Friday night and early Saturday morning (29 and 30 June) Puddin' presented us with a litter of 6 little Yorkshire Terrier puppies--cutest little things on feet (well, actually, on bellies just now!). Mama and babies doing very well!
Lovey (aka LoveBug, aka LoveThug) is nearly five months old now and she has recently begun learning the art of Watchdoggery.
Unfortunately, she is learning it from Puddin', she who thinks anything that moves...or might move is worthy of warning the household about. And while Puddin' pretty much ignores sounds other than the doorbell, neighbourhood barking dogs and people at the gate, Lovey has not yet learned such discrimination. As a result, she has taken to giving the alert at any...and every...unexpected sound--which includes the crowd of birds we host daily.
South African birds are a bit different from American (and I suppose European birds). Where in the US I listened to what can be described as "birdsong," here it is more like the background noises in the old Tarzan films. "Whoot whoot whoot," and "Twee-eep Twee-eep" and noises that cause birds to be named things like "Hoopoe" for their calls fill my back garden. Add the neighbours who have not yet figured out the road in front of the house is NOT an extension of Kyalami (a nearby racetrack), the sound of the local maids and gardeners walking past the house and chatting to each other as they walk to public transport, and, of course, Puddin's rantings about latest leaf that has fallen into the pool (or her attempts to coax the local kitties to come out), and it makes for a multitude of noisy episodes in the house.
One thing's for certain, though...these two are more proactive than an alarm...if someone unauthorized happened to walk into the house, not only would I know about it, so would the entire neighbourhood!!
Puddin' and Lovey.
Lovey is in the jammies because she decided to take a walk on Sunday...into the pool! Apparently she has not yet grasped the concept of "transparency" as she still tries to walk through glass doors and on Sunday, tried to walk on the surface of the pool. Fortunately, Hubby was in the pool when it happened and fished her out, but even as he grabbed her, she had bobbed to the surface and was swimming for the edge! But even after I dried her off, she was shaking, so I dug out Puddin's outgrown flannel jammies and put them on Lovey, and in no time she was back to her pugnacious self!
Puddin' at the window: we have rented our cottage to a lady who has two young cats. They have just gotten up the courage to explore the back garden and they decided to investigate the potted plants on my patio...just outside this window. Puddin', who has very little experience with cats, was fascinated by them. Days later, she is still checking all the windows and doors that lead out to the patio, hoping they will come back!
No pics yet, but this weekend we added a new member to our family, a Yorkie puppy we have named Pavlova Caramel (in keeping with the "sweet things" theme of our girls' names...Candy, Puddin', and now Pavlova) but we are calling her "Lovey" for short. When she wakes up from her nap I'll do a few pics and put them up.
Puddin' is not amused, at least not yet. She seems baffled and hurt at the same time, but has made no moves to hurt the baby. But she is softening already. The other night while I fixed dinner, Lovey was crying in the x-pen and Puddin' barked loudly until I came to see what was wrong. I think Princess Puddin' will be an awesome big sister once Lovey is big enough to play with her!
Pics later!
By now, everybody and his cousin knows I have a Yorkshire Terrier. I wanted one for a long time but now that I've had her a while, I've discovered that she is not the sweet, cuddly little lapdog I expected.
Because I have dander allergies, a Yorkie was a natural choice: they don’t shed. They also don’t smell doggie, even when they look like they could do with a bath, which is a good thing when you have a dog that has made her bed permanently in your pillows.
I’m no dummy when it comes to dogs, and I researched the Yorkie breed pretty well before my practical brain could support my desire for one of these handbag-sized pooches. I am a bit of an intellectual snob, preferring the intelligent over the bumbling dumb, so I was a bit disappointed to discover that Yorkies aren’t very high on the doggie IQ scale…closer to a end table than to Einstein. But their spunky natures and winning personalities—and quite frankly, their lack of allergens in their coats—won me over.
So, now I have my Yorkie. She is 19 months old and I’ve had her since the day she turned six weeks (no lectures from Americans, please…puppies go home at six weeks here, just like they once did in the States). She’s small and silly and energetic and stiff-necked stubborn and more like a little kid than a dog, and positively adorable!
