Warning to dog owners - deadly Sisotamoxym virus

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE READ ALL THE WAY THROUGH BEFORE COMMENTING

Due to the massive problem with foxes, the Australian Government has begun to introduce several potent strains of a virus called Sisotamoxym in an effort to control this pest species.  However it is not species specific and our pet dogs are at severe risk.  The death rate in domestic dogs is 100%.

New strains being manufactured for release routinely.  The vector is via biting insects who are bred and deliberately released at various locations around the country to spread the virus. IE mosquitoes and fleas.  In order to ensure the virus is spread as far and wide as possible the government has imported and released two types of fleas - the European and Spanish flea - as additional vectors to penetrate areas where lack of permanent water prevents mosquitoes from breeding.  All species of mosquito can transmit the disease and some can infect up to 10 animals an evening and remain infective for up to 7 months.   

The mosquitoes and fleas transfer the virus when they bite an affected animal and along with blood ingest bacteria.  The bacteria multiplies in the insects gut and when it bites another animal bacteria is introduced to the wound. Incubation period varies but averages 5-14 days. Once the dog is infected it's skin becomes red and thickens before traveling to lymph nodes and then organs.  It is present in the skin and bodily secretions making it contagious.  After 6 days the body has become swollen, with the swellings becoming distended and thickened.  Pus may discharge from the ears and eyelids, which become thick and swollen as well to the point they're swollen shut and the dog is blind and deaf.  The virus form tumors and skin lesions throughout the body.  The entire head swells and in in-tact males the testicles swell and the scrotum ruptures.  By this point the dog is anorexic, has difficulty breathing and convulses.  If not euthanized, death occurs within 12 days or so.  While for foxes this raises a significant issue of humaneness, dog owners need to be alert and aware to the symptoms to prevent an agonizing death.

Once infected, there are no treatments. Death rate is 100% and the current veterinary recommendation is for immediate euthanasia and quarantine of house-mates who may be infected.

The only current option available to dog owners is to keep dogs inside at all times and use mosquito proofing techniques to attempt to prevent infection.  If the dog must be outdoors, it is recommended you fully mosquito proof the enclosure and take measures to prevent fleas or mosquitoes from being near.  However it only takes one mosquito coming in and having one bite of one dog to kill them all.

There is a vaccination called Nobivac Siso.  It utilizes a virus called Shope Fibroma virus which is closely related but which doesn't cause the disease. However the Australian authorities are not at this time allowing the vaccine for fear immunity could transfer from vaccinated pet dogs to wild foxes.

This reasoning is faulty and does not hold with experience in areas where the vaccination is legal.  Foxes have built their own immunity independently according to the Australian Department of Primary Industries own publications. There is also a lack of immunity in a vaccinated individual can spread let alone to foxes. In UK and Europe, where the vaccine is available, there have been no signs of a decline in the disease and there is still a great need to vaccinate pets. The British distributors (Intervet) state that:

"...the virus (Shope fibroma) does not spread readily from one animal to another and all dogs in a group should be individually vaccinated"

Now... if you are all feeling properly horrified by the thought of your beloved pet dogs dying a horrible death, take a deep breath.  There is no virus called Sisotamoxym.  

The REAL virus is called Myxomatosis and instead of being released to control foxes it is released to control wild rabbits.  Instead of affecting your pet dogs, it affects our pet rabbits.  The only difference is that the word "rabbit" has been replaced with "dog", a pet most of you will have experienced a strong bond with - the medical information is accurate.  I wrote this to hopefully provoke thought as a house-rabbit is NO DIFFERENT than a dog in terms of it's intelligence, ability to love and be loved or bond when raised with the love and care we raise our dogs with and lives as a part of the family.  We are no less devastated by their loss than a dog owner would be.  Yet the Australian Government continues to deny, on the most dubious and shoddy of reasoning, access to lifesaving vaccination.  If you are outraged by this please sign the petition for the the vaccine to be made available:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~rabbit/pam.htmwriting

Or write the following people: Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage and Shadow Minister for the Environment and Heritage
along with your local representatives.

Because whatever our pets species, we love them, we suffer when we loose them and we don't deserve to have to stand by and watch them suffer horribly because of governmental apathy.

