wardrobe, due to the small Tsunami I would create.

The water bed was heated, and very comfortable, on this particular night, Lynnie and I hopped into bed, we bade one another goodnight, and then headed off to the land of nod.

An hour or two later I woke up on my back, the back of my head was wringing wet; I thought, gee I am really sweating here, but on attempting to roll over, I realised we were drowning.

I jumped out of bed and woke Lynnie, she was in a deep coma at the time, and she didn't get up, she spent the entire night practically under water. I went and slept in the spare bedroom, and as I glanced back at Lynnie I was presented with the sight of Lynnie completely underwater except for her nose and mouth. Thankfully she survived the night, but had the look of a half sucked prune in the morning.

We never did find out if it was due to Spider testing his claws, or one of the dogs puncturing the water bed.

CHAPTER 8 – BEE LEE

Oh! Shit! The house is haunted

I have to mention this incident, it involves a dog, but one that we were sort of permanently minding. My sister-in-law, Kerry, was moving from Victoria to far North Queensland, and Lynnie and I were asked if we would mind looking after Kerry's dog until she had relocated. Kerrie's dog was an Old English sheepdog called Bee. Bee was a lovely placid dog; she was getting a bit long in the tooth, a little lame, and liked to spend her days lying on our front veranda. (Actually I'm referring to Bee the dog there, not Kerry my sister in law.)

We had Bee for quite a long time, though just how long I can't quite remember, however I feel I have to tell this story, as it presented as quite a peculiar interlude in our life living at Flowerdale.

Let me set the scene: our house was a fibro-cement building, set on the side of a steep hillside. We were completely surrounded by thick bush, tall mountain Ash and Wattle trees etc. Our house overlooked the lovely Silver Creek and Mount Disappointment State forest. The house consisted of our master bedroom, and one wide bedroom at the end of the house that we would later divide into two, a small makeshift kitchen with island bench, and a decent sized lounge room, complete with centrally located Pot Belly stove. The lounge room commanded a lovely view with floor to ceiling windows right across the front.

All this seems quite normal, but we had a period where things were anything but normal. My son Troy was about four or five years old at the time, he was a blonde happy-go-lucky little chap, but for a period of around two months things changed quite considerably. Troy started waking in the middle of the night, screaming the place down after suffering yet another nightmare about (The Chocolate Lady). He would race into our room and was quite inconsolable, he would retell the same story each time, he would say he was lying asleep when he would hear this noise: (how can I describe this?) the sound he described was a sort of hmmmmf hmmmf hmmmmf hmmmmf in a high pitched voice.

Most of the time the only way we could get Troy to settle down was to let him into our bed. This whole episode was quite upsetting, and we began to convince ourselves that Troy's bedroom was unusually cold. I must admit I was getting quite freaked out about the whole thing, and one day I went down to Troy's room and said to no-one in particular, "I do wish you would piss off and leave us alone".

The same scene was enacted night after night; Troy would come into our room screaming. He would tell the same thing night after night, the chocolate lady came in, she made that peculiar noise, and finally she peed on him? I think the last bit he actually made up.

This episode came to a bit of a head one day, as Troy was about to head down the passage to his room and I did a silly thing: I made the noise hmmmmf hmmmf hmmmmf. I kid you not Troy shot six inches of the floor, and came screaming towards me at a rapid rate of knots. I cuddled him and calmed him down, and explained it was me being silly, but it certainly taught me a valuable lesson.

A couple of nights later the usual thing happened: Troy came into our room screaming, I thought it's about time we got to the bottom of this. I took Troy by the hand and took him to the front door, I then showed Troy that the door was locked, nobody could get in, I then did the same with all the windows and the back door, and finally as I tucked him back into bed, I showed him Bee the sheep dog lying on the floor next to his bed. I then went on to tell him, if the chocolate lady tried to get in Bee would hear her and bark, so with Troy happy that Bee was his personal body guard he went off to sleep.

I then went off to make a cup of tea, I settled down to enjoy my cuppa and you cannot begin to imagine the terror that I felt when I heard the exact noise Troy had been describing, all the hair on my neck and arms stood up. I grabbed the fire wood poker and tiptoed back to his room. Flipping on the light switch I was ready to attack The Chocolate Lady. Sheer terror turned into giggles when I saw the real reason for all this trouble. There fast asleep right next to Troy's bed was Bee, she was in the midst of a dream, her legs were quivering, and yes she was making a high pitched noise hmmmf hmmmf hmmmmf, phew!

Troy had woken up by this time, and I took great lengths to explain to him, that the noise he was hearing was his body guard Bee dreaming. The chocolate lady part we could only put down to being the curtains in Troy's room, they had chocolate coloured leaves all over them, and the peeing part still remains unresolved. One relocated dog later, and the nightmares stopped.

This particular house I am talking about burnt to the ground on Friday the thirteenth of August 1982. We had the house insured but not the contents. The reason I mention this is Bee was asleep on the veranda; Lynnie and I were at the mother-in-law's for the night. After the police contacted us with the horrible news, we headed home to what used to be our home at Flowerdale. Bee the dog greeted us on the driveway, her bum was singed. I believe she would have been asleep on the veranda at the time, and narrowly escaped the fire.

