Reverb11 Day 10 – Beauty

Beauty – Describe a moment of beauty that you witnessed this year.

I recently had my little ToyPom shaved for the first time in her 10year existence.  We are having what feels like one of the hottest summers so far and she was really suffering, so I decided to take her to the doggy parlour.  She came out looking like a little lamb, but even more beautiful than my little puppy’s new look, was the change in her personality.  She is loving the short hair and is strutting her stuff, being all cute and playful around the house.  She is being too beautiful for words.

Before:

After:

Reverb11 Day 5 – 5 Things

5 Things – Describe 5 guilty pleasures

My ultimate guilty pleasure is having cheesecake for breakfast.  There is nothing that taste better than eating cheesecake while still in bed, in your pajamas.  Nothing.

Reading a book that is so gripping that I read through the night just because I cannot put it down.

Cuddling with my beloved puppy.  She can be so cute sometimes, it makes my heart ache with love.

That glass of red wine when I get home from work in the afternoons.

Christmas presents.  I love getting christmas presents, it’s my favourite thing about the season.

The most beautiful thing ever written

“Her father had taught her about hands.  About a dog’s paws.  Whenever her father was alone with a dog in the house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw.  This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world!  A bouquet!  Great rumours of travel!  She would pretend disgust, but the dog’s paw was a wonder: the smell of it never suggested dirt.  It’s a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so’s garden, that field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen—a concentration of hints of all the paths the animal had taken during the day.”

I love this passage from The English Patient.

I have grown up loving the smell of a dog’s paws  Cuddling up between my dog’s legs when she falls asleep;  the most comforting smell in the entire world.  I have never met anyone else who gets this, and that is why this excerpt is so powerful for me, Michael Ondaatje just explains the essence of the smell so well.

A truce of sorts

It seems like my furry little critters have come to some kind of agreement in the new place. The cat is now allowed to sleep on the bed with me and the puppy.

They still keep to their respective sides; Thumpy to my left and the cat to my right, but at least my puppy stopped chasing the cat out of the bedroom every time she sees him.

I also find it comforting having my four legged children with me in the new bedroom. Not that they can do much in the form of protection, but its just nice to not be totally alone. I don’t know how people can live without pets, they bring so much colour to my life.

Pets First Aid

The other night I attended a first aid class for pets. It was presented by a veterinary nurse and it was really interesting. Besides the fact that I am now slightly paranoid about the things that might happen to my furry children, I am also much better prepared in case of an emergency, and honestly think its a good thing to do for anyone who has pets.

It was also strange for me to learn that I find the idea of having to stick a thermometer up my beloved puppy’s backside absolutely horrible, but will not hesitate to give her mouth to mouth (should she ever need it) which basically involves you having to stick her whole muzzle into your mouth and blow air through her nose. We were shown how to stop bleeding, clean wounds, how to set a broken leg until we can get to a vet along with a whole bunch of very useful information on how to deal with common pet-related emergencies.

We even experienced a serious WTF moment; Before the course started, the nurse introduced us all and in the group were 2 girls who work for a shelter rescuing cats. Then right in the beginning of the course, she told us never to give cats disprin as it’s poisonous for them. That’s when this one woman chirps up about how she puts food out laced with disprin to kill all the cats in the neighbourhood because they poo in her child’s sandbox. At first I thought I imagined it, but then I saw the look on the cat shelter ladies” faces. Can you believe some people? I mean, you come to a pet first aid course and then tell everyone how you try to kill the neighbourhood cats. Some people are seriously strange and disturbed.