Zombie Caterpillars!

"A single gene in a caterpillar virus sends its victims running for the treetops, where they die and their bodies liquefy, sending an ooze of virus particles on their brothers and sisters below."

wait what?! a virus is turning caterpillars in to zombies?! and they then ooze puss?!

full article is here http://www.livescience.com 

oh nature you can be creepy sometimes!

all quiet in the house for once...

So some of you know that the only job I could find after leaving university was two night shifts in Sainsburys. It is one of them jobs that is the same thing every week. I turn up, the shop is a mess, I clear it up and it is back to being a mess when I start my next shift. I have wanted to work with animals for a while now as it is one of the main things in my life I am passionate about but I have needed that push to get me going. So today I enrolled in an online Companion Animal First Aid Course! I thought that if I do this course it could help me in many animal related jobs as well as helping me with my own animals. My two pups are as clumsy as I am so I know it will come in handy even if I can’t get myself in to a job!

For those who saw my Holly pup on the Dogs trust website you will see that the first words they used to describe her were LIVEWIRE! In all fairness in the kennels she was and she definitely is super hyper when she wants to be. Today however her “greyhound” side shined through and she was lazier than Darkley! (even me saying that Darkley is lazy can shock people!) I have been snoozing for most of the day after doing a nightshift and Holly has been snoozing next to me the whole time- even though she slept all of last night! In the house both of them are so super chilled out, they have bouts of playing and running about but they are nothing like how they are when they meet people!

The welcome I get when I get home from work or from going out is amazing. Darkley bounces about (doesnt jump up anymore yay!) and Holly wags her tail that much that her whole butt wiggles about! She also just gets so excited that she sometimes yelps out she is so happy and today she even grabbed one of my shoes and ran down the garden with it! 

So me and the animals don’t have much planned this weekend, doing a full clean out of the birds and lizards which was a lot easier without two pup noses poking in to everything! Holly still needs to learn “lay down” which she is really struggling with, she is doing well though with stay though which is awesome. Just bought a dog tricks book so might see if I can get Darkley doing something new too! Hope everyone has a great weekend!

fact of the day!

Random fact for you all!


Darkley was originally called Darky in the rescue center. This did feel slightly racist to me and I really did not want to be shouting that down the street!


At university I studied film and watched many random films but I was drawn to one in particular because the love of my life Robert Downey Jr was in it, it was called "A scanner Darkly"

its okay for me to a photo on here of him..it HAS got a dog in it! haa!

So I added the L and E and Darkley got his name! Also discovered there it a town in ireland with that name and Darkley is Irish! 

three weeks with two pups and i am still sane!

Hello everyone thought I should do an update on things!

Firstly the great dane mentioned in my news post is doing really well it seems! He is walking a bit more and trying to play more which is awesome, sounds like they got to him just in time. The 13 year old collie stayed with another family member in the end, sounds like someone came to their senses. Sadly though Floyd the pup with the horrid amount of hair had so many other health issues that it meant that the kindest thing to do was to put him to sleep. My heart sunk when that email came through, I hope my donation can help with another “Floyd” that will come through their doors.

So tomorrow marks three weeks we have had Holly and she is really finding her feet now! I have been keen to find out if it will be Darkley or Holly who is in charge and it turns out to be tiny Holly. Darkley is just more laid back right now it seems, he lets her have his toys and just  lets her get away with all sorts. Holly’s fearfulness seems to be slowly fading too and her confidence is replacing that. She started barking at our neighbours today as they were too close to the fence, very bold of her! Darkley half-heartedly barked and backed her up! Her interest in the birds in the house is slowly going also, she only really pays attention to them when they are fluttering and excited. She got a telling off today for knocking the cage with her nose; luckily the birds couldn’t care less about it. Holly however ran away and sat in her bed and then came and nudged me to say “sorry”.  The similarities between how Darkley was when we got him and how holly is right now are spot on. She still likes a good chew but only with toys, she will dig to china if allowed too and she has lost enough puppy energy to have a good nap in the day! Darkley still digs when he is bored; he digs little holes that you don’t see till you fall down one in the middle of the lawn! One of which I have kept filling in for the past few months. Holly has decided she would like to have a go at this hole now and I caught her with her head right down it with her bum in the air! I have to say our garden is very dog friendly, there are only a few places they aren’t allowed to go so I don’t tell them off for digging but they will get told to bugger off and do something else if I catch them!

Took Darkley to agility tonight and had lots of fun. Once I worked out what I was doing wrong (always the handler never the dog!) Darkley was a dream to handle over the first jumps! He did however seem determined to skip most of the course and head straight to the tunnel!  Walking home in the dark and rain was a harsh reminder that summer is over though!