And she has quirks, some of them positively hilarious, even while being simultaneously irritating, Yesterday, for example, Hubby and I took in a book fair. I took along a tote bag because he and I are both profoundly addicted to the written word and we cannot exit a book store without having purchased something…why would a book fair be any different? Sure enough, we bought books and collected a few pamphlets and brochures and when we got home, I put the tote bag on the bed, intending to empty it momentarily. I put up my handbag and took off my shoes and when I returned to the bed, the bag had mysteriously grown much heavier…about 6 pounds heavier, to be exact. I hefted the bag and out between the handles popped a little Yorkie head!
Puddin’ loves bags! But not any bag will do. No, she shuns shopping bags and paper bags and even the cloth grocery bags you can buy at the market. How she tell the difference between a cheap cloth shopping bag and a pricey leather and tapestry handbag is beyond me, but she can. My husband gave me just such a bag as a gift last year and before I could get all of the tissue wadding out of it, Puddin’ was in it! She has even been found perched on a pile of unmentionables in a travel bag, a clear message that she knew what we were about and we were not going to be allowed to leave her behind!
And she’s clever that way…for a member of a supposedly dull breed, she is uncommonly sharp. Her love for bags includes a love of my cosmetics bag…well, actually, I think she has a love-hate relationship with that one. On the one hand, given an opportunity, she will remove as much of the contents of the bag as necessary to allow her to climb in and nest; on the other hand, the emergence of that bag invariably signals that Mama is putting on her face and going out…and probably leaving the Yorkchop behind. Locked in the cavernous bathroom. Cold and lonely with nothing for protection from the cold tile floor but a custom-lined, padded basket and two hand-crocheted blankets. And nothing to eat but dog food specially formulated for Yorkies. Alone with only 27 toys and stuffed animals for company. Poor pitiful Puddin’…the makeup bag sings both an alluring siren song and a dirge, and if I am successful in wresting it away from her, while I paint on my face, she secrets herself under the blankets of my bed or burrows beneath the pillows in an effort to hide herself and avoid confinement in solitary.
But she always gives herself away…she has to breathe so that little black button nose is poked out somewhere, and she is as curious as a cat. Invariably, one eye is trained on me as I prepare to go out, one eye that not only gives away her position, but speaks to her fragile hope: maybe I will get to go this time, too.
She watches for me to take out one of her nappies because that signals that she’s going with us. As a puppy, too tiny to get down from the bed by herself and, like little kids everywhere, driven by an urgent call from Nature, she peed on the bed one time too often. My husband is not a huge fan of dogs, having been bitten and terrorized by them in his Apartheid-era childhood, and so I was concerned that her propensity for relieving herself on the duvet might make her a tad unpopular with him. So, I sat down at the sewing machine and whipped up a few pairs of nappies, to be worn with an absorbent, disposable pad, and that problem was solved. What evolved from that, however, was a habit of diapering her each time we took her out so that she couldn’t answer the call of nature on the floor of a shop or the walkway of a farmer’s market or any other similarly inconvenient location. Over time she became house trained (and we got her a step stool so she could get on and off the bed at will), but we continued using the nappies for outings and so the appearance of a nappy immediately following Mama’s preoccupation with the makeup bag became, for her, a harbinger of happier times a-comin’.
I know a number of people who have small dogs and who swear that the moment a winter jersey is produced from the cupboard, their dog makes for the hills. Puddin’, however, because she associates those nappies with an outing, is eager to cooperate. She will bolt from hiding, run to my lap and assume an alert, “attention”-like position and actually cock one of her back legs to give me access to the fasteners over her tummy. Once dressed (and yes, sometimes she get a dress or one of her velour jogging suits in addition to the nappy), she prances out the bedroom door and, after the obligatory pirouette at the top of the stairs, waits impatiently for her slow-pokish humans to get their lazy bums in gear and get the show in the road!