A few years later, my wife Lynnie and I were sitting at the kitchen table of our new house, our neighbour Rose was there having a cup of coffee with us. On her knee was her three year old daughter Lee, Lynnie was sitting opposite Rose and she was holding our daughter Cara who was also three at the time. Both girls were sound asleep. I know not why but we were talking ghost stories at the time and we told Rose the Chocolate lady story, and of how we imagined Troy's room being unusually cold. All of a sudden both girls woke instantly, Rose's little girl shot off her knee, and ran straight into the wall, my daughter Cara was crying very loudly "I want my mummy, I want my mummy". The incident was so sudden and so bloody scary that Rose left immediately and never ever came back in our place again. This was all a bit freaky but at least this time we couldn't blame any of the dogs.

We later sold this house and bought the block of land next door, we lived in a little cottage as we set about building our dream house. Lynnie and I always wanted to try to build our own house, but without the assistance of any tradesmen; I mean actually physically build the house ourselves. We did achieve our dream, and built a lovely 24 square ranch style house, we lived here quite a number of years before relocating to Strath Creek where we built another house on sixteen acres.

The strange thing about all this is, during the horrific fires which wiped out a major part of Victoria, all trace of our ever living in Flowerdale was wiped out. The first house that burnt down in 1982, the second house that replaced that one, and also the house we so lovingly built. Now the whole area has returned to natural bush, even the little cottage we rented is gone.

CHAPTER 9 – RUSTY

The Bucket Boy

Our two Blue Heelers had long since departed, and my daughter wanted her own dog. Enter Rusty, although for obvious reasons, we very nearly called him Radar. He also had the nickname of Rusty Bucket.

Rusty was a very much switched-on dog, very smart, too smart at times. He and Rocky hit it off immediately, but Rusty and Casey was another thing altogether. I can honestly say that dogs can crack the shits big time, and this was the case with Casey when Rusty arrived on the scene.

Casey would get up each morning, greet Rocky with her tail wagging, but the minute Rusty approached she would dart under the nearest chair and snarl and growl and carry on – this went on for six solid weeks. One morning however she got up, greeted Rocky, went and sat under her chair, then, when Rusty came in, Casey suddenly walked out, tail wagging, licked Rusty's face, and that was the end of the shits. If a dog could be gobsmacked, well that was Rusty that morning. After that he was accepted, and they all got along famously.

I used to take Rusty for a ten kilometre walk on a daily basis and, because we lived out in the country, there was very little traffic, and so I could let him walk free. He was very obedient, and if he got a little too far ahead, I could call him and he would instantly return to my side. We would walk five kilometres out past the Strath Creek shop, and up the road towards a town called Broadford. I had driven five kilometres in the car so I knew when we had reached the 5 kilometre mark and as I approached a certain driveway, I would make Rusty sit, we would watch for traffic then we would cross over and walk back on the other side. I used to take Rusty's lead with me just in case I needed to have him at heel; sometimes local farmers would drove their sheep up the road. If this happened we would need to get off the shoulder of the road, because there could be up to a thousand sheep, they would take up the entire road both sides, and the nature strips. Chasing the sheep would be the farmer's kelpie dogs, and the farmers would be on Quad bikes or in four wheel drives.

I recall a local farmer giving me two hundred baby pine trees to plant. Lynnie and I spent an entire day planting these trees on our huge nature strip. When we had finished we stood back and admired our handiwork, then watered the lot in. The very next day a local farmer drove his sheep up our road, the sheep took up both sides of the road and the nature strips, and as the sheep walked past our pines, they dutifully plucked every single one, without exception, out of the ground. We spent hours replanting every one of them, and the end result was the whole lot died with the exception of one single tree. About a year later we decided to transplant this tree into our garden as a Christmas tree, and lo and behold that one died too. Ah! Well, shit happens.

Having Rusty's lead with me was useful also, because there was a certain part of our walk that took us straight past nesting plovers. These bloody birds would swoop right in your face, and give you a nasty turn if you weren't expecting it. The funny thing about plovers is, they will defend their eggs to the death, yet when the chicks hatch, it's like they no longer care. I worked for a while at the local Army Barracks at Puckapunyal; two plovers had decided to lay their egg on a lawn, right at the entrance to the Tank Battalion. It looked quite strange because this egg was just sitting on the lawn, the Army made everyone slow down and give these nesting birds a wide berth, until the egg hatched, then it was business as usual.

During our walk together when I would pass near to these birds, I would swing Rusty's lead over my head like a helicopter and this would keep the plovers at a safe distance. Also at certain times of the year when the local magpies would be nesting, it would be a bit of an ordeal going for a walk, because the magpies would swoop and fearlessly defend their territory.

When I say Rusty was switched on, my daughter and I observed him one day: he had picked up my daughter's horse-riding crop, Rocky was trying to grab the crop as well, but we watched as Rusty would walk behind a tree, poke the riding crop out at one side, and as Rocky would lunge he would quickly pull back then slowly ease the riding crop out the other side of the tree. It was very amusing to see him teasing Rocky in this way.

Another thing Rusty loved to do was to hunt mice, he was an avid mouser. Rusty would go to a piece of old corrugated iron and he would know there would be a mouse underneath it. He had a classic way of standing when waiting for me to lift the tin, his ears would be pricked and slightly forward, his tail in a rigid arc, typical heeler, and he would have one of his front paws cocked off the ground ready to spring. The minute I lifted the tin he would spring as quick as lightning and that would be the end of the mouse.