We've been saying Kiah is a lot like my old fellow Cade, who is now at the Bridge.  She's been growing leaps and bounds, so I decided to hunt up the collar I made him when he was a youngster.  It's double sided velvet hand embroidered in a celtic knotwork pattern and looks rather lovely on her if I do say so myself.

Meanwhile my stomach issues are flaring back up again, so I had a little extra snooze this morning so I could lay straight on the heat.  Nic went to let the girls out, without realizing Miss Kiah Papaya needs to be escorted straight to the door if it's not me letting her out because she's a big mumma's girl.  I soon found myself with an armful of wriggly, deliriously happy puppy moaning and groaning her bliss and attempting to clean every centimeter of my face (she's not usually a licky puppy so this is about the only time I get ecstatic kissy fest from her) before settling in to enjoy the heat pad too.  Such a little smile bringer she is. :)

It's also time for the little lovebirds, Romeo oh! Romeo and Cinnamon the Cinnabun to go get their vaxes.  Unfortunately the Australian government is STILL with-holding the myxo vax from pet bunny owners for no sound reason (yay for logical reasoning and evidence based decisions... oh, wait, no that would be prejudice, ignoring evidence and just not giving a rip!) but we can vax them against calicivirus which is just as important.  So we're off to visit the Melbourne Rabbit Clinic later today.

 

 Romeo would be giving me this face again if he knew what I had planned...

And one of Nilla, just being full of 'satiable curiosity for cuteness sake.  Excuse the craptastic lighting in all of them.

Dexter

I hadn't said anything to most people just after, not really feeling up to talking about it but I think I've put off talking about it as long as I can.

At the last update Dexter had been prescribed antibiotics long term and supplemental soft-food. He appeared to be going well, not eating much chaff but eating pellets and softer veg/fruit plus the critcare. The mites/ear funk he'd had when I got him had cleared. I'd thought if he had to have these issues at least he's dealing well with all the fussing, wasn't distressed by his injections (smeared a banana bit on the counter and did it while he was licking every molecule up) and he took to the crit care routine nudging the tip for more.

Then I'd been gone with Hopie at flyball on the Sat, leaving early in the morning and getting back lateish and and when I saw him in his little bed I knew we were in big trouble. I was grabbing his carrier and saying get back in the car, ring the vets to say get everything ready when he sort of sighed and passed. The best guess is maybe the antibiotics and/or not getting enough fibre with only pellets/critical care vs hay or stress from the abscess caused GI stasis and I wasn't there to stop it in time. Probably the fact that he'd had the problem for so long before I got him contributed, maybe if he'd seen the vet with the old people it'd have never developed the abscess. I can't undo having not been there when he went into stasis and I hate the thought he'd have felt ill and wanting me all day while I was gone. But I wish even more it were better known by people to have their vets keep a close eye on their bunnies teeth so things can be caught before they're problems. Please have routine health checks bunny mums and dads, they might save a life.

Rest in peace Dexie, until we all meet up at the Rainbow Bridge again one day.

By way of update on the critter front, Dexter had to go back in for another tooth trim - it'd already grown that much! While we were there we could tell the other incisors hadn't grown though, which we'd hoped they would. Still I've read they can take 6+ weeks to re-erupt properly after an injury so there is some hope they may regrow. In the meantime there was still some puss around the molar where they suspect the abscess so he's been prescribed long-term antibiotic injections (procaine/pen G). Bunnies abscess a bit differently than most animals. They lack an enzyme which makes it liquid and easy to drain like most animals. As well they tend to encapsulate it and it grows very slowly which is good in one way as they don't suffer from fever or so much pain but difficult in another as it means they are difficult to get rid of and don't easily drain.

He's very good for the injections, I give him a bit of cherry tomato and he doesn't even notice the little needle. He's lot a bit of weight as well so he's on Critical Care which is a special soft food for bunnies that is nutritious and appealing. It gets mixed into a paste and fed to him and he is just the sweetest fellow - just sits there on his little pillow and has a dollop squirted in, chews it, little tongue licking his lips and when he's done has a bit more. If I'm a bit slow he'll sniff at or lick the tip! LOL The pics are him on his little pillow while I was mixing the crit care up and after his food getting a kiss from La.