She’s really been an entertaining little minx, “good value for money,” as my husband puts it. She barks at noises, alerting us to possible danger, her rodent-scenting skills are superb (she knew we had rats long before the first one turned up in full rigor in the drying yard), and there isn’t a day goes by that she doesn’t provide us with at least one laugh. We have reached a point, in fact, that we often wonder what she’s planning for us next…
Well, with the exception of having taken a rather laissez-faire attitude towards her potty training, Puddin’ seems to be pretty much recuperated from her surgery ordeal. So much so, in fact, that I’ve had to shift gears from nurturing mama to vigilant disciplinarian.
Puddin’ is tiny. Well, by Yorkie standards (3 to 7 lbs) she is on the large side at 6 lbs, but objectively speaking, she’s tiny. We had “dog bars” built into a beautiful wrought iron gate at the top of the stairs so that the Maltese Mafia couldn’t just wander upstairs and wreak havoc. We also had the narrow dog bars built into the iron gates that separate our front courtyard from the street so the MM can’t bolt out through the front arches into the street. Puddin’ is so small, she can get through both sets of dog bars. We have a baby gate on the kitchen door so we can open the door for air but keep certain dogs out of the house and certain dogs inside…she can get through the bars in the baby gate. Right now it is mostly academic because it is winter and we keep the kitchen door shut, but there are those times…
Recently, because she has finally discovered the purpose of her puddle pads and has begun using them faithfully, we gave Puddin’ unfettered run of the house. She quickly learned to go up the stairs to the lounge and, being tiny, she could get through the dog bars. But she has toys, food and water bowls, and a puddle pad up there, and she’s not destructive (except to her stuffed toys), so it wasn’t an issue…at first. It became an issue when she…and we…discovered she couldn’t come down the stairs. Several times a day she would bound up the stairs and play with her rubber chicken or rawhide chewies, only to end up piteously whining at the top of the stairs, afraid to descend into the dark, curved, abyss on the cold, slippery tiles. And every time, one of us would come up the stairs and rescue her…which did nothing to curtail her forays up the stairs and her pitiful demands for assistance to come down. Finally, Hubby took it upon himself to help her come down the stairs on her own…after only two lessons, she was bounding up and down the stairs on her own, relieving us of rescue duty.
Yorkies are very small dogs, but they are fearless. This can work against them, as they have been know to leap out of their owner’s arms, breaking bones and even dying as a result. Puddin’ had made a couple of heart-stopping leaps off the bed so, once she had mastered the stairs to the upper floor of the house, I determined to get her something to let her get up and down off the bed safely. I found a plastic step stool and our local K-Mart clone and voila! Puddin’ was scampering up and down them in a matter of days.
So, on Saturday Hubby and I were kicking back on the bed, watching TV, when I realized I had neither seen nor heard Puddin’ in a while. Just like with little kids, extended absence and silence on the part of a puppy is generally a bad sign. A cursory search of our bedroom and bathroom didn’t turn her up but I noticed that, on his last trip to the loo, Hubby had obviously not fully shut the door. Puddin’s escape route from the master suite was revealed.
Our first thought was that Puddin’ had scampered up the stairs and was frolicking around the lounge, but on his way up he noticed that the kitchen door…the one that leads to the patio…was open. In a panic I ran to the bedroom to get some shoes so I could go outside to look for her while he checked the upstairs. The baby gate at the kitchen door was closed, but she can wriggle through it, and she had never been allowed in the back yard alone. We had dog proofed it a couple of years ago so the Maltese Mafia couldn’t escape, but she’s a lot smaller than they are and we don’t know if she can get out or not.
Additionally, Nash and Candy, the Maltese, haven’t exactly welcomed her with open arms. They haven’t attacked her or anything, but they’ve been rather hostile when she’s trying to gain their attention. Sadly, Puddin’ just loves Nash…she gets all wriggly and giddy when he’s around, but he’s in that grumpy old man stage of life and just doesn’t have any time for or interest in a puppy. That big back garden is the domain of the Maltese Mafia, their own private stomping grounds, and I wasn’t so sure how happy they would be at the sudden and unexpected arrival of a small, hyperactive intruder.