I caught Holly at 4am lurking about my room last night with her nose around the lizards. Yoshia the gecko was having a hard time shedding last night so I am guessing she was being more noisy then normal and this sparked Holly’s interest. I have introduced Holly to the geckos and Mojo and they fascinate her. She knows not to touch but it does not stop her looking and trying to stick her nose as close as she can to them! I told her to go back to sleep and she thankfully gave up her search for the geckos and thumped back down on my bed. The cheeky monkey!

I have booked to go away for a night in a few weeks and I am already being an over protective mum and thinking about all the things I will need to do to leave them with my mum.  I leave them all twice a week to work nightshifts but still I am being super over protective about it! I am sure they won’t care if I am about or not really!

what is holly?

So there is much debate on what breeds Darkley and Holly are! 


So Holly was called a Border Collie cross by the rescue center..what do you think? love to know other peoples opinions on this!

news type stuff

Yesterday I heard about a great dane called Chance. http://www.examiner.com/dogs-in-national/a-sack-of-bones-his-name-is-chance

yes a great dane! the poor boy was found just wondering about about. Thankfully an amazing person is working hard with him and he has made it through the dangerous first 48 hours! she is updating his fb page..cant wait to see a healthy pup on there at some point https://www.facebook.com/pages/Giving-Chance-a-Chance/143688105723285

another pup needing help https://www.facebook.com/notes/suzie-helpindogs/oldie-needs-a-new-home-or-he-will-be-put-to-sleep/10150370122353385 a poor old lady has gone in to hospital long term and her family are threatening to put to sleep her poor 13yr old companion! Grrrr!! please pass this on if you know someone who can help!

okay every now and then I stumble across something that makes me go eh?! 

apparently people dip these chicks in buckets of paint or inject the dye in to the eggs so they chicks come out like this. who thought of this?! So weird!

Also in the news a dog walker was killed by some cows while walking through the field. walkers have been told to let their dogs go as the cows are just after the dogs. i know my two could out run the cows but I think i would be the fool who takes on a cow for the sake of her dog!http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-14759924

 

and finally credit to "for the love of dog" blog on dogster have covered a story of a woman punching a bear to save her dog! http://dogblog.dogster.com/2011/09/01/alaska-hairdresser-punches-bear-in-face-to-save-dog/ crazy or awesome woman? sounds like the kind of stupid thing i would do to save my dogs...i have nearly started fights with people as it is over darkley. insult my dog? you insult me!

meet the family!

So I thought I would do a little blog about what pets I actually own so when I talk or mention them you will know who I am going on about. Should have done this at the start of this blog really!

So first we have Darkley. He is my 2 year old goofball! I rescued him from Border collie trust in Birmingham in May 2010. He had only been with them a few weeks and had only just been okay-ed for rehoming. They had gotten him in from Ireland where he had been found a stray (they think) at about 5 months old. On his paperwork it said he was shy and had no interest in toys. Couldn’t be further from the truth, sounds like he really hated kennels! He is a collie cross and is a big lad now. He likes to think he is everyone’s best friend and is a huge cuddle monster. He is a very excitable pup though which was probably one of the reasons he was in kennels so long. I am so used to it by now though that I just see it as him being him, he is a lot different in the home though. We have been doing agility now for about five months which he absolutely loves. Give Darkley a few tunnels and an A frame you have a happy dog!

Two weeks ago I adopted Holly. They estimate she is around one year old and is a collie cross (think she is very lurcher like!) Another Irish pup brought over by Dogs trust. When she arrived she was constantly sitting in a puddle of pee and they could not work out why. They did test after test and finally they sent her to the small animal hospital in London where they discovered there was something wrong internally with her and operated on it. The peeing magically stopped in the next few days until she was spayed. The peeing started again and they changed up her medication and so far it seems to have worked! She is still on it now with the hope we will be able to wean her off it in the future. She was described as a live wire and nervous girl, which is true. She loves to play with Darkley and bounce about all over the garden with their toys. She does however sleep just as much as Darkley and I do. She tries her hardest to stay awake and usually falls asleep sitting up and jerks her head up as she wakes herself back up! Her shyness is going slowly and a polite little pup is showing through. She is a cheeky thing though and still has a lot of puppy-ness about her!

Now too the birds! Louie is my grumpy cockatiel who is around 17 years old. My grandparents went out to buy me a canary and arrived home with a tiny 13 week old Louie! He loved my granddad so so much and would be the friendliest bird around him, the rest of us get the grumpy hissy bird! He doesn’t really like to come out his cage these days and his happy to snooze the days away. He chit chats to you and will tell the dogs off if they come too close to him! He is getting on now and I cherish every day I get with him.