One day Rusty was standing in his familiar pose, next to an old tyre and rim, this rim was next to my big 60 foot shed. I walked over with the intentions of getting Rusty all revved up, he held his pose, and I said "ready Rust?", and he stayed poised not moving a muscle. I placed my hand inside the rim, and once again said "get ready Rust", and still he remained absolutely stock-still, and with that final comment I lifted the tyre and rim to give him access to the mouse. He didn't budge, and when I looked down I found there was a large tiger snake curled up under the rim. Bloody hell, how close did I come to getting bitten? I had actually put my hand inside the rim right above the snake. Usually I would not hurt a snake – they are protected after all – but this snake immediately tried to get into my big shed, and I had to prevent this. This was just one of many encounters with snakes on our property.

I will digress for just a moment, and tell you about a very very close encounter I had with a large brown snake. I had been for my usual walk, but this time I didn't take Rusty with me. It was a very hot day and as I approached my place, I decided to take a shortcut up a small hill to my driveway.

Usually I would walk all the way up the road then turn onto the driveway, but for reasons known only to myself, I took the shortcut. As I approached the top of the hill, I had just thought to myself, I should have stayed on the road; today is an ideal day for snakes. The grass was long and very dry, it was like straw really, and no sooner had the thought passed my mind, than I stepped right in the middle of the back of a very large brown snake. The following scene would have made a very interesting 'Funniest Home Video'. I was wearing thongs at the time and shorts, and as my body weight pressed down on the snake I rolled my ankle, and immediately got a severe cramp in my calf. Fortunately for me, as the snake reared up level with my private parts, it's head just happened to be facing away from me, and as my foot released the pressure on the snake, it shot forward so fast, that I didn't see where it went. Needless to say, all future trips proceeded via my driveway only.

I hate to think what would have happened had the snake been facing towards me when it reared up; I think I soon would have found out who my friends are, and applying a pressure bandage would have been an interesting event.

• • •

Rusty's short modelling career

It's quite amazing as the years pass, some of the little things that slip your mind. I had a business idea, a silly idea perhaps but well who knows? At the time we had a huge in ground pool installed; I had a chat with the guys who had done the installation. We had always planned that our dogs would get to swim in the pool as well as us.

The chap said to me "it's not such a good idea, because chemicals from within the dog's fur play havoc with the pool chemicals". He went on to say that what with the pool being a saltwater pool, he would not recommend allowing the dogs in the water. He did go on to say however, "that if we did let the dogs in the pool, then he advised putting a nylon hose in the entry to the pool overflow reservoir". This would help catch any floating hair.

'DING' my business idea kicked in, I sat down and had a chat with Lynnie and my daughter Cara to get their thoughts on my idea. My idea, aaaah! Where to begin? Bathing costumes for dogs!! We talked about the idea, how would we go about it, and what about making a prototype?

I also put the idea past the pool installer; he thought it was a ripper idea. He went on to say "with most new pool owners that is the first question asked. Can the dogs go in the pool? He then offered to display our first costumes in his pool showroom. What a great start, all we needed now was the costume.

The idea for the costume was to use fluorescent coloured Lycra material, it would have four legs, that would leave only the paws exposed, it would fit up around the neck leaving the dog's face and ears exposed, and also incorporate a piece that fit over the tail. Crazy ideas flew back and forth; each costume would be in super bright colours, with black paw prints as the motif, perhaps Hang Four as the brand name?

The original idea was that the dog would have his four legs placed in the costume first, then the body and neck of the costume would wrap around his back. Velcro would be used for a quick fastener right along the back and neck. What a marvellous idea, what could possibly go wrong? Rusty was very co-operative he stood perfectly still while we took his measurements, his tail wagging ten to the dozen.

Our main problem was, we had no Lycra material, and also had no Velcro, but what the heck: this was just a prototype to see how the concept looked. My daughter Cara had a full roll of material, not Lycra, but really a T Shirt material more of dense cotton really. We figured we could cut out the pattern from this, then using safety pins instead of Velcro for the time being we could piece together a crash-test working costume.

My wife and daughter worked together, one cutting out the pattern, the other pinning the various pieces together, and then back inside and onto the sewing machine. I must confess the finished item didn't look overly flattering, but what the heck, this was just a test after all.

Rusty behaved very well as his Olympic style costume was fitted, we placed his legs in the appropriate places, the costume was pulled up around his body neck and tail, then the whole thing was fastened together using the safety pins.

What could possibly go wrong? I hear you say? Oh! For the use of a video camera, the prizes on Funniest Home Video are not to be sneezed at.

We threw Rusty's ball into the centre of the pool and he obligingly launched himself after it. Aaagh! So that is what can go wrong: as Rusty swam towards his tennis ball, he was swimming deeper and deeper in the water. By the time he reached the ball, he panicked and turned around, ball forgotten. It was now a life and death struggle to get to the side, and as Rusty touched the wall with just his nose and ears above water, we dragged him out.

Poor Rusty, the material had soaked up gallons of water, the legs had stretched at least two feet beyond the tips of his paws, and the bottom of the body sagged on the ground. He couldn't even hold his tail erect, and bearing in mind Rusty was a very red coloured dog, I swear as we laughed and laughed, he went even redder with embarrassment.