All together this week seems to just have disappeared on me... namely with school restarting and the roof (that'd be the one replaced last year due to springing a leak and frying all electrics...) re-sprung a leak and causing water damage in 3 rooms. Getting the roofing company to honor it's guarantee is interesting. To boot the tractor that was just fixed busted again and seriously I'm half expecting at any moment to hear a country guitar twang and the start of a theme song about how life done did me wrong writing all this! LOL My birthday was a few days ago as well and that turned out to be quiet but nice. Lily and I hung around the house with the dogs, kits and buns during the day. I got some painting done. I had a nice dinner with everyone and Nic totally surprised me as I was expecting no gift given how many big bills we've generated by presenting me with a laptop! He's apparently been paying for one to be refurbished for a year or so! It's not quite ready but still very exciting! (Our last computer predates our relationship so it was due!) Then Sunday I got given a day to myself at Flyball, just me and Hopie out having fun!

Here's La on his first day back at what would have been the equivalent to the start of primary school vs preschool/kinder. The school has a new building almost finished and welcomed a new teacher who will be sharing in his class so he's excited about that as well as being back with his friends again. A few more of Sir 5 Year Old.


and this is the view just near his school... how gorgeous is that hey!

Plus one of the Lilypillie, who is enjoying having mum all to herself (well, comparatively... still has to share with the furkids) now that La is in school full time!

Art wise, I've royally slacked off most of January. Trying to get back into the swing of things and make time for myself in February. I have two paintings on the go and one more in my goals for the month list. The first is (act shocked...) a dog. Nothing new there although I'm playing with a limited palette - cad red med, cad yellow med, black and white. Here's the roughed in first layer, excuse the dreadful flash shine, rug and jeans!

The second and third are part of challenges. Number two is a WC Acrylics board Different Strokes challenge. The rules let you crop, choose a section/detail, enlarge it or develop it any way you feel like. I really liked the orange lilies up against the bronzy background plant, so I'm planning to tightly crop on that. I can't decide if I want to go with my usual way of doing things given I'm still very new to it or try for something looser, more impressionistic and impastoish. This is the base layer for if I go my usual way. Wibbledywobbdly, indecisive.

The third challenge is to take myself totally out of my comfort zone and go to an abstract challenge I happened upon on the Abstract forum - which is to see how little 'detail' can you use in a piece of art and still convey your 'meaning' - however you understand that term. The subject is a rainstorm, hopefully mixed with a yellowtail black cockatoo. Start of the storm...

Random and unconnected to anything - our neighbors foals, who are just too much fun to watch running around! I mucked with it a bit, think it might make a nice painting eventually?

Poor Dexter indeed! The results.

Well there's good news and bad news from our vet visit today. Here is why I knew we needed to visit asap!

That white thing is his lower right incisor tooth. (It's a single tooth, I'll get to why the lower left and upper right and left front teeth aren't visible in a moment.) It's huge - it ought to end somewhere around where you see the gums (pinkish bit to the bottom left of the tooth) but instead measures at 2cm long, which is long enough to be poking into his upper lip.

The good news is that his general condition is good otherwise, aside from my thoughts about his manky looking ears being correct and not just an issue he gets when he's moulting! (Mites, requiring topical application to get rid of.) The long lower incisor got trimmed today and is likely to require routine trimming.

The bad news is the tooth situation was definitely not limited to an overgrown incisor which I'd kind of suspected but hoped I was misjudging given the ear lowering and slightly atypical chewing motion. With a second pair of hands holding him we got a better view of the rest of his front teeth which I'd thought were just worn oddly. Nope, the upper incisors and lower left incisor are fractured. This is likely from an injury several months back that simply broke all 3 of them off near the gumline. They may or may not regrow, only time will tell. If they don't and require removing, it will be difficult to extract them because there is so little to grip onto to loosen them.

