Big things happening... (J2)

Most of our family and friends are already aware that we have recently become the parents of a beautiful 3 month old baby girl... so naturally there is the obligatory photo-sharing process to go through now!

So, without further adieu, here is Julia...

She is a great little girl, and 100% healthy and happy. Her birthday is 3 April 2009, and the official adoption paperwork was finalized on Monday 21 July. She comes from Windhoek, Namibia and spent her first 3 months of life in a public hospital after she had been found abandoned in a river bed outside of town in her first 24 hours on earth. We are currently staying in Namibia for a few weeks to get her birth certificate and passport sorted out, and will be headed back to BW with the little one as soon as it's all done.

In the meantime we are still working away (thanks to the miracle of email and cell phone roaming) and keeping up with things rather nicely. Even Billy came along with us and is enjoying all his special attention away from the other 2 dogs.

Apologies in advance to those who didn't hear it from the horse's mouth yet, or who are currently suffering coronary heart failure after reading the above, but it all happened very fast and during the adoption process they tell you not to spread the word too far and wide, lest something unexpected happen and things don't work out or take a super long time to become a reality. Often the parents can start to feel pressure from other people asking for updates and "is there any news yet?" , etc etc, so that's why we had to keep a bit of a lid on it since March, when we started the process.

But now it seems everything has worked out great and we look forward to introducing her to all our family and friends as soon as possible!

Puppies (J1)

We have some really nice pictures of Billy and our new boerbull named Jock. Unfortunately, the two of them do not get along very well.

Jock certainly likes to sleep a lot, he can play really hard for 5 minutes, but then he is finished. We took him for a 5km run last week, and I was very surprised he actually made it.

He is slightly bigger then our old boerbull Sech, and his character is a lot different. We think he is about 2 and a half years old, and we adopted him from the kennels. He was a typical abuse case, and was scared of everything at first. Things have changed though, he has gained confidence, and is quite the watchdog / guard dog now.

Billy is coming with us to the office most days now. He is looking after the canine side of our business. You can see him at the picture above at his workstation.

This picture was just after one of his disputes with Jock, unfortunately he ended up wounded (again)

Billy is really getting older, this is how he used to be 24 hours a day, ears straight up to make sure he knew what was happening. He sleeps a little more these days.

And Billy does not like the cold, when we have a fire in the fireplace he lays right in front of it, and a distance I could not last longer the 1 minute. Sometimes I worry he might melt away. We have recently bought him a little jacket.

The vet thinks he may have arthritis, making him a little stiff, and really appreciate the heat. Hopefully the jacket helps.

No pictures of Reilly this time, I guess she has not done anything special, apart from chasing monkeys on the mountain from time to time.

J1