As I scrambled for shoes in a panic, Hubby used his head and looked out the upstairs French doors into the back garden. There, in the middle of the verdant, rain-freshened lawn, stood Nash, nose to the ground, investigating some fascinating smell or another. And right beside him, nose to the ground only inches away, was Puddin’.
Hubby beat me to the back garden but when he stooped to pick her up, Puddin’ had other ideas. Off she ran, scampering around like a mad thing, dancing just out of his reach, joyfully exercising her unprecedented freedom. This time it was my idea to use my head: I called Nash to me and he came running full tilt, ears flapping in the wind like silky white wings…and Puddin’ chasing him just as fast as her little legs would carry her.
As Nash came to a halt at my ankles and Puddin’ tried to jump on him, I scooped her up. Praising Nash for his obedience in coming when he was called, I held Puddin’ away from me as she was soaked…just dripping wet…from the lawn. It was past noon but we had not seen enough sun for the morning dew to have evaporated. She was only two days past her surgery and she was so wet she was shivering, so I took her straight to the bathroom and swathed her in towels.
She has now figured out that kitchen door is the key to unparalleled freedom and, instead of scurrying up the stairs at every opportunity, she now bolts for the kitchen door in hopes that someone has carelessly left it open enough for her to skinny through the bars on the baby gate and make her escape. She’s a busy little thing, and keeping up with her is quite the challenge!
Puddin' is a good example of her breed, considering that she is not quite 6 months old. She's cute, spunky, intelligent, and cheeky...a true terrier. I've taken regular pictures of her in the months I've had her, and share some of them with you now:
Puddin’ is teething and, poor little thing, the baby teeth aren’t coming out as the big teeth are coming in. This makes her mouth doubly tender, and she spends time pawing at the sides of her muzzle, obviously in discomfort.
So, I took her to the vet for her rabies shot on Tuesday and expressed my concern over her teeth. Before I left, we had an appointment to have them removed. She’s almost 6 months old, up to 2.8kg now (6 lbs) and, while small dogs are at higher risk for anaesthesia, she’s about as big as she is going to get so there is no reason to put it off any longer.
I took her in yesterday morning and she was not a happy camper. She was hungry and thirsty, as she had been NPO for nearly 12 hours. It was dark and uncommonly cold…only 8°C (48°F) when we went out to the car…she never goes for a ride in the car in the dark!...so I think she knew something was up.
Traffic was lighter than usual so we arrived at the vet about ten minutes before they opened. Puddin’ climbed in my lap, shivering in spite of the fact that the heater was on in the car and she was wrapped in her favourite blanket, one I had crocheted while awaiting her initial arrival. Once the door opened, she didn’t leap into the receptionist’s arms with her usual ears-back joyful wriggle…we had been there only two days earlier and she had received a particularly painful shot, and she definitely did not seem pleased to be back.
I sent her back to the cages with her blanket, hoping that having that familiar item would comfort her and went home to worry. I would not be able to collect her until after 4:30, as they keep the smaller animals that have undergone general anaesthesia for the entire day and monitor them. I knew it was in her best interests to stay, but I fretted over her absence…even the maid missed her.
Finally, it was time to bring her home. Hubby drove us there, thinking it would be better to bring her home comforted in arms. We knew she would be in some discomfort and probably groggy, but when I first saw her, my heart squeezed. Poor little thing looked like she had been through a war!
I was taking care of the bill when they brought her out looking limp and dazed. Hubby took her, wrapped in her blanket, and she just wilted against his chest, no greeting…no indication that she was glad to see us or relieved to be going home. When he handed her to me, she gave up this pathetic little moan and flopped her head against me. I was assailed by guilt.
We only live about a kilometre from the vet, but it was a long ride home. She lay miserably on my lap, her head against my tummy, emitting a low moan each time we turned a corner or hit a bump, each one eliciting a slash of guilt. This poor baby was in pain, she was miserable and not a little bit confused, and it was my fault! Never mind that the teeth had to come out, that it was in her best interests for her future health that they be removed, I was the one who subjected her to the procedure and its resultant torment. Bad dog mama!