When we were able to view inside his mouth to his molars using the otoscope, the upper right premolar #1 is missing and the left premolars #1&2 have puss which means the start of an abcess going on. The good news on that is that it was caught in the early stages. In addition the lower premolar and molars are misaligned. Poor lads mouth is a right proper mess! So the damage for anyone who thinks rabbits are a "cheap" pet btw was at about $150 today (consult, trim, antibiotics and revolution) and $30ish for each retrim every 3-4 weeks! He will go back in a week for another antibiotic (Pen-G) injection ($30) and dental x-rays (about $350ish) to see what is going on in his mouth. Hopefully it won't require further surgery to remove the teeth which would of course be more on top of that. Here's a video on normal rabbit teeth and routine problems from Medirabbit for anyone curious:

Poor Dexter...

I noticed his one ear was down. This in itself is nothing big, they do that sometimes but this just a bit more relaxed looking than normal and more often than normal perhaps. I thought maybe I'm just being paranoid. He was okay otherwise, eating well, active, normal litter box output and he could put it up, nothing wrong with his ears either so far as I could see.

Then I looked a bit closer, hm, was he chewing a bit oddly? A bit more to one side than the other perhaps? Nothing huge, maybe even just the difference between him having less fluffy lips with his short rex coat meaning the movements are more exaggerated than the others?

I had a little niggling suspicion. Ear down on the left. Chewing to the left. Ears on pups often go down when teething as the ligaments are goofing around, perhaps something sort of akin to that. So I went to peek at his teeth. I can't see them all, lacking a rabbit vets tools to see the rear dentition but as it happens I didn't really need them. I am really amazed he didn't show more signs or more obvious ones earlier - I'll try to get a picture when I have someone to hold him.

So we'll be visiting the vets. I do believe that sound is the sound of my wallet sobbing at the thought of Very Expensive Dental Work!

Bobbing bunnah

When I got Dexter, I'd been told that he only drank from a water bottle and previous attempts to get him to use a bowl hadn't worked well. I prefer bowls as the buns drink more water per minute, a good crock can keep cool and ice cubes won't jam it in hot weather. So I was keen to get him on a bowl but he was less certain about this whole switch-a-roo business! The first attempts were, well, "less than overwhelmingly spectacular". I started coaxing him by first holding pieces of veg just above the water and later dipping them till Dexter ended up bobbing for (proverbial) apples. LOL It didn't take a few sessions before he noticed it was good for DRINKING too! I'm not sure if it's because of his short rex coat or what but he dunks half his muzzle and comes up with his whole muzzle sodden and dribbly as well, which inevitably seems to result is whomever is nearby ending up a bit wet as well!

Completely unrelated I'm also trying to organize myself to get a plan going for all the things I want to do around this place. One of the major things I want to do is knock off more from our monthly mortgage repayment than we're currently doing. I also want to pad out our "vet/pet" savings a bit more each month as I am very keen to have another Aussie pup and either this year or next a PBGV now that La will be in school full time. I was very tempted to adopt one who came up a few weeks back but more practically I ought to attend to other things first, particularly wrt Shadow because we don't know how long that will take, neighbors weren't amused at the time and Nic is grumpy on the subject to say the least.

We need to do a major overhaul for quite a few things including:

• new computer - current is from 2003 and I want a lap top!
• new stove/oven - our current one is almost as old as me, the oven bit is completely kaput and cannot be repaired
• new washing machine and fridge - both are really old and have been fixed a million times, with the warning from the fix-it guy that they are on their last legs
• restump the area under the bathroom - the only place NOT restumped and currently sunk
• renovate the bathroom - new bathtub, flooring, tiles etc
• repair the ceiling in the study (water damage from the other year, it's fine but really ugly and warped)
• a new chainsaw and drill
• repaint and refit the laundry, study and loo
• put down pathing stones on the walks, to cover the road base and cut down on the mud the dogs drag in
• I also want to start saving toward a hydro bath and force dryer for the dogs
  

Totally aside from all of that I'd like to get Sierra, Rin and Luka all competing and with titles this year, have Hopie finish (or come as close as possible to) her Flyball Masters and finish up her HSA-s. Nothing too reaching given I'll likely reroute some money from training/comps/travel for the other stuff.

