The Dog Family Timeline
From the timeline above you can see that we got our two dogs Tessa and Roxy only a couple of weeks apart, it was like having twins. They went everywhere together, dog training, to work for the first few months with me, then to my Mom and Dad's house, then they were with just my Mom after the loss of my Dad. By easter of 1994 they were getting a little to large for my Mom's house, so we started to leave them at home. We put in a dog flap for them to get outside to the grass, or stay inside if they wanted to. They were only given access to the kitchen/diner. After a few weeks they seemed displeased with this idea, so started to make a new door through to the lounge. the walls were only studded with plasterboard. Apparently there is something in plasterboard that dogs like. the first time the hole was not to big, we filled it then they tried again. This time the hole was big enough to get a head through, luckily only the one side of the stud wall though. So that weekend we purchased some tiles and tiled the wall where they had chewed through, this of course meant decorating the whole kitchen to match the newly tiled wall!
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When we got the dogs we decided to get a touring caravan so we could take them on holiday with us. A friend from work had recommended the site where she had been going for several years. The first time we went we loved it and so did the dogs, a site where dogs were welcome, where they had there own walks. We left the caravan on site permanently. We took up golf, there was a nine hole course on site. A river ran along the edge of the site, we would walk the dogs along the river, and in the summer months would actually walk in the river with them. It was great fun. On one occasion when we were walking along the river we came to a canopy of trees, then we heard buzzing, we were being attacked by wasps! The poor dogs were covered in them, we turned round to go back, they were being stung all over, I ran into the river and called them in after me, they followed into the water and the wasps were getting washed off. I had them in my sleeves and hair so in the water I went. We ran back along the bank. On returning to the caravan the dogs were coming up in lumps. Guess where we went? Correct, the vets, antihistamines at the ready. They were fine after. |
Unfortunately this wasn't the only time we got attacked by wasps, one day on the way back from a walk through the woods Tessa disturbed another wasp nest, poor girl, she ran all the way back to the caravan to Daddy, me following as close as I could, with Roxy and Corrie on leads, shouting to Colin to put Tessa under the tap to wash the wasps off her, this he did, it took several minutes because her coat was so thick and the wasps had burrowed into her fur right next to her skin, they had stung her all over, but we had a stock of antihistamines, we gave her some and she recovered.
From here on Tessa became terrified of wasps, so much so that if one buzzed her she would run the other way. At the caravan in the summer the wasps would fly into the caravan and Tessa would disappear out the back door into the woods, so we got some beads for the doors, so in the summer the dogs could go in or out but the wasps couldn't get in, Tessa seemed happy with this.
If you read Tessa's story you will she her wearing a T-shirt, we found out that this was the only way to protect her injuries. We did try the normal Elizabethan Surgical Collar, no dog likes this and they scratch at them all the time. Tessa was a little different in that she hated the collar, she didn't just scratch at it but used it as a "weapon" to crash into things, including us, so we had to take it off, but we did put a T-shirt on her which did the same thing, this she didn't object to.
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| Whilst in Scotland we purchased Corrie our third German Shepherd, she was bought to be a show dog. She had the perfect build to grow to be an excellent show dog, but if you read Corrie's story you will see why we abandoned that idea, and spent the time looking after her and training the others. |
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Corrie joined us in the summer of 1994, that year we were suffering from an strange phenomenon. When we would get home from work the water bowl for the dogs would be empty, the area around the bowl would be wet, but the bowl would not have moved anywhere. One evening at Christmas 1994 we were in the lounge and just explaining this strange occurance to friends when we heard splashing from the kitchen/diner, we went in to find Corrie, front paws in the water bowl digging for all she was worth. Water was going everywhere! Problem solved. |
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In the winter they loved playing in the snow, but didn't approved of the posing with the reindeer antlers on., but did suffer the indignaty for a bonio afterwards! |
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| During the summer months the dogs would get hot, so we brought some lolli pop moulds that you could make your our ice creams from water and juice, the dogs loved them and they knew how to share. |
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When we first had the static van in Scotland we had to use baby gates either end of the walkway until we made the wooden gates, as you can see the dogs didn't think that much of them, but they did the job, besides if they wanted to they could have easily jumped them. |
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| In the pictures above you can see how different the dogs are. After a nice long river walk at the caravan, they would have a rub down and lie outside the caravan but they all had different tastes for their own comfort. Tessa liked the nice cool gravel to lie one, Corrie loved being wrapped in a blaket to keep out the draft, Bobby preferred the grass to lie on, and the two youngsters Crystal and Merlin had to have a blanket on the gravel to lie on. All the dogs on the site had to be tethered when not on a lead. |
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The photo on the left was one that was taken after Roxy's death (see Roxy's Story) and I felt that there was something or someone missing on the photo, so after a bit of work with a photo editing program, I managed to "paste" Roxy on the end. |
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At some point in the future I hope to do the same with Gizmo, I have attempted it but have not yet managed to get the prospective right, Gizmo is tiny compared to the others so it is difficult to "paste" her in. |
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| More to follow, hopefully soon! Thank you for reading. |
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