Jess's First Christmas

Today is Christmas day and it is also Jess's first Christmas day with our family. So I took her under my wing and showed her the ropes. I am a bit of a veteran with this Christmas thing now. Mind you my first year with my family at Christmas ended up with me in hospital as I ate too much... but that it another story!

Christmas seems to be all about eating and lazing around, something we hounds are good at! But there is something different about Christmas day, pressents! Both Jess and I got presents. I find ripping paper and extracting the gift inside easy, Jess has still to learn the fine art of avarice and greed! But she is getting there.

Once my family sat down to share their presents, it was our turn to remind them that the focus of attention should be us at all times. Therefore, Jess and I strategically arranged ourselves to ensure that we were both appropriately in the way at all times. You can see our day in the images below.

Christmas Eve run

It was hot today, summer finally seems to have arrived and so what do my family do? They decide that what Jess and I really want to do is have a run. Not just one run, but several. The other morning one of my family got up nice and early and took us out for our regular walk, but this time he just took us to the reserve behind our home and let us go, with muzzles on.

So in the cool of the morning, we went! In no time at all Jess was eating my dust and we were a mere speck in the distance to our owner. He started to have palpitations, but we were just playing with him! We hooned off to the end of the field, right down by the skate park and near to the road. Once there we wandered around a bit and then decided to blast back to him. (He still thinks that he has recall sorted with us....!) It was great to run again. Jess is so slow! She keeps going on about all the races that she won, the prize money she earned and rubbing it in about how that is the exact opposite of my racing career! But as Keith my trainer said, there is no one faster on grass than me! And Jess has still yet to overtake me...

So today is Christmas Eve and for our afternoon walk we were allowed to run again, but this time no cool of the morning, it was hot! Mind you, I am pretty hot so I blasted off again and Jess, yet again, was literally eating my dust as the field we run in has just been sanded this week for drainage and I was flicking the sand up as I ran. In no time flat we were at the end of the field, as far away as we could get from our family, without straying onto the road.

Once again I could hear the call to return, but I decided to walk back, it was too hot and Jess decided to blast back. She is now counting this as a victory, she claims the sand sapped my speed. Yeah, Yeah Delilah! I know however that I simply decided that it was too hot and walking was a better option.... That is my story and I am sticking to it!

Merry Christmas everyone

Animates Sylvia Park Grand Opening

It has been a while since I have done any dictation for my family to write up on our behalf. We seem to have dropped off of the GAP radar. Apparently the GAP Facebook pages are quite active, but as my family use Facebook for business, they are reluctant to mix business and pleasure on that particular forum so are missing out. Anyway, we heard through the e-mail chain that Animates at Sylvia Park were having a big opening and that us hounds would be most welcome to be ambassadors for pet ownership through adoption.

At 10:00 this morning our family bundled Jess and I into the car, we love going out exploring. The car always takes us to great places, with the exception of the vets and the kennels, but we can never really tell when that is going to happen, so we get excited anyway! Off we went to Animates at Sylvia Park for their grand opening weekend.

When we got there the place was awash with hounds we had not met before, with the exception of Reba and Hoss, who we know of old. Jess has taken a while to settle into meeting new dogs and often finds meeting new dogs, even hounds, stressful and will growl to encourage others to keep away. As for me, I love the attention and just lap it up, I take as much as I can get from all the willing hands that want to pat me and I just love meeting new dogs of every variety.

Apart from the attention, the best bit today was the furry creatures. I found the mice and best of all I found the rabbits! I really wanted to play with those guys, but for some reason, my family seemed really reluctant to let me do so! I kept pointing them out and I kept pulling them towards what I wanted to play with, but no dice, the nearest I got to playing with my buddies can be seen in the slideshow below. Ah well maybe next time they will let me play with the rabbits? Strangely, Jess and the other hounds showed little or no interest in the rabbits. Not sure why!