Part of it is that we do need to do all these things and I want to get them all sorted out of course but I am also very keen on being able to take the kids overseas - particularly I really want to have us all go to France and be able to visit Dives sur Mer, St Lo etc and financially I know that will not happen until we've taken care of those expenses and knocked a bit more off the mortgage so I'm shooting for having enough for a proper holiday there in 2012-2013.

Dexter

Meet Dexter... and his little stuffed bunny friend who has been with him since he was a baby. He is, hopefully, going to be Nilla's husbun once she is better - as she has a URI at t he moment - and he is neutered. He is a 2 year old mini rex whose previous owners were moving to New Zealand and didn't feel taking him was going to work. Even my DH is in love as Dexter is as happy to beg a pat from him as he is from me, whereas Romeo will only ask for ear rubs from me or occasionally La (particularly if there is goodies to be had) and Cinna and Nilla will ask him for pets if momma isn't available.

He's quite taken with hay, just pounced on it and started gobbling like it was going out of style... guess we know a good thing when we see one!

Close up of his curly-whirly whiskers and curly-whirly eyelashes... so cute!

And last but not least - this morning I was woke from a nap with DD to find someone small and fuzzy snuggled next to my cheek. Awwww... so naturally after I got up I snapped some pics of him supervising me folding some laundry on the floor. LOL

Not Just For Christmas

At Christmas, it's easy to see an explosion of animals bred for the holiday season. These are often victims of impulse purchase, sourced from puppy mills and irresponsible breeders and neglected or dumped in the following year. They contribute to the tens of thousands of animals euthanized each year.

While many are aware of the horrors of puppy mills, bunnies are vulnerable as they are falsely seen as cheap, cuddly, low maintenance 'starter' pet for children. The reality is a bit different:
Bunnies Are Not Cheap
While initial purchase price may seem cheap the associated costs over the rabbits lifetime can be expensive. All rabbits should be desexed by a rabbit specialist, vaccinated and microchipped and these costs factored into the choice to bring a rabbit into your life. Young rabbits mature quickly and you can run into unwanted litters, hormonal and territorial behaviour, alarming rates of uterine cancer and poor litter box habits. Adopting a bunny from a shelter or rescue may mean this is $50-80, whereas private desexing/vax/microchipping may range upwards of $250 for vaccinations, check-up, spay, bloodwork, fluids, monitoring, pre and post op pain management, microchip etc. They will require vaccination annually and may require specialized and potentially expensive treatment for dental issues and GI stasis in their lifetimes.
Bunnies Are Not "Cuddly"
Bunnies are prey animals by nature and physically delicate. The exuberance, desire to pick up, grab, carry around and cuddle with whatever grip their little hands can manage are frightening and dangerous for rabbits. It often results in broken legs or backs or bunnies who learn to bite or kick when picked up after having been accidentally mishandled. Bunnies do enjoy attention and affection but a child's idea of having fun and enjoyment is not generally compatible with how prey animals like rabbits express and understand affection.

Bunnies Are Not "Starter" Pets
The reality is that rabbits are active, highly social animals who require a commitment of 10-12 years. They represent a significant commitment in terms of time, money and owner dedication. Being highly social animals, rabbits ideally should live in pairs as well.

Bunnies Are Not Low Maintenance
Most 'hutches' sold for rabbit housing are woefully inadequate. We would not imagine locking a cat or dog in a cage barely 3 times it's body length and on wire for the duration of it's life but this is what most bunnies are expected to consider home. Wire bottoms can lead to painful pressure sores, broken toes, injured legs/feet etc. The small sizes lead to poor long term health due to lack of muscle tone, loss of bone, obesity, poor cardiovascular health, poor gut health etc as well as the mental cruelty of such confinement and isolation. Outdoor animals are more at risk of disease, mites, fleas, predation, temperature extremes and owners not noticing illness. Bunnies hide illness very well and it is hard to notice subtle changes in an animal who is out of sight most of the day. Any outdoor housing or exercise yards must be completely mosquito proof to prevent exposure to calcivirus and myxo which have fatality rates of 100%. Instead a more ideal home is a bunny condo when it must be penned and access to rabbit proofed rooms in your home so it can be part of the family just as your dog or cat would.

