It's been a busy few days since Miss Verity arrived... quite a few things she's been more cruisey than I expected, though I'm not dismissing there is a work to do with socializing when we start asking more of her. At the moment we'd been taking things pretty easy and not pushing into her comfort zone much, other than reinforcing the fact that all good things for little blue dogs come from toddlers and that if she's unsure of something, rather than dealing with it herself she should come to me. Have been not online as much the past few days due to a lovely tummy bug!

It's been a lot of fun discovering her... she is a lot like Hope in some ways, you can tell they're sisters!

On the other hand, there are plenty of differences as well. She is more of a one-person dog - that person being me. She's fine with Nic and is figuring out that Laurent while small, crazy and fond of moving about in a noisy and erratic manner is a veritable yummy-treat producing machine... but she's definitely 'my' girl and given the choice prefers to stick with me. She'll crawl in my lap, flop over for belly scratches, jump up for kisses and cuddles etc. and more often than not spends all her time not playing with the dogs curled at my feet.

Sierra, being the good natured goofball she is, has taken everything in stride. Another dog to wrestle with, another dog to chase about. Yup, life is good and all is right in Sierra's world! Hope has defered a lot to Verity as I expected she'd do but also as expected has the things she considers important enough to refuse to give up as well (her pink binky ball) and will be interesting to see how that changes as Hope gets older and more mature. Right now she seems to have slipped neatly into the role of a hero-worshiping pesty little sister quite neatly! The three Aussie's seem to have taken a lot of joy in the fact that they're now a small mob of like-minded playmates (the harder the better) and spend a lot of their time hooning around, wrestling, slobbering on each other and generally mucking about. Play is *definitely* a contact sport here!

Hope, attempting to take Sierra out, at full tilt. Black blips in the background are cows believe it or not, remarkably unfussed by the zooming, growly, wrestling nutbags.

'Round about the dam we go... then round about some more!

Great galloping hairy hordes of thundering Aussie paws!

Full tilt, full out... how do all three manage despite it all to never wear out?????

Poor Sierra... I managed to snap Hope ganging up on her again, though they all take turns in being the one everyone piles on pretty evenly!

In other doggy news, today was Verity's first day out to town. She got to ride in the car in the passanger seat which at first she wasn't so sure she liked. Fortunately like most Aussie's she's firmly lead by her tummy, so the discussion went like this:
Verity: Uh uh, no way! I'm not going to jump in that car!
Me: Verity, that seat produces liver cookies.
Verity: Nope, not gonna! No way, no how! Wait... did you say... liver?
Me: Yup! See - there's a piece right there on the edge of the seat.
Verity: Okay, well the -edge- isn't so bad. I guess I can do that. *chomp chomp*
Me: There's another piece there, you must have missed it.
Verity: Hm. *chomp* Well I guess it's not that much further in. *chomp chomp* You know, this liver stuff is pretty good! *burp*
Me: Well since you like it so much there's more there, go take a look.
Verity (front paws on the seat): Oh *chomp slurp chomp* YUM!
Me: Betchya if you jump up you get even more!
Verity: Well, okay, if there's liver involved...

After we got in she was a bit uncertain on the ride but by the time we got back in to come home hopped in and laid down like a pro. So much for "Uh uh, no way!" LOL

While we were in town, we walked around a bit to gauge her reaction to strangers. She was definitely a bit uncertain but not horribly so. I'd honestly expected a stronger reaction out of her, more like what I'd seen when we went to visit her the first few times but not a pull-back, not a bark, not a muttering. The worst of it was she looked mildly anxious around her lips and was trying to watch everything at once, coming back to touch my hand for reassurance a few times. We took a slow stroll around the shops, liver magically appearing under her nose every time a stranger walked by and halting when they'd passed, only to magically appear under her nose again with the next stranger. After awhile we sat outside the grocery store a few feet from the door in a position that she could see all the people coming by but they wouldn't be able to ambush her for pats without asking me first. Same thing as before - every time a person walked by lots of tiny little liver treats appeared, only to disappear when the strangers had passed. People with trollys, walking frames, two wheel-chairs, a worker dragging in a bunch of cars, kids of all ages, guy with big funky dreadlocks, lady with a baby in a sling, bikers, a skateboarder etc. So quite pleased with her reactions... by the end she was fairly calm about it all, more relaxed and had taken to nudging my hand for the treat she knew was coming when a person walked by! Cheeky little thing this one!


Okay, now this is my darling child in one of his more recent escapades. He got into my purse, nabbed my lipgloss and dobbed it all over himself while in the carseat before chirping, "Mum! WOOK! I peeettttyyy!!!" I need to get some nice pictures of him since I haven't gotten any in a little while and he's growing and changing so much recently! This week he's come out with literally heaps and heaps of little sentences and words we didn't even know he knew just out of the blue. He'd been talking before and adding words here and there but it seems like this week he's come out with a few months worth of new words and strung them together in bigger sentences!

Now... my ducks. Aren't they just the picture of happy, ducky contentment? Ahhh... a nice stretch!

And a snooze on the lush green grass! Okay but here's the thing - they're ON THE LUSH GREEN GRASS - which means they're not in their pen. Why, you ask? Because the silly things got it into their head while walking too and from the paddocks to dodge under the house. This, they discovered, is a place the dog will not follow them and the human cannot follow them. So for the past week they have been free-range ducks, escaping every attempt to round them up! They're perfectly safe mind you, we're well back from the road and fenced in anyhow with nothing but cows on all sides and plenty of pasture to graze, bugs to gobble and a dam full of water. I'd been putting out water and food for them anyhow to lure them out but they'd just gobble it and then hide the second I came out to get them. I shot this from Laurent's bedroom with my zoom lense out as far as it could go. However, the cheeky little boogers were caught today... fine and fat as butter from their munching... and returned to their pen!

And then yesterday, when I headed off to the showgrounds to check out the Wyandotte's which are a breed of chicken I've been after. While there, we got to meet up with some of our online aquaintences from BYP as well, including Jacquie who was down from WA! Trick is, I'm after a sort of chicken that is really hard to find... full sized partridge pencilled Wyandottes. The colour is rather rare in the full sized birds and since this is one of the largest get togethers of the breed, it was probably my best chance to get in contact with someone who bred them. Lo and behold there were two entered - a hen and a pullet. (Mind you entries were along the lines of 300 birds for the rest, so you can see how uncommon they are!) I was quite chuffed and Jacquie being braver than I am, sussed out their owners name, found someone who could tell us where he was and then went up to enquire as she was also after some bantam-sized partridges and standard columbians. She ended up getting a pair of pullets as she already has a CB line and had a PB line cockrel and we also managed to talk to gentleman into parting with the two PB standard sized ones for me! So I'm the proud new owner of a standard PB partridge hen and pullet! Now I just need to find a PB partridge cockrel so they can make lots of cute babies! LOL I may have to search long and hard for that though, as the gentleman who sold me these two told me that unfortunately he couldn't help me as he had only one and it'd taken him ages to find and knew of no one at all breeding CB lines! So here's the new girls, no names yet but geeze aren't they pretty marked??? The roosters are even more beautiful yet.

This is the hen

and another of the hen (left) and pullet (right) with Blossom, my partridge colour silkie, waving her fluffy bum behind the hen.