Ah! Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, the idea is not dead in the water, but we have put it on the back burner for future development.

Poor Rusty, his modeling career was both brief and traumatic for him. The swimming costume material had a few flaws. First it doubled in size once it got wet; it also soaked up water and became very heavy and took on the swimming capabilities of a submarine. Ah! Well, Poor Rusty, it looks like its back to the drawing board.

Later on down the track Rusty contracted a rare form of Tropical Mange, this is a disease normally associated with wombats, and it really took its toll on Rusty. Lots of his hair fell out, and it affected his feet quite badly, the skin between his toes turned black and was quite painful. Hundreds of dollars later at the local vet, and we finally managed to rid him of this awful disease, using tonics and medicated soaps.

We decided to take all the dogs for an outing to the local surf beach at a place called Kawana. We all piled out of the car with the doggies on their leads, out onto the beach, and then we made the fateful mistake of letting Xena off the leash. She immediately took off up the beach, and kept running and running until she had disappeared from view. We both thought well that's that as far as Xena was concerned, we had no hope of catching up with her.

Fortunately she finally decided to come back.

Meanwhile Rocky and Rusty were having a grand old time in the surf. Rusty was biting the waves and we would find out to our horror on the way home he was also swallowing gallons of sea water. We all piled into the car for the trip home when it happened, Rusty got diarrhoea, all over the back seat, he was like a red fire hose, and my poor bloody car ponged for months afterwards despite all efforts to clean it.

Prior to getting our swimming pool, we would all jump in the car and drive the 11 kilometres to the local beach but what we didn't know was, two minutes from our place was a beautiful fresh water dam called Ewan Maddock Dam. I would pass this every day on my way to and from work. One day I decided to drive into the car park to have a bit of a look. As I pulled up two bikini clad females came over the hill. I asked if there was a place to swim nearby. They said "yes, just over the hill". When I crested the hill I was met with a beautiful sight, a beautiful swimming area, marked out with a rope and floating buoys. I immediately drove home and took Lynnie, the dogs, and my daughter, Cara, to this magnificent swimming area. As we paddled into the water we found the bottom had a sort of rug covering so that we didn't get muddy, and the water was lukewarm. The dogs had a ball, and it was here we realized Rocky was losing her eyesight. I threw a stick into the water for Rocky to retrieve; we were on the outside of the swimming area and Rocky swam right past the stick then grabbed this huge rope that marked out the swimming area, she then nearly drowned dragging the whole thing back with her. The locals had a good laugh watching her.

Another time we went to a different swimming hole, and it was here we discovered Xena couldn't swim. Rusty was in the water swimming back and forth, and Xena was bounding along barking at him; she came to a rocky outcrop and stepped off. Unfortunately for Xena it was about 10 feet deep here, and she quickly disappeared from view. When she surfaced

she was coughing and spluttering, and trying to swim in the same way as her predecessor, Nero; this involved both front paws sticking vertical out of the water, how pathetic. International rescue had to drag her out of the water.

Rocky was getting progressively worse; she couldn't manage the stairs at all, and she was starting to snuffle a lot. We took her to the vet only to find, after he had taken X-Rays that she had a tumour growing between her eyes. The vet advised us to take her home and make her comfortable, and also he advised us to be ready to say our goodbyes. He warned that she may start to bleed from the nose, because the tumour was eating through the bone. The vet obviously knew what he was talking about because it was a very short time later that his prediction came true.

CHAPTER 10 – XENA

Our Doggie Family was almost complete

My lovely daughter Cara had heard from someone that there was a Great Dane free to a good home situated on a farm in Kilmore. (Here we go again!) Both Lynnie and I said "no more dogs", but Cara talked me into at least going to have a look.

We arrived at the property and we were greeted by a well-fed Rottweiler, but as we looked over to the right, there, tethered to a tractor tyre by a heavy metal chain, stood Xena. Cara and I were both horrified by what we saw. Xena was a Boston Great Dane, these dogs are normally black and white in colouring, but Xena in the places were the black should be, was a rusty brown colour. She was emaciated, every rib showing, every notch in her tail clearly stood out, she really looked pathetic.

RUSTY, XENA, ROXY and CASEY

My first instinct was to walk away, but I said to Cara, "we can't just leave her like this", and I asked the lady if Xena had been wormed. The lady replied "we don't believe in worming dogs". I then asked had Xena been given any needles for distemper and Parvo Virus. We received the same reply. I asked how she acquired Xena and she replied "we rescued her from the dog pound". We had to believe what we had been told, but the bit about the needles and the worming made us a little suspicious. We loaded Xena into the car, and took her straight to the vet at Broadford. On presenting Xena to the vet, the vet looked very angry and asked "how has this dog gotten into this condition?" We explained how we got her, and then I asked the vet if we could save her. The vet said it was a 70% chance that she wouldn't survive, and we said, "We would like to try", but the vet was concerned that because Xena was so emaciated her kidneys may have been compromised. She said" due to the poor condition of the dog, the pigment had gone from her skin, hence the brown colouring of her fur". We had Xena wormed on the spot, and also had her vaccinated for all the horrible doggy diseases. Then we headed for home to introduce Xena to Lynnie.

