Rainy day Lily playing with a stick of kindling.
For those of you who missed Erin Burnett’s rant on CNBC, apparently Australia is about to commit Camelicide.
True, lots of camels will die. But, wait for it, we have ONE MILLION feral camels living in the Australian outback. Obviously they are not doing the native flora and fauna any good.
There is one guy I’ve heard of who has made a mobile abattoir and is trying to set up a system for killing and slaughtering camels in the field. But the camels are nowhere as tame as cattle and I don’t envy anyone trying to round them up.
The most bizarre bit for me was the newscaster putting up a photo of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – who looks like a large eight-year-old boy, and not anything like a he-man, or killer, serial or otherwise, of any sort.
Whenever Luna won’t play with her, Lily sits on Luna’s head.
Poor Luna.
FunnyMean Lily/Lilly.what type of dog are those?
gorgeous may i say!
Thank you. They know they are gorgeous and can be quite the Divas in public, “why yes I am beautiful, and yes, you may pet me”.
The breed is known both as the Pyrenean Mountain Dog, and the Great Pyrenees. They come, not surprisingly, from the Pyrenees alps that form the boarder between France and Spain – where the Basque have bred them for millennium.
I’ve had at least one for almost two decades now.
Oh, and in addition to being livestock guardians, mine are also my Animal Assisted Therapy partners. They’re unflappable, great schmoozers, and very gentle, which makes them an excellent breed for the job.
Luna goes weekly to a nursing home, and every other week to a residential community for developmentally disabled adults. Lily, who is only six months old, is in training and fills in for mum about once a month.
they sound awesome!
i have a friend who rescues Anatolian Shepherds, which seem to be first cousins of your PMD’s. but yours look more lovable.
but maybe i’m just partial to thick furred dogs!
re: chow-chows
yes, i had also read/heard the name “chow-chow” was from the ships lading lists. & that they were bred as hunters of large animals- tigers, bears…. & when times were tough used as food (ugh!) i believe i read chinese emperors had vast kennels of them, keeping several hundred dogs & twice that number of keepers for them, but its been quite awhile, i may have my facts wrong.
i believe there is some speculation that they are very close relative to bears (i can’t remember which just now, but some bear also has the black tongue)
contrary to popular belief i have found these dogs to be very loyal & friendly, good guard dogs, superb children watchers & best friends to me & mine.
i guess dogs are much like children…if you beat them & treat them meanly you get vicious animals. if you love them & treat them with respect you get best friends.
thank you for showing me your furred children. that Lily looks like a goofy one… just like my Oblio. (the one in the baby pool)
& thank you for allowing me a place to show off my best friends.
Yep, the Anatolian is considered part of the whole chain of big white or light colored dogs used to guard flocks in the mountainous regions of Europe and Indo-Europe.
There’s also the:
Italian Maremma
Pyrenean Mastiff
Tatra Mountian Sheepdog
Akbash Dog
Aidi
Hungarian Kuvasz
Slovensky Kuvac
Komondor
I’m very fond of Chows, probably because the ones I know best belonged to my first obedience trainer. The dog she used in classes to teach us new techniques was called “Little Britches” (who took best opposite sex at Westminster one year). She was as sweet as she was obedient.
such hard work!
sitting in the sun…
diving for treasure….
guarding the furless ones….
gha! very hard work!
What lovely Chow Chows.
It’s my understanding that the name Chow Chow has nothing to do with the Chinese name for the breed but rather comes from their inclusion on manifest of the first ship that brought them to the US under the heading “Chow Chow”, which roughly translates as “miscellaneous cargo”.
The ducks are laying again.
About to have some more of these for breakfast. While our fowl are all laying (four ducks, three chickens) we’ll have so many eggs the poor dogs will be called upon to pick up the slack. The dogs like their’s raw, in shell.
We made someone very unhappy when we moved the tarps of the old firewood and moved it in preparation for stacking this seasons’.
The tenant discovers the eviction order.
The tenant strenuously objects to the order.
The “sherrif” enforces the eviction order.
Imogen wants to know what kind of snake it was.
I used to get similar tenants in our compost pile.
It’s a common king snake.
I’m only familiar with the stripey Kings.
I recently purchased a Canon Powershot camera to use when doing home assessments. It has a video function. About a week ago I gave Lily a new toy and took a short video of her with it to try the video out. Today I downloaded it onto the computer and played it. Lily was entranced, so I replayed it to video her watching herself.
Lily’s review (translated by JimF): the plot was weak but the main character was compelling.
Don’t make me laugh (it starts me coughing again). 😉
Hey, the whole bloody world is infested with your eucalyptus trees, so maybe you ought to be willing to live with our camels! :o}
True, and you are welcome to cut them down wherever you find them.
I actually grew up in California, where Eucalyptus are so naturalized that I thought they belonged.
Australia has perhaps the biggest feral problem of anywhere in the world. Pigs, goats, cats, dogs, Water buffalo, horses, have all gone wild here. And that list doesn’t even include all the intentionally introduced wild species, like fox and European rabbits, deer, and the infamous Cane toad.
In the twentieth century, we had the greatest rate of extinction of any continent, and it’s not slowing.
That is a serious problem indeed, particularly on a continent that has so many unique native species. WRT the intentionally introduced species, it is the essence of the law of unintended consequences.
About the eucalyptus trees, I can’t think of a country I have been in that did not have them all over the place, with the possible exception of `Oman – I do not recall seeing any there, though I might have and put it out of my mind. They are all over Pakistan, and I have seen them in Syria, too, though not as much. The problem is that they not only take over, they produce chemicals that kill other vegetation, so they not only crowd out the native species, they kill them off. They are also a TERRIBLE fire hazard, with the volatile oils they produce. Cutting them down helps some, but really doesn’t solve the problem, and of course people just keep planting the bloody things anyway.
Yep, they burn like Roman Candles. And yes, like a lot of trees they change the soil chemistry around them to cut down on the competition. I’m sorry to hear they have become such a pest abroad.
Our biggest invasive tree species in Tasmania is the Crack willow. They have taken over all the riparian areas. They reproduce by losing branches which then take root (any piece of living wood larger than two inches can start a whole new tree). They are all male and essentially clones of the original imported trees. Unlike the Eucalyptus trees, which have small leaf pores (stoma) – which reduces the amount of water they lose when they respire, willows have evolved to take in large amounts of CO2 though large pores (and grow rapidly as a result). Which means an individual willow tree loses up to ten-thousand litres of water into the atmosphere a day just by “breathing”. That’s more than ten times the water usage of a native tree, and why many of our streams have disappeared.
BTW, if you haven’t seen the mockumentary CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY I can highly recommend it as one of the finest examples of its genre.
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Final part