It was a long night. They had removed five teeth, including her two upper canines, and she was drooling blood and moaning in her sleep. She would drink chicken broth from a syringe, but aside from one trip to the puddle pad, she remained in a groggy, pained state and showed no interest in anything. She was chilled, her ears and foot pads cool to the touch, so I put a onesie on her, followed by her flannel nightgown and tucked her into my bed with the heated mattress pad turned to its lowest setting. She snoozed for an hour, but her ears stayed cold until I covered them with her crocheted blanket. By 8 pm she was warmed up and no longer huddled into a tight little ball, but her discomfort was evident. And each little groan just sent another dagger of guilt through me.
By morning she had recovered enough to nibble at a bowl of boiled chicken and rice, but she remained subdued and disinterested in her toys or chewies. Several naps later she began perking up, using her stairs to come up onto the bed rather than standing on the floor and moaning piteously for me to pick her up. It is now evening and except for the fact that she won’t eat her kibble, she seems pretty much back to normal: trying to rip the stuffing out of Fred, her stuffed dog, playing “blankie monster” with my hand beneath the bedclothes, and making brief attempts to gnaw on her rawhide and ostrich sinew chewies.
Me? I’m exhausted. Between my limited sleep last night and the regular pangs of guilt that assailed me each time the little beastie winced, I’m worn out. It will be an early night for me and, with any luck, we’ll both be back to normal by tomorrow morning.
Today Puddin’ is 16 weeks old and it has become increasingly obvious to both Hubby and I that we are dealing with a “girly girl.” Oh, she is full of rambunctious mischief and is sometimes referred to as our “Yorkshire Terror,” but she’s definitely girly, nonetheless.
The first clue was when she looted my makeup bag. At first we thought it was just an example of Yorkie high spirits…these dogs are notorious for being energetic, after all…but the next time I opened the bag, I had to fight her off! She dove into the bag head first as if she were diving for treasure…which I suppose, in her little world, was the case. Her first foray into the bag had left the duvet littered with eye pencils and brushes, and she had even managed to extract a lipstick and get the cap off, quite a feat for someone who has no opposable thumbs!
The next clue was how cooperative she seems to be about wearing clothes. She has a small wardrobe of things both practical and pretty, and while she wriggles in protest at diaper time (a precaution against accidents when she is on the furniture or hardwood floors), she is cooperative when I put her onesies on her (usually for bedtime) and gets excited when I bring one of her dresses. She never fights or chews the clothes…even Hubby remarked that she seems to love them.
Grooming is a bit of a different story, but she seems to like having her face and head brushed, but not so much her legs and thighs. But she will sit and raise her chin for the brush to go over her face and throat, the top and back of her head and her ears, She even allows me to put her tiny little topknot in a pony tail with a minimum of fuss. But we weren’t convinced that she was fully committed to her femininity until the lace arrived…
Here in South Africa, it is a monumental task to find lace trims for sewing projects. In America you just walk into any fabric store and there will be a section in the shop devoted to lace and braid and sequins and ribbons of all descriptions. Not so in South Africa. Here, you have to go to a specialty shop called a “haberdashery”…assuming you can find one. Once you do manage to track one down, don’t expect to be spoiled for choice: the selections are invariably slim and prosaic. And heaven forefend if you are seeking ruffled or pre-gathered lace! It simply does not exist here! Being a person both resourceful and persistent, however, I have come up with a workaround solution: eBay!
I know what the meagre offerings of lace and eyelet trims go for here, so I use that as a baseline for my on-line shopping: trims that, including shipping, approximate the cost of a roughly similar item here, are within budget. So, if a piece of 1” wide lace would cost R25 a metre here, then a piece of lace on eBay costing $2.50 a yard, including shipping, is within my reach. Gathered laces can go for 50% more, since the gather ratio is usually 1.5:1. And so I have a fairly steady stream of small packages arriving from America as there are plenty of suppliers…some even ship free!...to feed my sewing machine.