Lynnie was horrified when she first met Xena; she was certainly presented with a huge challenge to turn this dog around. Xena fitted in well with the other dogs, and the only one who had a bit of a problem with her was Rusty. He was a bit miffed at the new arrival, and steered clear for the first couple of weeks. The day we got Xena was quite a hot day, and I decided to take all the dogs up to our dam; all the dogs loved to swim and splash around. As soon as we got to the dam, all the dogs, with the exception of Xena, immediately jumped in and started swimming. Xena meanwhile bounded in and out of the edge of the dam, barking and wagging her pathetic tail, she never ventured in too far, but was obviously pleased to be free from a chain, and allowed to run free. I called Lynnie to come up and have a look. You really wouldn't think Xena was the same dog. I said to Lyn "this is the real dog, if we slowly fatten her up she should turn into a beautiful dog".

That evening Lynnie made Breville sandwiches: these are sandwiches with a filling toasted in a Breville sandwich maker. Lyn made me two with red hot melted cheese in them. As I went to take my first bite, Xena took the red hot sandwich pretty much out of my mouth in one huge gulp – surely she must have burnt her oesophagus or her stomach it was so hot? Xena and I were off to a bad start and I said to Lynnie, "if this happens again Xena will be on her bike".

We arrived home one evening to an amazing sight, as we opened the front door we saw masses of white feathers all through the hallway, we followed the trail to our bedroom to be greeted with the sight of Xena completely covered from head to toe with feathers. She was lying on the tattered remains of our Doona with an innocent look on her face. We couldn't really go crook at her, because she had had such a hard life beforehand, but this was Xena's third Doona now, so Lynnie did put a muzzle on her for just one day, and Xena never ripped anything up after this.

Xena had a lovely nature and was placid, but on several occasions she copped a bit of a hiding from Rusty. I think perhaps he thought himself the leader of the pack, and also the fact that Xena towered over him tended to make him a bit nervous. Xena tolerated Rusty's outbursts for a while, but one day she had had enough and clobbered him. Rusty later tried one more time, and once again he copped a biffing – after that he left Xena alone.

Xena's main thing in life was mealtime, she would eat her dinner as if there was no tomorrow, gulping down every last morsel. It would take quite a while before she could actually walk away half-way through her meal.

Lynnie rose to the challenge, and Xena started putting on weight: she filled out, her ribs disappeared, her tail was covered with a healthy layer of fat, and the great thing was her coat was starting to become a glossy black, also her white markings started to shine. Xena had huge ears and we almost renamed her Dumbo. Her snout was very long; I used to take great delight in saying to Xena, "hey! What's with the long face?" She had a constant worried look on her face, and sometimes we called her Xena the Teenage Worrier.

I would play fight with her, and she would love it, but never for more than a minute or so, then she would calm down and walk away; the reason for this became clear later. Xena had huge doleful eyes, and one eye had a small defect. I don't know if this is what made her able to watch television, but this was one of her favourite pastimes. She had certain favourite TV shows, firstly Funniest Home Videos, and another show called Harry's Practice (this was a show about a vet). She also loved any show containing native African people, and she would watch the entire show. Her other favourite movie was Ice Age, it looked very funny to see this huge dog, parked in front of the TV set, and she would not move.

Later on we bought a new house and installed a movie room with a huge screen on the wall, and we would all settle down to watch a movie, and there would be Xena front and centre with her big boof-head in the way. She also loved to watch me on the computer; she would sit behind me, with her head resting on my shoulder, and avidly watch the screen. It's funny how some dogs can watch TV and others don't seem able to. Xena developed the typical Dane habit of giving love nips when she was happy, nipping up your arm, like eating corn on the cob.

Xena fitted in beautifully with the other dogs, apart from her minor skirmishes with Rusty in the early days.

As with all our dogs Xena had her own bed, in our bedroom, and Lynnie had fitted coats for all the dogs; I sometimes think they were better treated than I was. We have always treated our dogs as one of the family, basically the same as our kids really; perhaps this is why some of them developed their funny personalities.

About ten years ago, Lynnie and I decided on a bit of a sea change; we sold our property at Strath Creek, and headed north to Queensland, to a place on the Sunshine Coast. We drove two separate cars, and set off on a 1,600 Kilometre drive.

Lynnie was driving one car, with Little Casey Lee sitting next to her. I was driving the second car with Rusty, Rocky, and Xena alongside of me. Rusty did not travel well in the car, so the vet prescribed half a Valium tablet for him.

The day we set off Lynnie gave him the Valium, but gave him a full tablet. Rusty slept 90% of the way to Queensland, and when he did come round his eyes were both looking outwards from his face; I believe the term is skein-eyed; poor guy had a very rough trip. The worst part of the drive was that all three dogs in my car were farting, the entire atmosphere was gone, and I spent most of the trip with my head hanging out the driver's side window. At the first stop to let the dogs stretch their legs, I pleaded with Lynnie to swap cars for a while, but she flatly refused. I arrived in Queensland suffering severe methane poisoning.

