Ted-Day

You will have to forgive me if this post is overly sentimental and has far too many pictures. You see today is Ted-day- it has been exactly 1 year since Tedicus J. Magic Paws came to live with us.

    Psyching himself up for Ted-day

We don't celebrate his birthday because we don't know when it is. His original paperwork estimates the 8th of January 2013 but when he was assessed by a vet a few months after we got him, instead of the 6 1/2 months we thought he was, she placed his age as being much closer to 9 or 10 months. Hardly surprising that his age was misjudged because at about 6 months (corrected age) he was dumped at a rural NSW pound significantly malnourished and weighing about 7kg.

How Much is That Doggie in the Window?

The life of a pet shop puppy:

You wake in the morning at 5:30am like all good puppies and pull yourself out from under your sister who has fallen asleep on top of you. You climb over your other siblings and the 2 cavoodles they have chucked in your box and do a quick circuit of the perimeter, this takes you about 30 seconds and having decided there is nowhere new to go you do your morning business next to the water bowl that is empty after one of the cavoodles knocked it last night. You are really hungry but the staff won't arrive for another hour or two so you flop unceremoniously back on top of your sister and go back to sleep.

The lights come on. Hooray!!! You scramble to get a pat from the pet shop lady as she opens the magic door and reaches in to scoop out the dirty shredded paper that is your floor and bedding and make sure you are ready to pounce on that food as soon as it arrives. This is the best part of the day! After breakfast you have a bit of a roll about with you brother and the 2 cavoodles and then settle down for a nap. It is hard to sleep under the fluorescent lighting but you are pretty used to that now....zzzzzzzz

TAP TAP TAP

Shit, what is that?You wake abruptly and jump up ready to fight. There is a giggling noise and you realise that the noise was just a human tapping on your box. You go over to see if they will give you a pat but the magic door doesn't open and the human just waves at you while you trace their finger movement with your nose.

The rest of the day carries on much like this. You get a quick pat when the magic door opens and one of the cavoodles is taken away but other than that the highlight is when you get dinner just before the lights go out.

Fairly crappy existence right?

Casual Philanthropy

 I did a good thing.

About a month ago Oscar's Law and The Paw Project were able to provide enough evidence to the South Australian RSPCA to warrant a raid on an Adelaide Hills puppy farm. Over one hundred dogs and cats were rescued, including pregnant animals and a callout was placed on the Oscar's Law Facebook page for donations of blankets, food, medical supplies etc to assist the foster carers of these animals. Most of the drop-off points were in the outer suburbs and being inner city and wanting to help (and having seen other requests for inner suburbs drop-off points) I offered the shop I work in as a location.

The store was listed as a drop-off location on Thursday about midday, by early Friday afternoon we had this:

Starting

So, I am starting a blog.

Nothing unusual really as there are very large numbers of people with a blog, or who start one at least. Also, I am excellent at starting things. I am also not too bad at finishing things but I am relatively hopeless at any kind of long-term continuing-on with things. Still, one must start.

I decided to do this because I am not the sort of person who coasts along in life. I don't really coast along in anything. Definitely not a coaster. I am potentially entering a period of reduced work hours,  stress and increased time for non-work pursuits and I know that unless I give myself things to do that are at least slightly artistic I will spend my time doing random jobs and errands, over-organising the minute details of my life and checking Facebook.