Our little brown boy has a name!

Tiki = the first man in Maori mythology

Tiki is going to live with my other brothers family since we will soon have 2 other boys coming over to NZ which is more than enough for the moment.
This way Tike stays close to home and is still a little mine :-)Zanna is possessive of this baby. None of the other girls is aloud in the whelping box, if they try she goes and stands between them and Tiki. If they stick their noses too far over the edge you can hear a soft low growl that is quite enough to turn the heads away of any of the inquisitive girls.
But she is softening and Kiwi was aloud to give Tiki a lick this morning
Yesterday we went to the dog school Bill, Kate and I are going to train at. For the obedience we start in April. Bill with his own dog Rusty, Kate with Rowi and I will train with Vaglie. Well that’s the plan but maybe we swap dogs somewhere along the way.
But the class for “fly-agility” was not full and I could start training right away with Vaglie.
Fly-agility is a combination of flyball and agility. The idea is for the dogs to get the ball out of the holder and come back via the same jumps, tunnels, walks and/or pools they took on the way down. For now we just practice the ball holder but Vaglie had already done flyball in Holland so the basic’s only had to be polished up. Agility she has not done so that will be the real challenge.

We had taken Rowi with us so just for the fun while Vaglie was recuperating from working hard we gave her a lesson

She doesn’t look to bright eh ;-). I think she is looking at Kate who is taking the photo pleading her to come and save her from these lunatic humans.
Vaglie and Rowi looking around at their new school.
One very amusing thing happened while talking with one of the trainers. I asked her if Vaglie was aloud to try the fly-ball coarse set up for the advanced dogs. “of coarse” she said “and you can take your father along to help put the balls in the fly-ball machine”. I burst out laughing, my brothers look of shock would have made a great picture hahaha. I don’t know if it was that my brother looks so old or that I look so young hahahahahaha. I told this lovely lady it would be a long time before my brother would forgive her for that small mistake ;-)
Bill and Rusty

Sleeping beauty 3 days old

No photo just a quick update to say Zanna's brown little boy is doing very well. Tomorrow Ill take a photo of him to prove it :-)
His name is in the make. What ever it will be it will start with a "T".
Thomas?
Tim?
Trevour...... ?
Tom?
Tumper?
naaaaaaaaaaa surly not one of those......

Well that was short and sweet.... 1 boy. But like I said very cute!!!
Good thing we have lots of dogs for this little guy to "dog socialise" with ;-)
He is the splitting image of Rowi, my youngest girl that I have here in NZ. Even the white markings are the same!!!
Zanna is content as can be. She will have an easy time but will have to miss out on being able to “pig out” or she will be making much to much milk.
Oh this little boy is going to be soooooooo spoilt!!!
Having made NZ 1 Lagotto richer we look to the future LOL.

15.35 first born brown boy! 280 grams and cute as a button

Its now 10.30 Saturday morning.
My 2 sister-in-laws and I were going for a quick outing to the small local produce market where they sell local grown/made things all biologically friendly.
Today was extra special as they were having a artist day which we 3 girls enjoy. After that we would go and drink a great cup of coffee with a muffin in the homely looking coffee house (which we perhaps enjoy even more ;-) ).
But Zanna has started signs of going to give birth today!!!
So I have stayed home and my wossy brother that was going to stay home and do useful things has taken my place. He really doesn’t want to be witness to the birth of the pups and will do anything not to be in close proximity hahahahahaha.
So Els you well probably still be able to see how the birth has gone and how many Lagotti richer New Zealand has become.
All the dogs are waiting with Zanna. Kiwi just a few meters away and Rusty the german shepherd is in the lounge too. She is totally a member of the pack of girls.
Mum is doing a puzzle and I am watching tv, dogs and computer.
In the mean time while I write this Vaglie has joined Zanna in the “Rusty basket”. Yes instead of my bed it looks like the first puppy will be born in Rusty’s bed. Once the first is born we will go down stairs to the whelping box.

Watch this space!

Still no puppy photo's to show so I thought a nice dark photo of the mating would be nice :-)

It was a beautiful sunrise this morning but no puppies today. Will they be "Friday children"?

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath dayIs bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Kiwi and Rowi. The very, very very "bestist" friends!
They play so softly togeather :-/

Zanna is stating to look a little fatter thank goodness. It satisfies my need to cuddle chubby preggy girls.
The pups are lively and well, great to feel!!!
I counted out the due date to be today but that will not happen. Judging by her temperature it wont be tomorrow either. Oh well patience is a virtue.
Kiwi sleeping with a leaf in her mouth. Don’t ask me how or why….
Rusty, my brothers German shepherd, has a wonderful basket ;-)
Zanna, Rowi and Vaglie.