The house we purchased on the Sunshine Coast was a pretty double-storey house with two completely self contained living areas, the gardens were beautiful, very tropical, palm tree and flowering bushes out the front, and the back garden was like a miniature tropical rain forest. We fell in love with the place straightaway. The dogs started to settle in, but Rocky was having a little trouble negotiating the stairs to our living area. Xena on the other hand loved the upstairs; we had a huge veranda that offered sweeping views of the neighbourhood. The funny thing with Xena was she was very comfortable upstairs on the veranda; it was like her own comfort zone, and for the entire three years that we lived in this house Xena would go out in the garden to do her business, but as soon as she was finished she would race back up the stairs.

We had bought in a little township called Mooloolah, in a street called Dorson Drive. Neighbours asked why we had bought here, and soon told us that the nickname for Dorson drive was 'Divorcing Drive'; apparently a lot of the people from that street ended up going their separate ways. Fortunately for Lynnie and I, we managed to go the distance.

After we had been on the Sunshine Coast for 12 months we had a huge in-ground swimming pool installed: 40 feet long by 20 feet wide. We loved it but the dogs loved it more. Rusty would be in the pool at every given chance, and Rocky enjoyed being able to take the weight off her back legs – she had started to get really bad arthritis, and it started to get to the point where we had to carry her up and down the stairs, poor girl.

• • •

I think the worst thing about owning a dog is their short lifespan. Rocky was about 10 years old when we had to let her go. It was heart breaking as we both loved her dearly.

I penned a bit of a poem about her (Lynnie never wanted to read it), and I still shed a tear when I do:

### OUR BEAUTIFUL GIRL

Oh! What a terribly sad sad day,  
The day our beautiful girl went away,  
No longer sitting at my feet,  
When she passed, she took a part of me,  
She rarely barked, and never growled,  
Just so happy to be around,  
Her beautiful nature, never changed,

Take me driving in the car,  
Let's go for a walk, no matter how far,  
To the river, or to the beach,  
She was always there, within arms reach,  
But time it takes a terrible toll,  
Her limbs became sore as she grew old,  
No more racing off down the track,  
Now she barely manages, just to the gate and back.

I recall coming home from work each day,  
The dogs would be waiting for me at the door,  
Madness and mayhem would then ensue,  
Jostling, one another, for attention too.  
Even little short-arse would push her way in,  
Pat me first, don't worry about them,  
And sitting at the back, waiting patiently,  
There sat our girl awaiting her turn.

Pushed out of the way, by the crazy gang,  
She would bide her time till the madness calmed,  
Then she would waddle over to me,  
Her little stump wiggling, oh so happy,  
She would take up her place,  
Where she wanted to be,  
Curled up and contented, at my feet.

Time stands still for neither man nor beast,  
And there is a saying that springs to mind,  
"Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind."  
As the tears run freely down my face,  
I look into those loving eyes,  
Though our lives won't be the same,  
We can't let our beautiful girl be in pain,  
With a tearful hug, we say our goodbyes,  
To our beautiful girl,  
We'll miss you,  
It's time.

CHAPTER 11 – BUBBLE

Please make welcome Miss Annie Bubble Lee

Oh Dear! Where shall I begin? Please say hello to our latest pooch, Little Annie Lee. That's her real name but we call her Annie Bubble, or Bubble for short.

She also has another nickname Triple F, – roughly translated means 'Flat Faced Fu*#er'.

We named this little vegemite Annie after my Mum. In reality my mother would have had a fit had she known we would name a dog after her; my mother always said "I wouldn't like to see a dog come to harm, but I don't bloody want one".

The funny thing about this was, our dogs always made a beeline for her. The little one, Casey, would hop up on the chair and sit on my Mum's knee much to my Mum's disgust, and she would always say in her lovely Lancashire accent, "eee, ark at this one". Roughly translated this meant, 'have a look at this cheeky bugger'.

Another dog you may say, why? "Buggered if I know" I would reply. My lovely wife Lynnie had been going through something of a torrid time. She developed some serious medical problems ending with a mild heart attack – you may say not the best of times to be getting a new puppy.

Yet there is also a saying "laughter is the best medicine" and this new addition certainly provides plenty of that. As you can see we have had lots of dogs, all different in their personalities, but this latest one takes the cake by far.

We had discussed getting a new puppy, and it was Lynnie who suggested we get a pedigree Boxer. I was always of the impression that Boxers were a bit dippy, and hard to control – well the dippy bit is right, but Annie is quite smart and, to my amazement, trainable.

We had gone online looking for a new Boxer pup; we found one that hadn't been born yet, advertised by a breeder, in a suburb called Hoppers Crossing. We rang the lady and were told the pups were due in 6 weeks time, priced at $1,000 each. She took our name and phone number, and assured us we would have the pick of the litter. She told us to call on a certain date to arrange to come see the new pups.

When the day arrived we rang the lady, only to be told the pups were all sold. I could have cheerfully reached down the phone and strangled the woman, but never mind, perhaps it was not meant to be, for had this happened we never would have made the acquaintance of Annie Bubble.

My daughter Cara and I went back online and contacted a breeder in a place called Allansford, near the seaside resort of Warrnambool, a good four hours drive from my place. The lady there said she still had three pups left, all girls, and assured us she would keep one for us. The difference here was that these pups were $500 each, pedigreed but without papers – this was fine as we had no intention of getting into the showing side of things.