A few weeks ago I received a packet of pretty pink lace…3 yards of it…and opened the packet on the bed where Puddin’ was taking a nap. I left the room for just a couple of minutes, returning to find her rolled up in it, yards of pretty pink lace wrapped around her like a cat! I took it away from her, but only under protest, and when I put the lace on the bedside table, she took to barking at it! Eventually it ended up trimming a dress and matching undies for her, and I thought nothing more of it…until today.
Yesterday I received a notice from the post office that my latest purchase had arrived and today Hubby and I stopped by to pick it up: 5 yards of gathered eyelet trim, destined to embellish a few more outfits for Miss Puddin’. Winter is coming and I need to get a few flannel pajamas and nightgowns ready. Don’t laugh…these dogs do not have an undercoat to trap air and keep them warm like most dogs do, which is why they do not shed. Also, because of their small size, regulating their body temperatures can be more difficult than for larger dogs, particularly since their energetic metabolism tends to keep them lean and without much fat to insulate them. As a result, they do need some extra measures taken to keep them warm enough in chilly weather. OK…they don’t actually need pretty dresses or nighties, but I can sew, so why not?
So we brought the eyelet home and I sat on the bed and opened the packet, then set it aside on the bedside table. A few minutes later we let Puddin’ up on the bed and, after her enthusiastic greetings were done, she climbed up on top of the pillows and began barking, her nose pointed at the table. After touching several things in an attempt to identify what she was barking at, my hand fell on the eyelet and her ears perked up. When I put the eyelet on the bed, she grabbed it and started unwinding it from the card! It was the pretty lace trim she was after.
She also likes jewellery. She will try to chew the aquamarine I wear on my right ring finger and last night, when we got home with seven pairs of new earrings…the insurance company finally sent us jewellery store vouchers to replace the stuff stolen in our Valentine’s Day robbery…she went for the little jewellery boxes just as soon as they were out of the bag! And speaking of bags…she ignores our briefcases…but if I leave my handbag on the floor, she will stick her head into it and root around.
So, when you add it all up…an attraction to make up, jewellery, designer handbags, hair brushing, pretty clothes plus a penchant for lace…seems like we’ve got ourselves a pretty girly little girl here. Now, if we could just convince her that chewing on other people’s fingers is just not ladylike!
Having a new puppy in the house is a lot like having a new baby, especially in the sleep department. Puddin’ is still getting up in the wee hours, but it seems to be more related to being cold than anything else. She gets out of her bed to go potty and the tile floors are really cold at 5 am, so she comes to the bathroom door and whimpers for rescue. Most mornings she is shivering when I open the door for her, and she snuggles down with me in the bed and goes right back to sleep. But it still interrupts my sleep. So on top of everything else, I am walking around sleep-deprived and not a little punchy!
We live near a vlei, so vermin are a fact of life here. The insects here are huge and more aggressive than I am accustomed to…when was the last time you had a 2 inch long cockroach run AT you in broad daylight??...so we have an exterminator come out every six months and spray, which has worked out very well. Since my allergy to cats has gone out of control, we can’t keep a mouser, which is how I kept my mouse population to zero in California, so we occasionally have to deal with mice. Until last week, some Rattex…a kind of poison pellet…in a plastic feeding contraption was working fine. We’d put some out when we found mouse droppings and in a day or two a dead mouse would present itself for disposal. The good news was that they seemed to prefer nesting in my study, which is not actually inside the house, so they never got into the kitchen. The bad news is that they didn’t stay there.
Early last week Thandiswe made a loaf of bread and put it on the counter on a rack to cool, a kitchen towel draped over it. When she came back later to bag the bread, she removed the towel and found the crust on one side had been chewed away! We quickly mobilized and filled and distributed the Rattex feeders, expecting the problem to be resolved quickly. No such luck.
Over the course of the next few days a plastic bread bag was chewed through and more bread eaten, the Rattex feeders pushed around…one flipped up on end, another actually pushed off the kitchen counter…and I actually surprised the creature as it climbed up the cord from behind the refrigerator! I didn’t see it, but the sounds were unmistakeable. I switched to a more serious bait…one feed and death! the packet advertised…but Mr. Mouse simply wouldn’t succumb. Finally, in frustration, I called my bug guy, Han, and asked if he could help. He hurried over and put out some poisoned grain and some little gel cakes, cautioned me to keep the dogs away from it, and then made the pronouncement I, in the back of my mind, was dreading. There were no droppings around, despite nearly a week of infestation and multiple feedings…he thought it was not a mouse, but a rat!
