walking past a salsify-eating cockatoo

It's just great that Penny has recovered from her gastroenteritis and I can walk along without stressing about whether she's scouting for food. (She always is, but I'm hopeful she won't make herself sick.)

As we stepped onto a path today, I noticed a cockatoo in the distance. Penny didn't, because she was nose-down checking out for edibles. Or good smells.

We approached, and the bird flew up into a nearby tree, holding something in its beak, and then nibbled on the plant it was holding.

I wish my phone could take a better photo, but if you zoom it up a bit, I think you'll see that it wasn't a grass stem. It was something more substantial. Inquisitively, I looked around to see what the plant might be. And there was a clue...

And lots more clues, actually - clumps of stems bent down and snapped off, all along the edge of the path. Also, a clump that hadn't yet been attacked...

Salsify. How interesting. It's considered a weed in Australia, but recently I've discovered it is edible.

Once we moved further away, the cockatoo landed on the path again and, after considering the available plants, decided on a big grass seed head, which it took up onto the old tree to eat.

Penny and I headed home for our own breakfast, and I'm pleased to say that Penny is now eating her normal range of food, instead of being limited to a 'gastro' diet.

looking at yellow-tailed black cockatoos at Heidelberg

Dogs are terrific for taking us to new and interesting places. If we didn't have a dog, we wouldn't have  taken a walk along an ordinary-looking mud track in Heidelberg.

And if we hadn't gone there, we wouldn't have found ourselves alongside a flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos.

They were noisy and busy, seemingly finding food - or something interesting, at least - under the bark of the little trees around us. It was wonderful to realise they didn't much care that we were there, and we could have stayed for hours watching them swoop and land and rip into the trees, but we did eventually tear ourselves away and continue the walk.

grass parrots and a dog

We visited a new walking place today, at the end of Wills Street in Kew. I don't know what the little off-lead place is called, but it has terrific views over towards the city of Melbourne.

Penny wasn't too keen on saying hello to the other dogs. She is quite wary when we go to places where she doesn't usually walk (pretty often, actually). But she greeted them quietly and headed away from them.

The grass parrots, as usual, aren't worried when there are dogs around.

We headed out of the little off-lead area and found some nice paths to wander along. The highlight was seeing this pair of - presumably amorous - grass parrots seemingly checking out a nesting hollow in a dead tree.

summer - or drought once more?

This morning, in our summer routine for hot days, we set off early, when the parks are pretty much deserted, except for dog walkers. The sun was brassy in the sky, and already hot at 7:45 am, but bearable because of the clouds.

As usual, Penny made the walk interesting, stopping to draw my attention to a good smell on a rock...

and on a post.

The grass on the sportsground is still green, thanks to watering from the storage tanks.

But it's frightening to see how the environment is drying up elsewhere, now that it hasn't rained for so long.  The cracks in the earth beneath our feet are a warning of how fragile our hold on life is, in this dry Australian continent. I have water tanks to hold 8000 litres, but two out of three tanks are empty.

I hope we're not slipping back into drought.

a dog learns from another dog's blog

I've been having an interesting conversation with Johann's mum. She has two great video clips of how she trained Johann to succeed with the wooden Nina Ottosson Dog Casino.

First she taught him to focus on the little pegs that close off the drawers.



Then they moved on to pulling the pegs out of the holes.



So far we've practised Penny touching the peg for a reward from my hand. We moved on to clicking when she knocks the peg off the game, because I thought that might be closer to what we need finally, when she'll have to pull up the peg and throw it off the Casino so she can pull out the drawer to get the treats.



Johann's mum has mentioned the command 'pick it up' and Penny knows that well, so we experimented with that.



(I just can't seem to co-ordinate using the clicker and stopping myself from saying 'Yes!'. Luckily Penny's used to my muddled training methods, lol.)

a wet dog

I'm sure that if I were to look back one year at my old posts, I would have been writing about the drought. It was so stressful and depressing.

Well, today, Penny and her two humans set off for a thirty-five minute walk on a lovely cool cloudy day. Yes, she can now walk for thirty-five minutes - we build up five extra minutes each week. At first, we enjoyed the puddles and the dampness, as a contrast to the hot days we've recently had.



And then we got caught in a huge downpour. We sheltered under a tree, but got soaked. We took refuge in a toilet block and still got soaked. We all crowded together into a toilet cubicle with the door shut, standing in rising water and dripping wet all over, and the rain still blew in.

Eventually we decided we'd have to grin and bear it, so we set off at the usual slow, slow, post-operative pace, slogging through the rain.

But you know what?