Rabbits also require a fair amount of care - daily fresh food (good quality hay, water, fresh vegetables/herbs and a small amount of high quality pellets), litter changes, mental stimulation and at least 3 hours exercise time in order to maintain health and well being. Short haired breeds should be brushed regularly to prevent the ingestion of excess hair causing blockages or stasis, while long haired bunnies may require daily brushing. All rabbits require nail trimming.

For homes who are definitely keen on rabbits as pets, there are many more rewards but we need more awareness of the reality of owning rabbits responsibly. For those considering rabbits please check out The House Rabbit Society (www.rabbit.org), Australian Companion Rabbit Society (http://www.rabbit.org.au) for more information, Australian based Boing Online (http://www.boingonline.com). For more information on rabbit body language and behaviour The Language of Lagomorphs (http://language.rabbitspeak.com), as well as all sorts of information on Rabbit Links (http://homepage.mac.com/mattocks/morfz/rabrefs.html) and if you're in Melbourne the Melbourne Rabbit Clinic (http://www.melbournerabbitclinic.com) is one of the best bunny vets around!

random catch up photos

because I've been such a slacker and haven't really been sure what to write

One of the new roses in the Rainbow Bridge garden

Tim Tam, "Where are you going mum?"

Hopie and Luka at the dam

Lily at Ballarat comp

Luka on his birthday! :)

Lilypillie, my smiley girl

The interesting attempts to draw with small children around! LOL

Hopie with the ribbons our club gave her at the end of the year. She was more impressed with the biscuits but I thought they were nice. LOL

La demonstrating his weird abilities to sleep in the most bizzare places...

Hope at a recent comp

Hope, Sierra, Luka and Rin at the dam

Nilla playing sneaky stealth ninja bunny

and demanding a pat from La

Haha, - such shy timid little wallflowers hey!

and then there were three!

Meet our new little one... Nilla Vanilla! She is a medium to biggish bunny baby. So far she is very cheeky and active and into EV-ER-Y-TH-ING! It's funny, Cinna was a very active little thing in that she loved to dash around madly but less with the being so full of 'satiable curiosity about the whole world that it needed to be jumped on, nudged, dug at, rolled around, tossed in the air, sniffed, taste tested, chinned and otherwise checked out. LOL

The idea will be to try and bond this one with Cinna and Romeo once she's had all her vaccinations and is desexed. That won't be for awhile yet as she's only a baby! Trio bonding can be tricky and not always (or even often) successful though, more so as I picked her rather than letting them do so. If it doesn't work then sometime mid to late next year we'll visit the shelter to find a friend.

At the moment they are in the bunnies bedroom but in separate living quarters. They can see each other but not reach each other. The only thing we're doing as far as bonding at the moment is some positive association. It's one of those happy coincidences in life (which I have carefully arranged... LOL) that whenever she is out, pellets start being doled out to Cinnamon and Romeo. When she comes near their quarters, parsley appears for them. When they sniff through the wire, tiny slivers of banana.

And one last pic, because hey - when you're this cute you can never have enough photos!

Catch Up

Long time no blog... in chief it's because it's been busy. Which is a nice term for "more complicated than I have energy and wherewithall to sit and put into words by the end of the day when I finally have time"! LOL But I did actually write much of it down the other day, so I'm going to pinch some.

Earlier this year Laurent has been diagnosed with a proprioception sensory integration disorder and we've been working on this and the behavioural difficulties we'd been seeing with an occupational therapist and psychologist team. Basically proprioception has to do with the input gained from your muscles and joints. He is under responsive and as a result, rather than the information his senses provide integrating into one useful world picture, all that unorganized sensory input creates a traffic jam in his brain making it difficult to pay attention and learn while also causing him to seek out that missing sensory input. Sensory seeking behaviour for him typically comes in the form of wanting to hang off things, climb, crash, push, jump, fidget, pinch, twist, fiddle and be overly physical with objects etc. In hindsight it explains so many of the things we'd just chalked up to being individual quirks about him!