A rat! OMG! My personal take on things is that having mice in your house can be a thing caused by outside circumstances rather than unclean personal habits…drought will drive field mice into nearby neighbourhoods, construction on nearby sites will do the same. But rats are for people who are dirty and low rent and living in decaying neighbourhoods. OK…it’s irrational, I know, but I have a greater horror of harbouring a rat than a mouse, and now I am one of those low-rent people with a rat in her house!!
So, two days later, Thandiswe is cleaning the kitchen and calls me out. The refrigerator badly needed a cleaning…it had that funky “something in the back of the fridge is past its sell-by date” smell, so I set her to work cleaning and deodorizing it. She had finished the cleaning but the smell lingered, She took out the trash but still the smell lingered. She removed the spare oven rack from beside the refrigerator and peered into the narrow gap and called me. Sure enough, there, between the fridge and the cupboard was a dead rat, stinking up the place, Gross! Gross! Gross!
So, chasing after a puppy and trying to paper train it is a full time job. Hubby, dear man that he is, allows me free reign in training and disciplining Puddin’ while he takes a strong hand in entertaining her, For Valentine’s Day he decided to take us both out to dinner at our favourite tapas restaurant, as they have outside seating in a lovely courtyard with a fountain. I dressed her in the new harness I had made for her, packed her in her puppy purse, and we headed out for our 7 pm…just dusk…reservation. She was a little darling! She slept through most of it but when she was awake, she sat in my lap and took little bites of chicken from my fingers.
We got home about 9:15 and while Hubby prepared to pill the old dog (who is now on a daily dose of Prednisone), I headed for the bathroom to put Puddin’ down on her puddle pad. She is very good about not going in her tote bag. I put my purse on the kitchen counter, took two steps towards the bedroom and stopped, Something was amiss. Suddenly, I realized that I was looking at the back of our big screen TV standing in the hallway leading to the bedroom! We were interrupting a burglary!!
They didn’t get away with much…two watches, a camera, two laptops, and some gold and silver hoop earrings, a few other small items. They didn’t get the TVs or entertainment system, sound system, or the expensive jewellery. But they totally ransacked the house…we don’t think they had gotten to the kitchen yet, as it looked normal…dumping out the contents of all the cupboards and closets in what we think was a search for a safe. Sorry, dudes…that was pried out of the wall by the 2005 thieves and never replaced.
We called our security company and the police, but we couldn’t figure out how they got in! We have burglar bars over every window in the house that can be opened, The patio is surrounded by decorative iron fencing, making it look like a gazebo, but protecting the vulnerable sets of French doors. None of the bars were damaged, none of the doors were broken in…we could not figure out how they got into the house.
Hubby walked around outside with the security people, torches (flashlights) in hand while I went upstairs to figure out how they got to the big TV…there is a heavy-duty decorative iron gate at the top of the stairs and I was afraid I might have forgotten to close it last time I was up there. Our discoveries were shocking.
Hubby and the security guard found the point of entry…the thieves had actually removed a fixed window pane from the frame by chipping out the putty holding the glass in place. They removed the glass and set it aside and then crawled into the house (the window was at ground level, one of several in a column of windows from floor to ceiling) on their bellies like the snakes they are. Through this window they were able to hand out small items like the laptops, but they couldn’t get the big screen TV out this way. There is evidence that they tried to break the burglar bars on the window immediately above their access point, as the metal is slightly bent and there are gouge marks on the window frame. We suspect their intent was to remove those bars, break the wood crossbar, and create an opening through which the big screen could pass.
