hot weather and allergies and chest infections

How come I'm willing to get up at the crack of dawn, before the stifling heat lands on us, yet Penny's acting like a wimp about going for a walk?



Luckily she can always be persuaded to walk out the door to eat a treat.

Ooops, just noticed how I titled this post...

Well, the allergies are being experimentally treated with Cetirizine. I read online that the basic dose is 1mg per dog body weight, and the vet agreed. This site has lots of info.

As to the chest infection, she's still taking Amoxyclav 250.

I'm so looking forward to the time when she is on no medications.

Penny chased her first rabbit

Walking in a fresh spot today, I was enjoying the newly-mown grass, and Penny was enjoying the longer patches that had been left to grow.

She was munching on some long leaves and smelling the smells, and didn't notice a rabbit sitting right near her, ignoring us. Fortunately, before Penny realised what was going on, the rabbit leaped into the long grass and hid.

 I won't be letting Penny into long grass in couple of weeks, because as soon as the weather warms up, the snakes will be out.

Because I'd already seen the rabbit, I wasn't too surprised when Penny dashed off from me in pursuit of another one - her first rabbit! I'm super pleased to report that when I called a sharp 'come!', she left the rabbit and headed back to me for her well-deserved reward.

enjoying a little park with the dog

As I've said before, living with a dog makes me more aware of local places to enjoy nature. I was driving through Heidelberg recently and noticed a teensy little park and stored the information away in my 'can't-be-bothered-going-for-a-proper-walk' mental filing cabinet.

Today was one of those days, so we drove to the minuscule park and Penny showed me that you don't have to cover a lot of ground to have fun.

You can chase tennis balls and then lie on them.

You can mooch around smelling the smells.

There's always the pleasure of surveying the local scenery.

And, of course, you can just enjoy the ownership of a really, really grotty old tennis ball.

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.

mooching around the local lanes with my dog

Penny did her 'puppy eyes' trick today, glancing at her lead as if to say, 'When are we going out?'

Of course, I couldn't resist. I love it when she communicates with me so clearly. But I wasn't in the mood for a full-on exercise-type walk, so we strolled around for half an hour just smelling the flowers.

I feel sure Penny was smelling things, because she had the tell-tale froth around her nostrils that says she's in full scenting mode.

But, strangely, all the flowers she examined were low to the ground. Could it be that she wasn't actually enjoying perfumed flowers, but was sniffing around for pee-mails?

I, on the other hand, WAS looking at plants for aesthetic reasons. Oh, wait, I guess canine aesthetics involves urine, so I shouldn't feel so superior.

I recently attended a workshop on edible weeds at Ceres, so I was looking out for them. Here are a couple I noticed:

dandelion

plantain (I think)

I saw a lovely dandelion seedhead, and crouched down to get a photo of the ball of fluff. 

But Penny came to see what I was doing and wandered away with half the seeds stuck to her coat!

enjoying the ordinary with a dog

Walking Penny is a duty, in one way. We aim to go out for at least forty minutes every day. (We don't achieve that goal all the time, of course.)

But in another way it's an absolute pleasure, because even an ordinary place is made interesting by Penny's company. Who'd have thought, for instance, that a concrete yard could hold so many smells to investigate?

And you certainly never know what you'll find in a grassy back lane...

I found lovely sunny vistas.

Penny found bread rolls! (Oh, how I wish our neighbors wouldn't throw bread into the back lane.)

Every walk is an adventure, if Penny is with me.

Polish pottery and dog walking

You might be seeing more posts in the future saying we walked at Willsmere.

Why, you might ask. (Or you might not.)

It's because a new shop has opened in the vicinity of the park, just at the right distance for the humans to have some afternoon tea or a light meal before or after our walk. How convenient!

It's The Cup and Mug, selling gorgeous pottery from Poland, including the lovely dinner dish Penny eats from every day.

We have bowls too. Here's one of them.

Texture walk

For a bit of a change, I thought I'd ask marymac, one of Penny's Other Humans, to do a guest blog:

I took Penny for a walk at one of our usual venues this week, twice.

I had an ulterior motive, not just to walk but to get some images for my textile work.  I have a fascination for trees and bark and am currently working on an idea related to fungus growing on fallen branches.