We still love rain!

cruciate ligaments and lovely stamps of dogs

Penny's asleep in the lounge room at the moment, hopefully giving her sore leg (and maybe cruciate ligament injury) time to heal. We're at the stage of going for a few ten-minute walks around the streets, now, but she horrified us yesterday by racing up the back steps before we could stop her.

She limped badly last night, for a minute or two, but today seems well, except that on our second walk of the day she suddenly walked on three legs, not putting her rear leg down at all - just for a couple of steps. I think we're going to end up having her sedated so the vet can test the leg properly. He said it's difficult to check the knee when the dog is awake because the muscles are tense. From what I've read - and this site explains it clearly - the test is called the 'drawer' test, and the vet manipulates the knee as if pulling out a drawer in a piece of furniture.

And I've just remembered a fascinating site I discovered ages ago, one that shows a dog's gait during normal walking, hip dysplasia and cruciate ligament injury.

On a more cheerful note, there are some lovely dog pictures coming on our letters, and the writing on these Australian postage stamps says ADOPTED/ADORED. It's a gorgeous set of stamps and should appeal to dog lovers. I like the fact that everyone who sends a letter will get the subliminal message that it's good to adopt.

a boring but thankfully safe day today

Penny has been outside a few times in the hope of some human activity but I'm sitting inside away from the smoke that has blown over metropolitan Melbourne today. By some trick of the wind, we didn't get a lot of smoke from the dreadful fires of last weekend.
Of course, everyone's nervous, so the Country Fire Authority (CFA) site has a reassuring message that most of the smoke seen today is from burns that are intended to deprive the fires of fuel.

Smoke Information
Metropolitan Melbourne
The fires around Melbourne are generating a large amount of smoke. Residents in metropolitan Melbourne are advised that due to extent of bushfires around Victoria in the past week, they may be experiencing increased smoke from both going fires and fire suppression activities being undertaken by DSE and CFA fire crews.

Winds from either the north or east are likely to bring smoke into Melbourne. The smoke may be more noticeable at night or early morning when overnight inversions trap the smoke near ground level.

All day the light has been yellow, but Penny doesn't care. She wants to go somewhere.



She doesn't know how lucky she is to be bored. I was listening to the radio yesterday, which was broadcast from Warburton, a town waiting to know if the fires would swing around - they haven't, thank God - and the interviewer wished each person a boring day the next day. That's today, and so far, it's been quiet.

Not quiet, of course, for the people sitting by the bedsides of burn victims, or preparing funeral services, or sifting through the ashes of their homes.

I know how lucky we are. And I think constantly of those who will need help in the short term and in the long term.

lumps, bowels and doggy illnesses

Penny's been keeping us on our toes lately. She had her annual vaccinations last week, one of which which should protect her from distemper, infectious hepatitus and parvovirus; the other from bordetella brontiseptica and canine parainfluenza.

Well, I think that's what they were - the teensy tiny stickers on her health record are hard to read, even with my glasses on!

That evening she threw up five times. I rang the local animal hospital and the vet said to keep an eye on her and gave me the phone number of a local all-night clinic. However, she slept through the night okay.

We didn't, though.

In the morning my own vet examined her and he thought she was more likely to have vomited because she had a bowel inflammation. (She had been having jelly-like material in her poos on and off over the last few weeks.)

He put her on antibiotics for a week, which are nearly finished now.

It's hard to know what to do for the best for our beloved animals. There are lots of internet sites with scary stories of pets' reactions to vaccinations, and I did check out lots of such sites when I posted last year about the concern that we over-vaccinate in Australia.

I thought Dog Owners' Guide seemed to have a reasonable overview of the question. Basically they referred to vomiting as a severe reaction, but said we should still have the vaccinations with the proviso that the dog might need to take antihistamines or the leptospirosis part could be omitted.

They discuss (but not in detail) recent research that suggests we should vaccinate less frequently.

As I write this, Penny is frantically licking her paws. She tends to have a problem with her paws, so it's not a new issue, but I feel sure she's doing it more these last couple of days. So I'm interested in a site that suggests paw licking can be a reaction to vaccinations.

And to top off our worries, when I got home from the vet after the vaccination, I noticed Penny had another lump - this time on the top of her head. It's not long since she had one removed from her chest.

The vet said it would be safer to remove it, but not to worry about rushing into it. I'm fairly sure it is getting smaller every day. At first it was as big as a pea, but I think it's only pin-head size now. Here's hoping!

dog owners work together as a community

It infuriates me to see dog poo lying around on our streets or in our parks. People who don't pick up after their dog are lazy or dirty as far as I'm concerned.

