This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised I turned out as well as I did, given my childhood ...' 47

At some point, this is going to have to transmogrify into: This series of stories will be titled 'I'm surprised my kids turned out as well as they did, given their childhood ...' but for now...

---

Throughout my life, in different stages, there have been child-safety gates – Ha! I bet you weren’t expecting that… ranging from ‘Oh wow, that’s SO useful,’ to ‘Bloody thing! Trying to kill me!’ and anything in between.

My first recollection of one of these infernal things is when I was perhaps around six years old. We had one to prevent my little sister escaping the house.

Source

The back door was left open for the breeze (so I guess it was summer) and my sister was toddling. I would clamber over the gate and had no problem getting out without my mother’s help.

This particular time, I was parading around in high-heels, playing dress-up. I’m not sure if I also had a lot of fabric draped around me too.

Yeah… you can see where this is going, can’t you?

I went to go outside, over the gate and the heel of one of the shoes caught on the top of the gate and instead of my usual fast and graceful exit, it turned to instant disaster, bloodied hands and knees and a vow to never wear heels again.

I was six… what did I know about vows?

Over the years, friends and relatives have used the gate things, so I know what they do.

We bought one when Dani was starting to toddle so she didn’t get out of the living room and to the stairs.

The stairs weren’t built with child safety gates in mind and we could never find one to fit so Trev built one. He fastened it to the wall and was more a conventional gate than a child-safety one. It stopped the dogs going up the stairs too. Rottweilers are big dogs and their hips take a lot of strain, so going up and down stairs isn’t good for them, they’re not really built for it.

Only one pup has come a cropper with a safety gate and that was Bear. We bought one to stop him going up the stairs (the old gate had been taken down years before Bear came along.

It seemed like one day Bear could fit through the gate at a run and the next day he had grown enough that his hips caught between the bars. I’ve never heard such yelling!

Bear also doesn’t like the dryer – the frame we hang clothes on when it’s too wet outside. I used it as a barrier to prevent him getting into trouble overnight and he pushed the envelope, so to speak and it fell on him. It didn’t harm him, but he really doesn’t like them still.

Nero, our first male Rotty didn’t like teaspoons.

Nero watching the rabbit

If you hold a teaspoon up to him, he’d back off, snarling. He really hated those vicious teaspoons!

Trev had made a cup of tea and launched the teabag toward the bin. Nero, the scavenger, was fast as lightning and went to catch the teabag. He caught both teabag and spoon and both were hot.

Nero was an excellent guard dog, brave, fearless and intrepid (that was his KC registered name: Nero, Intrepid Emperor). I’m not sure what he’d have done if a burglar had tried to rob the house armed with a teaspoon.

Nero looks vicious but this was the malnourished puppy's way of telling us he wanted food (more on that later)

Rotties are gentle dogs, but bloody clumsy. All our dogs could hold an egg in their mouth without breaking it.

Trev tapped Rom (Romulus) under the chin when he had one in his mouth. Rotties also have very expressive faces. Rom looked miserable because the egg had broken – until of course, he tasted the egg.

When we bought Nero, he was living with his mum and his brothers and sisters at a local farm, in the barn where they were born.

My best friend, Deb and her boyfriend Rick came to fetch him.

We weighed the puppy as he grew – once a month, to see how he was going.

Trev picked the puppy up and stood on the bathroom scales. At 13 months and 13 Stone (180 pounds) Trev could no longer pick him up and so the experiment had to stop.

Such a patient dog, allowing the puppy to drag him about

Nero stood at 28” to the shoulder (too big to show at dog shows). He had a 56” chest and 31” neck.

He looked like he could tear anyone and anything limb-from-limb and yet, he was the most gentle dog… but clumsy!

He turned around in the kitchen and took the washing machine door right off the hinges with his back-end.

When Dani and later, Haydn were brought into the house, many would have you believe Rotties were not safe dogs to have around children. I’m telling you that’s not true.

Nina, our first Rottie took our children as part of her pack and would follow them whenever they were out in the garden. Dani fell over and Nina was there, nudging her to get her to stand up.

Of course, we never let the kids out with the dogs without our supervision, that’s insanity.

The child safety gate came in handy for that too. The dogs could easily have leaped the gate, but knew they weren’t supposed to and so, they never did.

They can open them if the catch isn’t too complicated. Just be aware of that…