a fifo wife {fifo life: me: dogs and morning walks}

I walk the dogs every morning. I have too. If I didn’t they would wake the kids with their nagging and it’s only fair just like humans they need exercise to stop them getting bored, to keep them healthy and to stay strong. Some days it’s an effort but once we are out and about I love it and walking is one of my favourite forms of exercise along with swimming, just like them really. They love to swim. It gives me a bit of time to think about what I have to do for the day and until recently it was the only me time I got and we all know how important that is.

I have four dogs. A complete mix of breeds to a very princess poodle, staffy cross, kelpie cross, and a to a very elegant bull mastiff cross. They are various ages from Josie the geriatric poodle to Shona a three year old who is as fast and as quick as a whip and beautifully and like humans all have their own personalities and traits. They are inside dogs and outside dogs. my in law’s hate it. I don’t care. They are part of my family and research states its good for them it shows they are part of a pack and they understand their place in it their pecking level. They are cleaner than my kids most days are treated for fleas and wormed every three months just like my children are with the exception that the boys are treated for (precautionary) head lice as opposed to fleas and I clean every day weather there is dogs or kids inside, there is always something.

Why four dogs? I have four dogs because well I’m allowed to by council legislation. I live alone for six months of the year; they take care of me, and my husband’s dog Lucy has told me on more than one occasion who I can and can’t let into my home. Strange as it sounds she determines who I will and will not let into my life. She proved her worth in gold the day she tried to bite a subcontractor (something completely out of character) we had working on our home. Turns out he felt that women were best used for of punching bags and scrubbing his floor with. There are other reasons too I have a big home and perhaps too big a heart and the fact is they have either come from deaths row from being the last at the pet shop meaning they were no longer cute and cuddly or they have like Shona our dingo kelpie cross has come from an impending death row of irresponsible owners. Beating an animal and starving it will not get them to do what you want them to only good training will do that. The last to join us was Big Boy he simply was not wanted and left behind. His purpose whatever it was my guess a pig dog given the number of poorly healed tears around his mouth and ears, was used up and like too many puppies far too easily discarded.

So each morning we walk. We pass the cows with the poodle going crazy, she barking like mad, me apologising out loud (yes to the cows) all a while saying thankyou to them (the cows) in my head. Now I’m not a vegetarian but the older I get the more I’m conscious of what I eat and how it got there. It’s become important to me. I know the food chain rubbish. I know they are just a cow. I know they are breed for eating. I also know they live, they breathe, they cry for their mothers, they cry when they are hurt, they bow their head for another scratch and I have watched the fear they hold as I follow them as I drive into town them on the back of the truck as they head to the slaughter yards. Its fear I can see it and they what ever you think are not stupid. So I’m thankful to them.

It’s after this a brief struggle in which in the day light I am often laughed at hence why I go in the dark we move on to the creek where Shona chases rabbits and Big Boy tries trying being the optimum word to catch bream with his mouth; yes its true. Lucy ever the grown up just watches and encourages the mayhem with her pitched bark and jumping from side to side, what ever that may do. Lucy my husband’s dog has grown from a scatter brain puppy to a lady. A true lady. If she was human we would most certainly be friends but we are all the same. We then walk down bush tracks, past old farms and then as he does every morning Big Boy will just sit in the middle of the path or road what ever comes first to tell me he has had enough. We don’t know Big Boys age. He is old full of arthritis and when he sits he is unmoveable until you say let’s go home Big Boy. In which he raises himself and we do go ever so slowly home. To do it all again in the morning.

xx Deb