My discovery was that I had, indeed, closed and locked the upstairs gate: they had broken the lock. When my ironmonger, Davey, came the next day to survey the damage and measure us up for new, improved burglar bars, he took the lock out of its case and took it to a locksmith to get a replacement. The locksmith said that the thieves could only have done this damage to the lock with a chisel and heavy hammer, and that they had obviously worked on it for quite some time. So, these guys came with house breaking tools…not a couple of kids just getting into mischief.
We obviously interrupted them…the bedroom TV was unplugged and removed from its armoire and standing on the bedroom floor next to the breached window, its remote apparently pocketed as we cannot find it. The big screen was on the floor in the downstairs hallway rather than on its stand in the upstairs lounge: its remote was found in our downstairs bedroom, on the bookcase near the bed. My guess is that one of them was working on a way to get the bars off the bedroom window to permit egress of the big screen, the other one was sitting on Hubby’s side of the bed (the remote was found on the bookcase there) rifling through the odds and ends of stuff he keeps there, looking for valuables.
Interestingly, they opened his jewellery box and took two watches, but left four behind: two old collectable watches (one an Omega), a Citizen and a Seiko. They also ignored two pairs of cufflinks, one of them Mont Blanc. The didn’t touch a drawer full of DVDs or a stack of CDs. They took cheap ($7 to $90 in value) earrings and left behind a charm bracelet watch with a diamond set in the face and trendy, chunky sterling silver jewellery. We believe we interrupted them, as they were obviously still working on a way to get the big screen out, but I find myself wondering if they were pros or just chancers…they had pro tools and got in like pros, but obviously did not recognize items of significant value and took stuff of little or no value.
We have numerous windows that do not have bars over them because they are fixed windows…now Hubby is nervous that these guys will come back to finish the job we interrupted. They know what is in here, they know where it is, and they know how to get in. Until Davey gets the new bars installed (which will protect those windows as well) and new, improved locks for the security gates, the house has to be occupied at all times. So, I’ve been a little preoccupied these last few days and not paying proper attention to the blog.
Hopefully, things will be back on an even keel again soon.
Oh…in the midst of all of this Hubby announced that we may have to move to Johannesburg in the next few months, so I also have had estate agents and rental agents out to look at our house, and been poring over the web looking for suitable accommodation in Joburg.
Life is never boring in this place!!
Well, she’s here and if she isn’t the cutest thing you have ever seen, I will just eat my hat!
She arrived at about 9:30 and I have to say I am impressed with the way the breeder did things. The process of registering your KUSA (South Africa’s answer to the AKC) puppy is very different from the way AKC pups are registered. In America, the breeder registers the litter, receives individual slips from the AKC for the pups, which are then given to the buyer: no intelligent buyer would walk away with a pup without the registration slip. Here in South Africa, it is the breeder who does all of the registration…which means the breeder must submit names for the pups…and the buyer has to wait for KUSA to issue the paperwork---and trust that the seller is legitimate. This breeder provided me with photocopies of the pedigrees of both parents and copies of both his and his wife’s KUSA membership cards. We also got a health book from the vet with her immunization and worming information, and she was microchipped…all very professionally handled.
Puddin’ hasn’t made a sound all day…not even a squeak. But she’s sampled her bowls, explored her crate and her sleeping basket, played with her toys, and used her puddle pad.
How glad am I that I spent the last couple of weeks at the sewing machine and with a crochet hook in my hand? The basket is perfect, with a liner to keep her from chewing the wicker and fleece blankets to keep away the chill of the air conditioning. The crocheted blanket made a good basket cover when carrying her out in the hot South African summer sun…it provided both shade and ventilation. The fitted pad and cover for the crate have given her a comfy “cave” that she already likes. The time and effort was well spent…and it was cheap since I used an old cotton window scarf (about 5 yards of fabric) for the material and a old mattress pad for the innards of the basket and crate pad. I already had the pink yarn, left over from a previous project…all I had to do was buy a couple of inexpensive fleece throws, cut them to size, and stitch the edges…about $10 worth or materials total, since I already had the dog crate and the wicker basket!We’re getting a puppy!
That’s right…on 6 February my Valentine’s present will be delivered to my front door by her present papa…a brand new Yorkie puppy!
