Despite being New Zealand-born and having lived in this house for nearly eight years, I have done little in the way of renovation and redecoration. There has been some moving of beds, some purchasing of couches, and some routine maintenance, but not a lot else. I tend to caution, renovations-wise, I think, since in the back of my mind there’s always a worry that I’ll run out of money, time or taste. I haven’t minded living in a house that’s in effect a period-piece, since most fixtures have stayed in reasonable order, save some harrying by the dogs.
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27 February, 2010
in dogs
I am at present flooding Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr with — let us not put too fine a point on it — pictures of puppies. Fortunately, this move has generally been well received. Finnmar described the image supply, on behalf of her colleagues, as the “next ‘aw’ moment” and an anonymous well-wisher was kind enough to request its continuance on formspring.
Conversation with my own colleagues has revealed a small variety of questions and queries and “oh, I didn’t know that moments” about very young puppies, so in the spirit of self-indulgence and public information, I thought I would make a modest list of Facts! about this topic. It’s knowledge, bro.*
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A word to the wise, said a colleague of mine a fortnight or so ago, the mother of two very lively young boys. Take as many weekend breaks as you can before the baby’s born, because after that comes a period in which you are more or less housebound. By this collegial advice was the decision that the señor and I should spend Waitangi weekend in North Otago further strengthened. As the pregnancy fog, which I understand is said by most researched accounts not to exist, continues to envelope my mind, it felt also like an opportunity to do something involving fine-motor skills — such as driving — before my previous accomplishments of coordination and logical sequences of thought desert me completely.
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As tweeted, young Fern is in pup, surprising me at yesterday’s scan with four fetal whelps in view, one of whom obliged us with a backflip under the ultrasound. The average-sized Norwich litter is two or three whelps, so this was a surprise. There are around four weeks to go, although the poppet in question is already sporting considerable saddlebags and moving a little more sedately.
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As it was three years ago, so this has been a summer for mating Norwich Terriers. This is never without drama, and the heat doesn’t help anyone. There is a week or so to go before expert hands will palpate the abdomens of Evie and Fern to see if anything lies within. I have given up any pretense of soothsaying via participant observation and will have to wait and see.
High summer is also the time when Norwich Terrier upper airways get irritated, for a whole raft of reasons. There is some interesting science going on in this regard, of which you can read a layperson’s summary here (an article with both pathos and data by my breeder friend Magda).
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Even with the best of domestic and digital organisation, files sometimes can’t be found, and so it has been for a year or two with the video shot and edited by harvestdad in honour of the day on which Millie joined my household and made it a two-dog home. It was not long before the summer solstice in 2003 when she and her three litter brothers — two red, one black and tan like her — were brought up from Otago by Deena their breeder, and taken away by their respective new owners. We had so much hope of her, this black-and-tan ball o’ wonder, which proved sustaining in the subsequent months of furious feistiness.
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Aka, harvestbird’s Fou de Fa Fa
Insérez des friandises
Laissez jouer votre chien
Surprise, des friandises s’en échappent!
The treat-ball was a complementary gift to my mother as she collected Braeband Kennels’ umpteenth sack of dog food. With five dogs, we won’t be filling it with anything except air, but the multi-lingual intructions reminded me of the excitement I used to feel when examining our household’s Lego boxes as a child, whose legends “for ages three and up” were listed in successive European languages amongst the illustrations of creations possible with the fabled blocks. “Treats” are neither here nor there, but “friandises”? There is a surprise.
After six blog posts in a row last Saturday and a weekend spent in that grim halfway state of staying on the internet, waiting for something to happen, I decided to take what, for want of a better phrase, I dubbed a spiritual detox. It is no disrespect to you, gentle reader, to say that I’m feeling much better for it: I’ve got a lot of reading done, for one (although I’ve yet to finish the weighty tome I’m showing off in the Amazon link at right).
This final non-teaching week also gave rise to a lively social round. The señor and I called mid-week on Governor’s Bay Jay, whose lovely blog you can now find here. Today we took Evie and Fern to visit Ashburton Jay and friends, some of whom were very young puppies. You can see my too-fast panning and unsteady walking zooms of Coco, Zsa Zsa, Evie and Fern below.
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The (contestable) fact of a decade passing has been slow to come to my attention, and it was only really the appearance of the obligatory lists (particularly by 
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Anniversary Labours
17 February, 2010
in O internet, at home, commentatrix, dogs, in Aotearoa, we are family
Adventures with Average Baby
This spring-and-summer pregnancy is already twice the length of its winter predecessor, and as different, thereby, as two things of the same kind can be. Not least among these differences was the way in which we passed the first eleven weeks in a kind hopeful lockdown, wary to put too much pressure on the future to carry hope that might yet be redundant again.
The brain, the spine, the beating heart that was our gift before Christmas opened the door to a different kind of experience, territory as unknown as the very notion of being pregnant was the first time around. The tremendous good fortune whereby my morning sickness (a most inadequate moniker) receded by New Year has given me back my old ability to think about anything other than how terrible I feel (and the accompanying certainty that nobody understands or cares sufficiently) and something of a hopeful forward-gaze.
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