I set off on this little 8 hour round trip, next to me on the seat I had a small puppy bed, complete with snuggly blanket. When we rang the puppy's owners, she told us that her bitch had given birth to 10 puppies, and that both parents would be there for me to see. The trip was a long one, and by the time I got to Allansford two of the other puppies had already been sold. One had been promised to a family in Tasmania, and the other one was to be flown to Perth in Western Australia the following day. Finally I arrived at Allansford and was greeted at the door by the owner, and she showed me round to the backyard and here I was greeted by mum and dad Boxers. I was quite surprised, the dad was greying around his muzzle, but both mum and dad were only small boxers; I thought they would be much taller and stockier. They both had a beautiful nature that was apparent immediately. This is a good start I thought. Then I met the Bubble, what a funny looking creature she was.

She looked as if she had stepped off the set of Lord of the Rings – I almost expected her to say "my preciousssssssss". She was racing around with her two sisters, play-fighting, and pretty serious at that. I thought perhaps she had maybe eaten her other siblings. The owners were very nice people, and she sort of gave me a bit of a clue what to expect as the new owner of a Boxer pup. She went on to inform me that Boxers are very lactose-intolerant, and to be careful in this area; she showed me the puppy food to buy, and with all the formalities over, it was time for the long drive home.

I put Annie in the little doggy bed, and she curled into a tiny ball and immediately fell asleep; I thought what a good start. I stopped half way home to let Annie have a stretch, she ambled around the park, did her business, and then we continued on our way.

Lynnie took to Annie immediately, despite Lynnie feeling very unwell – we could see that Annie was just the tonic that she needed.

One of the things about Annie that surprised me was how quickly she fitted in to the family – she never once cried nor showed any signs of missing her mum. At the time we first got Annie, my daughter Cara was still living at home and she had her dog Allie with her. Allie is a Boxer cross Staffordshire Terrier and she has a very placid nature. Little Annie took to her immediately, and Allie seemed a little surprised that she seemed to have given birth to a puppy overnight without knowing it. My daughter Cara also had another dog called Zoe; Zoe was a Border collie cross Kelpie. Zoe was a very intense dog, highly intelligent, and loaded with strange afflictions. Annie's first instinct was to attack Zoe and try to rip her to pieces. Allie immediately stepped in between them and calmed things down, it was lovely to see. Allie seemed to have taken on the mantle of one of our earlier dogs Judy; Allie became the new policeman.

ALLIE, CASEY and ZOE

Little Annie was a bundle of mischief, into everything and so funny to look at with her little squashed up nose. She was all legs, long spindly things, and this little thin body, and tiny little squashed in face. Lynnie initially wanted a Boxer with a white front; Annie is mainly a rust coloured brown with a tiny bit of white. We wanted a Boxer without a tail, but it soon became apparent that a Boxer should have a tail, and we are glad she hadn't had her tail docked. It is illegal to dock the tails of dogs here now, I believe only in Western Australia it is legal to dock them.

I feel I must give a quick run down on Zoe who has since left us and gone up to Queensland, with my daughter's former friend. To describe Zoe I would have to say she should really have been a working dog; she has lots of strange traits. For example if Allie would be lying down Zoe would stand very close to her watching her intently, staring in fact, staring so hard we would have to call her to distract her. If we played in the garden, Zoe would run round us in circles, and always clockwise never anti-clockwise.

We bought a very large circular trampoline; Zoe watched Cara bouncing on the trampoline, and within minutes joined Cara, and quickly learned how to bounce very high. This was funny enough for starters, but Zoe watched Cara do a forward flip, and, to our amazement, Zoe did an enormous bounce and flipped over and back onto her feet. We at first thought it was a fluke, but soon realized this was a very clever dog.

When my daughter Cara was living on a nearby farm Zoe showed us some other interesting traits. Cara could throw a basketball off the veranda; it would roll way down a hillside and into a gully. Quick as lightening Zoe would race off after the ball then using her nose she would edge the ball all the way back up the hill, then up a narrow ramp and back onto the veranda, back to Cara's feet. If no one would throw the basketball for her, Zoe would nudge the ball into the horse's paddock, and push the ball into the front legs of the horse as it walked; she never tired of this, and really thought the horse was playing with her.

Another day it was very cold, and Cara had the wood heater burning, Zoe came in through her doggy door, in her mouth she had a pine cone, and she walked over and dropped it into the wood box. Cara mucking around said "Zoe go get another one", quick as a flash Zoe was out the door, and repeated the act, this turned out to be terrific because in no time at all the dog filled up the wood box. This became one of Zoe's favourite pastimes, and saved Cara a lot of hard work.

On the other hand Allie too had some peculiar traits: for instance she loved to join us in the Exercise room. It got to the point with Allie that if we said "do you want to go for a walk?" she would immediately go and jump on the walking machine.

Another favourite thing of Allie's is to open presents, especially at Christmas time. We would pile all the people's presents under the tree, and mixed in amongst these would be presents for the doggies.

Christmas morning the grandkids would be over, going crazy looking for their presents, and Allie would wait very eagerly for Cara to say "Allie go get your presents" and, like lightening, Allie would dive in, and we don't know how but she would get only her own presents, she would rip the present open, have a quick play then straight back under the tree looking for another one.

Allie would get so excited opening Christmas presents that one year as my son Troy was about to open his present, Allie grabbed it out of his hand and started tearing the wrapping off, ha ha. Troy was not impressed.