When I see someone who is ignoring their dog's defecation, I ask myself whether they haven't noticed or whether they just don't care. If they look approachable, I might say, 'Would you like a bag?' if I have a spare one with me. But mostly I don't say anything if I'm alone.

I'm wondering how I would go if I lived in the villages of Denny or Dunipace, in the UK. They've set up a Green Dog Walkers project, in which volunteers will approach pet owners to ask them to sign a pledge to clean up after their animals. If people join the campaign they'll wear an armband that says they are green dog walkers.

I can't really see it working here in Melbourne, but I ask myself why it shouldn't. I think it's because we are such a big city and there's a creeping sense of anonymity in my area. I used to know everyone in my street but now most people don't even make eye contact.

Yet dog walkers do.

Maybe it could work...

I read about this campaign at the blog of Dogs Life, our Australian dog magazine. I've been reading it for years but just now realised it has an online component.

trivia night and Huntington's disease

Penny had a quiet night at home alone last Saturday while her humans went to a trivia night. We didn't bring home any prizes; we obviously didn't know enough about sport or about the pop music of the seventies and eighties. That's weird - we were there, after all. Hmmm - must have had the radio turned off for twenty years.

However, we had a great night and also had the pleasure of knowing we were supporting a wonderful cause. Sean, the nephew of a good friend, is going to ride a bicycle across Australia, to raise funds for research into the terrible disease called Huntington's.

Three years ago Sean's father died of this disease and Sean, who had been diagnosed in 2002 as also carrying the Huntington's gene, decided he wanted to do something to honour his father's courageous life.

I'll quote a little from Sean's blog:

In May of 2005 John Egan died of Huntington’s Disease (HD). HD is an inherited neurological condition which slowly destroys the brain cells that affect the way people think, feel and move. There is no treatment. No cure. The disease is invariably fatal. I am John’s son, Sean. I am gene positive for HD.

The day after his funeral I started training furiously for the Melbourne to Warrnambool Cycling Classic; a professional, one day race of over 300km. Two weeks out from the race I purchased my new bike; a final gift from Dad.

On the day of the race I cried most of the way to the start; partly due to the daunting task that was ahead of me, and partly because I missed my dad. When I completed the race, I was immensely proud of my achievement, and realised that this was only the beginning.

I began planning a bike ride across Australia. I wanted to try to do something physically difficult to honour the courage and determination with which my father lived his life. I’m training for the ride by cycling 300 to 400 km each week (up to 600km during school holidays).

I want to show people that despite the setbacks life throws at us, we are all capable of achieving amazing things. When I think about what Dad went through, failing to complete the ride is not an option.

He's starting on Friday 12th September, from Perth and intends to be in Melbourne on Sunday 5th October. If you glance at the map you can see it's a huge challenge.

dogs and spirituality in Darebin Parklands

Today Penny had to wait till the afternoon for her regular outing to Darebin Parklands, the beautiful urban wilderness at the bottom of our street, because we were busy welcoming a large group of overseas visitors to the park. Thirty-six young people from Korea and sixteen from France walked the Spiritual Healing Trail under the leadership of a local Aboriginal guide.

As part of the welcoming group we couldn't take Penny with us, so it felt strange to be there without her. However, as usual, there were plenty of people walking with their dogs and the young people seemed to enjoy meeting the local canines.

























At one point on the trail we all sat down on small rocks and meditated, whilst our guide played the haunting tones of the didgeridoo. As the music echoed around the bushy hillside, soft rain beat a gentle rhythm on our umbrellas. The purpose of the meditation was to gather our thoughts and use the tranquil surroundings to reflect on the issues that are concerning us at present. I used the time to try to come to terms with the anger and frustration I feel that local authorities are determined to drastically reduce off-lead dog walking in this beautiful park that is so central to my life.

















It was interesting to walk along the Banyule side of the creek. It's an area where dogs have to be on lead so we don't go there. Luckily the rain had stopped, so the creek wasn't up over the stepping stones and we could all make our way back to the Alphington side of the creek.

















In the flat ground on the other side we took part in an Aboriginal smoking ceremony, in which we took turns to step into the smoke - our guide said this ceremony would bless the young people in their time in Australia.


















A final part of the Healing Trail was at the arched bridge, where each of us dropped a leaf into the creek, thinking about those issues we have no control over. I found this more than a little ironic, seeing I am seething with frustration about the way my love of walking with Penny in this park has been dismissed as having no importance.










After this wonderfully inspiring morning we arrived home tired out. So what did we do? Yes, you're right! We set off back to the park, this time with Penny. If we can't manage to change the mind of the Powers That Be about forbidding off-lead walking, we need to build up as many happy memories as we can, to help us get through the loss and sadness when we can no longer enjoy the park.