So Penny happily trotted off with me to Rosanna. She enjoyed the outing but was a bit mystified by the fact that it was the human who kept disappearing into the bushes for little periods of time.
That was me, taking pictures of interesting fungi and fallen branches.

We also saw some native birds.

Galahs

Kookaburra

Come on, what's the hold-up?

I found a good stick, isn't that enough for you?? Let's go!

marymac

dogs, storms and rainbows

If I didn't have a dog I wouldn't have been sheltering under a tree at Warringal Parklands in the cold, lashing rain this afternoon.

And I wouldn't have turned around and seen this glorious double rainbow.

I'm glad I have a dog.

Perhaps there was a treasure at the end of the rainbow, but I had my treasure walking beside me.

Once the sun came out, Penny I and I headed off, glad to see the stormy sky blowing away to the west.

But what was this coming in from the east?

We hurried back to the car, invigorated and happy to have been out of the house. Yes, I'm glad to have Penny living with us and making me get out for a walk no matter the weather. 

Walking my dog below the birds in the trees

Bits of trees were raining down on Penny and her humans as we strolled along the paths in Rosanna Parklands today, so we looked up and saw an Eastern Rosella.

In the next tree we saw this bird:

I think it's a gang gang cockatoo. I can't recall seeing one so close to the city ever before, but maybe they are less rare than I think.

When I checked on the internet, I saw this clip, which looks to me like the same bird:



I checked once again at Birds In Backyards and read:

They are widespread in eastern New South Wales from the central slopes and tablelands to the south coast, down through Victoria's north-eastern regions to Seymour, with some records in east Melbourne, Mornington Peninsula and south-western Gippsland.

Rosanna is in the north-east of Melbourne.

Aren't we lucky to have these glorious creatures flying free around us?

After the stitches came out

Sue, from the Portuguese Water Blog, added a comment on my last post saying that Penny's swelling was probably fluid. That's what our vet said, also. He said it would be mostly gone by yesterday - which it was. Aren't vets amazing? I would have said it would take another week for such a big swelling to go down.

Here's a picture of it yesterday, after our first proper walk in more than two weeks:

It's a little swollen, but basically gone. And, hooray, the stitches are out at last.

We had a lovely short walk at Clifton Hill, in the winter sunshine. We used to walk about an hour a day at least, briskly, but for this first outing we simply strolled around for half an hour.

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.

dog walking in every kind of weather

Living with a dog is a great way to get in touch with nature. We've found that we have a greater interest in the weather forecasts since Penny came to live with us.

In winter, we need to know whether there's going to be a break in the rain so we can head out and not come home soaked.

But it's in summer that we really keep and eye on the forecasts. If it's going to be a stinker of a hot day, which has been the case lately, we need to walk and be home before about 8a m. It was about 30º C this morning by that time. That's about 80º Fahrenheit.

Lately we've been getting less exercise ourselves, because if we leave it a bit late to walk, we simply take Penny to the river. She swims while we sit around.

making paths when walking with the dog

I've mentioned previously that the local council in Clifton Hill has closed off the pathway people have worn in the grass as they head out of Quarries Park.

I discovered recently that these unofficial pathways worn by human feel are called desire paths.

When we headed into that park on Monday, I noticed that people must be hopping over the little chain and wearing a new desire path. Of course, once we noticed that, we had to try it our to see if it's a good idea, and Human Number Two demonstrated.

But who would have guessed we have such a law-abiding dog that she would refuse to take such an illegal action?

dog walking near Narbethong

Last weekend Penny joined lots of other dogs for a long walk on a bush track near Narbethong. (Don't you just love that name?)

We've been there before, so I was prepared for the red mud. (Sorry about the awful quality of the photos, but it was tricky to keep my footing in the slippery mud while taking pictures with my phone.)

Sure enough, Penny had great fun getting muddy. And that was fine.

A couple of us walked more slowly than the others and lost sight of them, but there was no difficulty finding the way. Paw prints in the mud!

When I saw a nice little stream flowing into a nice little pool by a nice little grassy spot, I suggested to Penny that she jump in, swim a little and get nice and clean.

It cleaned off the red mud beautifully!

Hmm... what to do with the black dog?

Well, we stopped for a delicious cream-cake at the Beechworth Bakery in Healesville and Penny had a second swim, this time in the fast-flowing creek, and she came out clean! (It's lucky that she's willing to swim in any weather.)