Fact or Fiction? - 16

The story about Nina giving birth -

The story was TRUE!

I had a notion of embellishing the story, saying that she deposited every pup onto my lap as she gave birth but it didn't seem right. Nina was a loyal and faithful member of the family, but she was never 'needy'. She was confident and self-assured and wouldn't have done that.

Yes, she trusted me with her pups, we had a wonderful bond and I still miss her, though she's been gone more than two decades, but she didn't need to fawn over me. She enjoyed our friendship, but I also get the feeling that she'd have been OK if it was less loving, too.

When my own babies came along, we were, of course, suitably cautious about the dogs. Even though we didn’t think they’d hurt the children on purpose, accidents can happen and the children were never left alone with the dogs.

Nina died 2 weeks before she was 10 years old.

Nero died a year later, just two weeks before he was 10 years old too.

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While the children were growing up, we had lots of pets – hamsters, chinchillas, cats, fish.

Dani wanted an ‘Undersea World’ bedroom and I decorated the bedroom in pinks and blues, in a ‘rag-dab’ fashion (a mixture between rag-roll and dab methods).

I made some stencils and drew a family of orcas on her wall, using black poster paint. On another wall, I drew fish and seahorses. I found glass beads with flat bottoms and glued them onto the wall so it looked like bubbles rising to the surface.

She had a dolphin quilt cover and the cherry on top was her very own fish tank.

We took her to the local aquarium to buy fish to put in it and she chose about half a dozen. She saw one that was missing an eye and took pity on it. The guy threw that one in for free.

Because I cracked a joke about it –

Q: What do you call a fish with no eye?

A: Fsh!

That’s what she named it. ‘Fsh’. She had a couple of creamy-white ones and she called one ‘Springy’ because it jumped out of the water (make sure the lid is always on).

One morning, she called me into her bedroom to tell me one had gone missing.

Hamsters escaped and did ok, but I’m pretty sure fish don’t do well in the ‘wild’ inside a house.

Then she saw the tail of the missing fish. It had explored inside a shell and looks like it had got stuck. I thought it had gone there to die but didn’t like to tell her that.

I took the shell out and flicked it, like shaking water off it. The fish plopped back into the water and swam away.

Dani was delighted. The fish looked like it had a crick in its neck, back and tail and it swam in circles for a day or so, but it got itself straightened out eventually.

Dani got tired of the underwater theme eventually and went on to Japanese chic – red, gold and black.

The glass beads had to come off, the painted undersea effect was painted over and the orcas… well they took way too many coats of paint to cover over than I care to remember! It seems like a good idea at the time, but trust me, black poster paint is awful to get rid of!

I eventually found a trick. Mix wood glue (PVA) with a little water, paint over the poster paint and allow to dry. The paint is then sealed under the glue and no longer spreads or seeps through the new paint.

The fish went downstairs and Trev took them under his wing. He called them all 'Graham' because he didn't want them worrying about favouritism. 'Springy' and the rest went into the pond eventually. Springy died at around 15 years old. He was a large albino grass carp and had grown to almost 24 inches long.

Escapee animals:

Hamsters – some we’ve re-captured, some we’ve lost completely and others have died by cat.

Chinchillas – a whole pack of them escaped their communal home and attacked the rotties. Only a few survived that. One chinchilla escaped into the cavity wall of the kitchen and it took ages to get it back. Another escaped into the garage and lived there for a week. I caught her by tempting her with raisins.

Rotties have jumped the fence, undone the gates and doors and once bashed through the garage door, destroying the door – just to get to the ice cream van!

Fish – from the pond. Why they escape the pond, I’ll never understand. It’s a good thing Bear has a ‘warning bark’ and lets us know there’s an escapee flopping around on the ground.

Smudge went AWOL one day and he came back less and less frequently. One story I do remember about him was the day he caught a mouse and brought it home. Pleased as punch he was.

We knew he’d not caught the mouse himself. He was way too laid-back for that. Plus the mouse was still in the trap that had caught it.

To see him trotting up the garden with the mouse and trap in his mouth was amusing. He seemed so proud of himself.

So... Truth or Fiction?

To make this more complex... are any of these stories true? All, some or none? You decide. I'll tell you tomorrow!

Some of the images are from Google - the dogs are mine :)