Boswell left us yesterday, he joins a family who already have a std poodle and an elderly goldie, he is such a smart pup and so eager to please. Normally when the pups leave at 8 weeks I find it fairly easy to wave them goodbye, having cleared up after them for several weeks, spent hours playing and socialising with them, and getting up at the crack of dawn to start their day, I am ready to get our home life back to normal again. However, once you have just one pup left they become a real member of the family, you see them as an individual, start doing basic training with them and start to see the dog that they will mature into, this makes it much harder to say goodby, no matter how good the home they are going to is, so today I find myself missing my little shadow, missing the fact that he could nip through the gate without me catching him and missing him offering behaviours for rewards. I have to remind myself that he will be relishing all the individual attention that he will now be getting, and the fact that I couldn't devote the time he deserves to be spent on him. So along with all the other pups that have left Itzapromise, I take pleasure in the knowledge that he is making his new family happy.
Just as a point of interest, you can see how the colour on these pups differs from a black, in the 2nd photo, not only is his face pale, his coat has a definite brown tinge (usual in blue pups)
At the beginning of the week we lost a much loved member of our household, Attila the Hen, Attila (a light sussex chicken) joined us 8 1/2 years ago with a brood of chicks, so we must assume she was at least a year old when we took her on, in the time that she was with us she proved to us just how delightful chickens can be, not only was she a very regular layer but she also reared a brood of chicks or ducklings every year, because she was so friendly she would frequently bring her babies into the house to show them off (we eventually had to fence the chickens off in the garden, as housetraing a chicken is not a task I am up to!!), she would 'help' me when I was digging the veg plot, virtually sitting on the fork whilst I dug to ensure she got any worms and would come running whenever anyone went up the garden. Towards the end of last week I noticed that although she came running for table scraps, she wasn't actually eating any, she just encouraged the chick that she had hatched this spring to grab anything tasty. By the beginning of this week, although she appeared happy and was still scratching around the garden, she had dropped a huge amount of weight and was starving herself. Normally I am fairly practical with my hens and a friend comes round to dispatch them and then feeds them to his ferrets (humane and avoids waste) but I couldn't do this with Attila, so she went to the vet who euthanised her and she has been buried in the veg plot.
On a brighter note, Harleys kittens are doing very well, growing fast even if they are a bit naked. We have given them nicknames, Julius and Brutus as they were born by caesarian section
1 comment:
Beautiful tribute to your work and your love of your extended family
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