My puppy

Meet Sutherlands Viceroy. (aka Uli)

He's my puppy.

When he poops/vomits/does something naughty, he's my father's dog.

Although at nearly 9 years old, 30kg and 70cm high at the shoulder he's not really a puppy anymore. The first time my sister's fiance came to our house, he refused to get out of the car when he saw Uli.

He's a German Shorthaired Pointer, most people have no idea what that is though, so when they ask what breed he is I say "a big brown one" and then they look at me as if I'm stupid.

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When we first got him, he was an outside dog. He had to sleep in the shed out the back, and was only allowed inside very rarely, but over the years he has become more and more spoiled. Now he's allowed all through the house... Although he still gets in trouble when I let him sit on the couch with me.

For his 7th birthday, my mother got him a whole chicken.

  Which she then put into the oven and warmed up to "chicken body temperature".

 And gift wrapped.

I would have liked a chicken for my birthday. Just saying.

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He was very naughty when he was little. We ended up having to get dog psychologists to help us train him. Even then, he didn't fully settle down until he was about 5 years old. Every now and then, he's naughty again.

One day he disappeared for a while, and returned a bit later with a bone.

They had no idea where the bone came from, until a few weeks later when they bumped into one of our neighbours.

Turned out he'd just casually walked in through their front door....

Through their house...

Out to their backyard, where their dog had a bone....

Took her bone....

Walked back through their house....

And out the front door, back to our place.

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My dad once found a little baby bird which had fallen out of its nest.

He picked it up and put it back in the nest.

It then fell back out of the nest.

He put it back in the nest.

 It fell out again

And Uli ran up and gobbled the baby bird up in one go.

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As I've been sitting here writing this blog, my dad is telling me off for making Uli look too fat. So I'll include an actual photo of him so you can all see how pretty he is...

There are many more stories, I will do another post about him sometime.

Olga

I never had pets as a child. I think that that could be part of the reason why I'm so obsessed with pets. I've already talked about how I wanted pet spiders, and about my many budgies. This is the story of Olga.

Once upon a time, I found a baby hedgehog outside my house. It was so cute!

The next night, I found it outside again.

It was still there two nights later, so I decided it had been abandoned by its mother, and I decided that I would be its new mother.

I brought it inside, and my flatmate Joya and I made a little bed for it, and started finding out all about how to look after hedgehogs.

We figured out that she was a girl, and named her Olga.

We made her an awesome little house.

We fed her with kitten food, and a couple of blueberries.

She only spiked me twice, and I'm pretty sure that the second time was an accident.

She bit me twice too, on purpose, but I forgave her because I loved her so much.

Eventually, we came to realise that it wasn't fair on her to be kept as a pet. We didn't want to put her back outside our house though, because she would probably get run over (there were always squished hedgehogs on our street, it was awful). We decided to give her to another flatmates mother, and she would release here somewhere nice, with lots of gardens to run around in, and no cars.

The day before we were going to give her away, she went missing. We couldn't figure out how she had managed to escape. Animal lovers, please don't read this. (highlight, but don't say I didn't warn you)Eventually we found out that a flatmate's friend who had been staying at our place had killed her.By throwing her onto the ground. It makes me sick to my stomach even thinking about it. When I found out I was beyond angry, I wanted to kill him. I was devastated.

Long story short, someone had killed her:(

A few months later it was my birthday. My parents had come down to spend it with me, and had brought presents from my sister.

I opened the card from her.

"I hope that nobody kills your hedgehog"?

I mean, my sister and I never really got along then, but really? That's a pretty mean thing to say, on my birthday of all days!

My mum saw the look on my face, and said "don't worry, you'll understand when you see the present" I unwrapped the present, and it was a charm for my pandora bracelet.

In the shape of a.... tombstone? Really? Making fun of my dead baby hedgehog, ON MY BIRTHDAY? What kind of sick joke was this?

I was starting to get upset at this point.

My mum looked confused.

No, definitely not a hedgehog. It's a tombstone for my poor baby Olga. What kind of horrible person would do something this morbid and mean? ON MY BIRTHDAY?

Turns out that my mother had mixed up my presents. The charm that I thought was from my sister was actually meant to be from my mother. It was a bible, as a late baptism present. My mother quickly dug out the charm from my sister.

I nearly died when I saw it: an adorable little hedgehog. I'm not even going to attempt to draw it, because I won't do the cuteness justice. Even these pictures can't capture how adorable it is.

I was so happy. What a perfect, thoughtful present! I love my sister!
And now I get to keep Olga with me all the time.


RIP Olga



Olga at her happiest: Eating a blueberry