I digressed a little, and now come back to Little Annie Bubble. Bubble firmly attached herself to Allie; she would sit on Allie. We found this amazing – if Allie lay down, Bubble would sit squarely on Allie's head, or lay across Allie's body, and rarely sat on the floor. We couldn't believe how patient Allie was with the puppy; she put up with so much from her. Everything Allie did, Bubble copied and we feel this is why Bubble was so easy to train, for we felt Allie did most of the training for us.

Bubble's nickname came about very early in the piece. I found that when I came home from work I would be greeted at the door by little Annie, and I noticed she didn't just greet me but she positively bubbled, her back-side would be going crazy, her back would arch, she would bounce and snuffle and go positively crazy, hence the nickname Bubble.

Zoe and Allie as a pup

Little Annie Bubble has some very strange traits that she likes to do: first of all we have a sort of chess set on a coffee table in the lounge, and it consists of wooden figures of dogs and cats. Bubble cannot walk past this without, using her little snub nose to move these figures, she does this three or four times a day, pushes them one way, later she pushes them back etc. Another peculiar trait she has is waking me up when she needs to go outside. Our other dogs have just come up and either nuzzled me, placed a paw on the bed, or in Xena's case, she used to just stand and stare at me one inch from my face, quite disconcerting to be woken up like that.

Annie on the other hand does none of the above; she has a set thing she does every day. Her first move is to go to a washing basket in the bedroom, she uses her little flat nose to flip the lid up and down, the noise usually wakes me up. If this fails she goes to plan B; this involves a CD rack, she runs her little flat nose all the way up the CD'S which makes a continuous clicking noise. If this fails plan C always works: she goes to the telephone and flips the receiver in its cradle, this never fails.

The part that annoys me is that none of our dogs has ever attempted to wake Lynnie (though Lynnie is pretty scary first thing)!

One of little Bubble's endearing traits is that she never fails to get up in the morning to see me off to work. I rise at 3:30am each day, and Bubble ambles out, helps me eat breakfast, and as I set off for work, she toddles off back to bed.

Bubble has another very strange little thing she loves; she goes out in the garden and selects a pebble. She plays with this throwing it all over the house, then when she has finished; she stashes the pebble under the nearest piece of furniture. Every now and then we are forced to look under every piece of furniture and return dozens of pebbles back to the garden. Our main concern here was that Bubble may have been swallowing them, so we warn visitors to stay away from her back end in case she farts – we don't want someone getting shot.

One of Bubble's funny traits is the Full Face Kiss! I once said to Bubble "give daddy a kiss". Immediately she pressed her little flat nose squarely on mine, and stayed there. Lyn was in fits of laughter, and I thought I wonder how long she will remain like this? Bubble won – I had to turn away, she was not moving. I have always found with dogs if you look them directly in the eye, they nearly always turn away but not Bubble she just remains fixed looking straight in your eye.

Another thing if you take a mouthful of air and blow in Bubbles face she never turns away but pushes harder on your face – what a funny little dog she is.

I recall when she was about one year old, I was sitting on our sofa, it is a large white leather L-shaped sofa. I could see Annie Bubble out the back, basically going berserk running as fast as she could around the garden. All of a sudden she shot in through the music room door, into the lounge where she leaped through the air and landed sideways on the back of the couch. She then ran sideways around the couch like a motorbike on the wall of death.

Her other favourite thing is her bean bag; she has a bright red bean bag that she loves. But when she goes to sit down she has to spin in circles to get the bean bag comfortable. The problem here is she goes faster and faster and faster until she looks quite manic. The funny part is when she stops she looks totally confused and this has us in fits of laughter.

One other endearing habit is her full-on cuddle; she quite often climbs her paws up the front of me, hooking her legs over my shoulders, she then presses her face against mine, this sounds quite cute, but it's hard to get out of.

• • •

I really cannot imagine living in a house without pets; our dogs have given us untold amounts of laughter, unrelenting love, and if humans wear their hearts on their sleeves, well, dogs wear their hearts on their tails, and any other part they can get to move.

It matters not if it's just been a five minute trip to the shop, or out all day at work, the welcome is always the same: jeez Mum and Dad, we have missed you so much, don't ever leave us for such a long time again.

We have had countless pets over the years, cats, lizards, even snakes, and lots of horses, but for sheer pleasure, YOU JUSTCAN'T BEAT A DOG.

Thanks to all our WOOFERS

• • •

The Author all typed out

Grab a cup of tea, sip a glass of wine, or just sit back and relax.  
I invite you to enjoy a true story about our canine friends:  
Sometimes funny, often unbelievable, at other times downright ridiculous.  
Join the Lee family in their quest to become bankrupt.  
Is it wrong to name a dog "Direct Debit"?  
Can a dog be charged with rape?  
Would you like to learn an amazing way to cure a Tapeworm?  
My story starts with the tale of two Great Danes,  
Firstly Charlie (the black Great Dane rapist),  
Followed by Nero, the gentle (but somewhat clumsy) giant.  
I then go on to write about other pet dogs we have owned over the years.  
Also included are a few lines about the arch enemy, Spider the cat.  
Is it possible for a cat to do a burn out on the Mother-in-Law's head?  
I know not if the madness and mayhem is peculiar to my family,  
But I am sure that fellow pet owners will get a good laugh at our expense.  
Please read and enjoy

John Lee