We have 3 big compost bins here.
I have emptied the first one and got at least a hundred kilos out and spread it in the garden outside my living room. Its beautiful dark compost that will hopefully eventually blend with the awful hard clay soil we have here. Its near impossible to dig into so I’m really hoping the worms will do their very best to get the compost into the ground. According to my trusty sources this will happen but I must admit Ill believe it when I see it :-/
Note my professional compost sieve. Everyone laughed at me till I started to use it and it worked like a dream :-p

My mother usually keeps me company when I’m working in the garden. Here she is sitting under the young apple tree in the much needed shade.
The girls are so “gezellig” too and keep me company where I am working. They usually go snuff around in the surrounding bush and plant boarders in the same area as I’m working so they don’t always see when I go somewhere else. But always they come and check if I’m still where I was and if not they run as fast as their little legs will carry them all over the section and even in the house till they find me. Very cute!

From left to right: Zanna, Tieka rolling around, Kiwi, Vaglie and Rowi
I don’t think Zanna will have a large litter. Her belly is still small even though its only just over a week before the pups are due. I’m just hoping she has a sweet and beautiful little girl!!! Fingers crossed!
Look at that little face, my little teddy beer….. She is so cute and loves to show her tummy.

Auckland city.
Have a look at the Sky tower. More info here http://www.skycityauckland.co.nz/skycity/auckland/sky-tower/sky-tower_home.cfm

Btw the guestbook is working again!

The girls are having a wonderful time with there new life. Every day we go for walks in parks or beaches. And when at home they have a huge garden to play in and a wonderful piece of private bush to spend many hours of searching in.



It’s a hilly garden so the rabbits that are busy at the bottom of the garden cant be seen from the top of the garden till coming round the top garden corner. When the dogs, esp. Kiwi and Vaglie, see them they hurtle down the sloop but by then the rabbits (usually 3 cute little black ones) have had plenty of time to escape. Kiwi and Vaglie spend ages snuffing out the bunny tracks and trying to dig out their holes.

A few days ago they found the rabbits ultimate safe haven. It was a +/- 10 meter long 15 cm in diameter flexible drainage pipe. It had never been in use and was dumped in the bush for safe keeping. It wasn’t an eye saw because it was quickly overgrown by plants. One end of it started at the bush edge and the other end some where in the bush.

Well this was just unbearable for Kiwi and Vaglie. A hole in the ground posed a fare challenge but a hard plastic drainage pipe was down right impossible to penetrate and thus completely frustrating! And boy did Kiwi let us know. A normally quite girl Kiwi now barked so hard, and if I had of let her so long, that we would have been put out of the country again for unsociable behavior. Down the garden I had to go to collect her and bring her up to the house.
A while later I let her go and unfortunately for me her “elephant brain” hadn’t forgotten her mission in life in NZ and WOOSSSSH down the garden she ran again in hot pursuit of the rabbits that simply went and hid in their nice black hiding place. Again Kiwi was bouncing around the pipe wagging her whole body with every bit of energy she had and barking as loud that her lung capacity would let her. Yelling at her would have been a total waste of time so down I walked again, this time with a leash in hand as that walked a lot more comfortable than having to hold her collar. She certainly wasn’t going to come up with me without a protest and bending her head to the ground to make holding her collar a lot more difficult than when she walked willingly. She is a cleaver cookie.
Next day and all was quiet during the day. The bunnies come out in the late afternoon so then the fun would start again. Hmmm I didn’t fancy doing the same thing every evening so after a talk with my brother Bill we agreed the pipe had to go.
Bill drove down the garden with his 4 weal drive and a long rope. The pipe wasn’t very heavy but by now it was lodged into place by all the plants

Kiwi and co. rushed down to help uncle Billy

Rope tied and Bill pulled the pipe out fairly effortlessly and very much to the surprise of the mighty hunters.


“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr let me help you Bill” you could hear Vaglie thinking as she tried to rip open the offending pipe. We (well actually Bill cos I had the excuse that I had to take photos rather than risk my life at being close to some escaping animal. It could just as easily be a rat.) had shaken the pipe to make sure nothing was in it so Vaglie was quite safe.

It took a few attempts to get the car up the hill, it really is quite steep. But once he finally got just the right spot and tempo the car rushed up the hill dragging the pipe that then started making the most amazing nose!!!! Well this was fantastic and the ALL the dogs booted up the hill in hot pursuit of the now “singing pipe” having SOOOO MUCH FUN!



Well that was all yesterday so today we had a nice quiet day and expect to have that until………….. until they find the other piece pipe hidden a little deeper in the bush ;-)