I Bet You Thought I Would Never Write Again!

Hi there! You are almost right, I didn't have much to tell you, so what's the point of updating the blog?

Oh! Did I forget to tell you about my TEN puppies? ;-) Then I guess you will understand that the reason for not updating my blog is that there has been no time leftover for doing so! I have been and still am totally in command of my dogs!

I went to Denmark last year in January, leaving a friend of mine in my house to take care of the dogs. One day she calls me and announce that Leon - the male dog of our local taverna owner, Babis - is in the garden... and that Happy is actually in heat. What to do? Naturally, I was a bit astonished why she would call me Crete-Copenhagen to find out what to do about it... trying not to shout I asked her to put a collar and chain on Leon and to get Happy inside for safety! Well, getting home from Copenhagen it was soon obvious, that Happy was getting fatter! A visit to the vet confirmed the suspicions: She was pregnant, and it was too late to do anything, safely, about it. I don't know if that was actually true, but I had to believe it. So... on the 3rd of April the big event started. I had taken the shelves out of one of my biggest bookshelves and turned it into a bed for Happy, so she had plenty of space for whatever was coming. Then she got started and delivered one after the other beautiful little puppies, the size of a hand or maybe even smaller. After 5 Happy got a bit tired, so thereafter she just delivered, and I had to take care of strapping the "bag" and cutting the string... to hand the content over to mommy for her to clean. We did good... and after 10 it finally seemed to be over.

The next month it was Happy in my office with her 10 puppies, but soon that turned into something quite inconvenient, no peace to work at all, so she had a transfer with puppies and all into my very big bathroom.

10 puppies are a lot, so when they started growing a bit, there was not much space for all of them to get milk from mommy. So here my 24/7 duty starts: Preparing warm milk with egg yolks and cream and getting the baby bottle ready: Happy takes 5, I take the other 5 one-by-one and then switch them over to her after the first feeding, taking over her first bunch of 5 for a fill-up. This had to take place every 4 hours around the clock. Geez, it was sweet but very tiresome!

When they were around one-and-a-half or maybe two months the weather was nice and warm and they all moved out into the garden in a fenced area in a nice, big house under the olive tree. Now I was the sole provider, so Lidl saw me every week coming for a box of milk cartpms (32 litres) and loads of eggs and cream. Puppies grew to be little fatties and looking beautiful.

I started to get in touch with various "dog organizations" to find foster home/adopting families, and they all told me to stay put with the puppies, they would do all they could to find home. Well, some of it turned out right. One doggie went to a home in Germany, 2 others to Holland, one is living happily in Matala just a few chilometres away from here, and another one right here in Pitsidia. But for the 5 remaining no homes seemed to show up.

OK, it is late to say "to make it short", but let me do that anyway: I now have 8 dogs! The original 3 + the 5 remaining puppies. They are all the size of small horses, so I guess nobody will soften up to take them, they are simply too big now. And I love them all dearly! ;-)

One of the reasons for not finding much time to write the blog is maybe because I now mostly work to feed the dogs! 6 big tins of dog food every day, sterilization for the girls (4 of them, 200 euro each), vacinations, flee protection, chewing bones... you name it, my money go there! :-)

I love my doggies - but by now I am labled the local mad dog woman! ;-)

Cats? Only Darling is left. Billie left her life in the road last summer, there is no such thing as a world record for cats in Crete!
Darling on the other hand is really tough: Had a broken hip twice and got over it, just came home the other day after been missing for 4 days with a broken front leg, so he stays put in the bathroom on his soft bed for now, dinner and lunch served right in front of his nose, special treatments included. He'll soon be out there chasing the girls again! ;-)

Crete is still beautiful, even though now it is "winter" the fields are green with yellow flowers, we have sunshine most of the days - although in this exact moment it is pouring down with rain and tomorrow's forecast doesn't look too good either, but compared to the rest of the world - weatherwise - we live in paradise, I can assure you!

If something sensational should happen, I will be back to tell you about it.
If you hear nothing, it's just because the sun is shining, the fresh fish is amazing, and life is smiling at me!

May it smile at you as well!