A 'side effect' of this under responsiveness is that he is also largely insensitive to pain. Consequently, where most people learn that things that hurt are to be avoided, he hardly notices tends to hurt himself fairly often. Even when he was a baby he'd face plant and just giggle or bang his head on the floor and only be annoyed by it. It takes something fairly painful for him to feel it strong enough to register as 'hurts'. It also means his idea of what feels like normal, moderated amount of strength to him when he's playing with a toy is actually rather hard and he tends to rough on his toys and always engaging in a very physical manner seeking that sensory input. Some of it is minor but upsetting to him, while some of it can be much more annoying to us who have to fix or replace things if they break.

His OT is fabulous and has provided a number of immediate and practical tools and therapies that are designed to integrate all the sensory input into the brain and enable his days to go smoother. But we were all quite concerned he doesn't seem to learn from the experiences and has difficulty incorporating what he knows into self regulation to the degree an average 4-5 year old can. While he is very bright (actually has tested quite high) and is keenly interested in a wide range of things his psychologist and I feel his brain is processing, recalling, linking and utilizing the information it encounters in a somewhat atypical manner. Put together with his intelligence, confidence that he can carry out his plans and tendancy to pick his opportunities with impressive skill daily life is full on. When we've had our appointments done in home, they've all observed you can explain something to him in very clear and age appropriate manner, with explanations of why, what to do instead, what could happen if he does it and what action will follow it. This is followed through consistently and fairly, with discussion afterwards. In the case of things he's done before, he also recalls how it felt physically and/or emotionally, how it affected others, recalls if he didn't like that and would like to avoid it again as well. Even doing "all the right things" though, it can make little difference! He demonstrates understanding of all individual bits but he doesn't seem to be able to link it up to come to the conclusion he needs to.

So now we're involved in the headache of trying to access further assessments and services for him, which are entangled with a plethora of bureaucratic red-tape and nonsense which is both stressful, confusing and emotional. In the meantime our good days are gold- he is a funny, sunny little boy who loves his sister and is better with her than many kids I've seen are with their siblings, adores dogs and cats and would desperately love to play Flyball with Hope, wants to go to 'clicker class' with me, loves to garden and especially finding worms to watch or worm holes in the soil, is completely obsessed with food/cooking and all things cheffing, art - especially painting and experimenting with different sorts of paints, clay work and adores anything which lets him run, jump, bounce, crash, flip or otherwise act like he needs to run away to the circus! Bad days... well, we won't go there! We just try to get through them and remember that as bad as they can be there are people out there who have far more to cope with with far less resources so we really are quite lucky especially in light of the number of people I know of directly and indirectly who are seriously ill or who have lost their lives or loved ones lately.

In more cheerful and less serious news Miss Hopie will start competing in Flyball before very long and have several comps around Victoria this year and into next! We're very excited and can't wait! Here's a video of our recent practice, the order of run is Sam (black/white BC), Hope, Quiche (yellow/white BC)

It's also looking like our foster kitty Emi FINALLY has a new home at long last and fingers crossed she will go to her new home on 12 Sept! After 8 months I'm so pleased to see her get her 'happily ever after' and see the faith we had that there WAS the perfect home out there for her somewhere rewarded!

I also decided to be brave and enter Hopie in our first real trials (the PT title, HIC and such being 'test levels' vs open trialing) in Started A course on sheep. I knew she could handle it but I have still got heaps to learn, so the real question was if I could handle well enough. The weather conditions meant that mud was about calf-deep and footing was very difficult to maintain for everyone involved. The result was that we made the first pass, albeit it was not a terribly impressive run given I cut short on the 4th post and I didn't do so well on the center-line gate because of it - poorly lined up! The second run went a lot better and would have been about a 80 except I bodged the Z chute the first go and it took me time to recover enough to get them through - poor Hopie! We had an absolute blast though and it gave me a lot of ideas of what I want to practice as I can't wait to enter again for next time!

We've also had our lovely (and admittedly my favorite) ewe Star become ill for reasons the vet couldn't pinpoint as the symptoms were pretty nondescript. She had a mild fever, some scours, wouldn't rise and if lifted to her legs would wobble and fall. Despite his giving us antibiotics and goodies to help bolter her she didn't make it and I'm now bottlefeeding Timtam.

Random last but not least is Cinna - she's discovered that if I've gotten up the bed is still warrrrrrmmm and makes a cozy spot! Don't know what I'd do without my bunnahs!