I also have a tiny white canary called Casper. While in a pet shop back in February 2010 my mum heard this beautiful singing from the other side of the shop. As we went over to investigate the singing stopped but I noticed that amongst all the canaries there was a dazzling white canary. As we walked back off the singing started again and we asked the shop keeper which bird it was, turns out it was the white little canary. My mum had been going through a rough patch and I was still away at university so I thought a happy little singing feathered friend would be prefect for her seeing as she was very much in love with the little guy already. So with my credit card in hand I got my little finchy friend! Every day he brightens up the house with his cheeps and chirps, he is the happiest little guy.  Through bad breeding he got a huge cyst on his wing where one of his feathers grows inwards (like an ingrown hair for humans!) it gets infected easily. The vet told me that if it got to the point that he could not fly that the “humane” thing would be to put him to sleep. It got to that stage but I refused to give up he was still singing, eating and hopping about happily. I gave him warm regular baths and exercised him more and finally a new feather pushed through and the lump broke off! Casper can now easily fly about and land in my mums pot plants again. There is still a small little lump there that isn’t infected and the feather will grow back each year and cause issues no doubt.  However none of this bothers him at all! He has started to copy the noises Louie makes so if and when I have to say goodbye to Louie, Casper will be here to sing about Louie loud and proud!

Right the next two come as a troublesome pair.  So back in January of this year my mum got very ill again and I was running about all over the place trying to keep things ticking over. My mum wanted to thank me for everything and a tiny green budgie appeared!  We named him buddy and he is a mouthy little thing who doesn’t mind people but would rather not be near us humans! He looked so lonely in his cage and would try and talk to Casper through the bars, so I got an even greener Buzz the budgie! Another budgie that pretty much dislikes me and every other human but is best friends now with Buddy.  They bicker, chat and chase each other about the cage all day and seem to be in their own budgie world! It is so fun to watch them climb upside down and hop about like mad.

I have a little lizard gang also who is led by Mojo. Mojo is a rankins dragon and is about 19 months old now and I really did not think she would be here with us still. I got her from a store that was well known for breeding nice reptiles, apart from Mojo it seems. Soon after getting her, Mojo sunk in to a depressive state. She sat in the same spot all day and would not eat or drink. I tried everything I could think of to get her to eat. I tried putting her in different places, different foods from different places and took her to vet after vet. I kept on asking anyone and everyone I could about her and nothing worked. The manager at the local pets at home was a bearded dragon breeder and had given me great advice with her vivarium lighting and with her in general. He told me to bring her in the store so he could take a look. Firstly he was shocked at her size and he then had a look as told me she was a she! He then placed her in with the other baby dragons and she just sat there under the light refusing food as normal. Mojo does not like her tank as hot as most dragons so after a while she opened her mouth to cool herself down, so the manager rested a worm on her lip and gulp it was gone! So she is hungry and she does want to eat so why isn’t she? He wiggled the worm in front of her again and she again ignored it. One of the other lizards walked past her and she did not flinch.. as if she did not know the lizard was there. Finally it clicked and we worked out she couldn’t see any of it! So we got her to open her mouth again and put a worm in it and gulp gone! She did it with worm after worm! They said she must have been incubated at the wrong temperature which is why her eyesight has gone and why she is still as small as she was when she was born. I have learnt since then she can see shadows, so I keep everything in the same place in her vivarium so she can work her way around it easily. She is not living the full life she could be but she is getting along okay and is cheeky as anything- her favourite thing to do is to scratch the glass and annoy the pups! I am just glad we worked out what was wrong with her in time.

Drizzle

I have 4 leopard geckos now as one passed away about a month ago. It must have been something internal that suddenly made her go downhill and pass on. She was such a brave and good natured gecko who I miss dearly. Her vivarium sister was Yoshia, who is shy and tiny! Never been one to like to be handled really but she is a sweet little thing. My other three I rescued as they were dumped at the local pet store in an ice cream tub. The male is a giant yellow inbred monster but is the sweetest of them all. We called him drizzle (lemon drizzle for the yellowness!) and he always comes out to say hello when you speak to him. He loves his chin tickled too! Then there is rain (she is purple…purple rain!) Who has lost her tail at some point and has a weird regrowth, which does not bother her at all! She is laid back and likes to wait at the food bowl when I am putting new food in, the little piggy! Then the youngest one is Thunder (because she had a temper!) her markings make her look SO moody! When I got them she had not been handled at all so she was a moody girl who took a bite out of my finger a few times. She is now much better but I still have to watch my fingers if I have been touching their food!

I have 3 tanks full of guppies and each has a loach in there too (bones, booth and tango!)  That pretty much ends the list of my animal family! It sounds like a lot but it really does not feel like it. They blend in to my life and my day to day going on and it would be weirder id they weren’t here really. They all have their quirks and I love that about them all!!