missywombat's Journal

Not exactly a plant related post except that Kala had been responsible for some plant failures. But she was lovable and sweet even if she wasn’t very smart.
Kala has been on borrowed time for the past week since we found out that she seriously bailed up our neighbour Tad twice and our other neighbour Rob. These are people she has known forever. Rob especially got a huge scare. Now she has never been a problem with the kids but Stephen and I didn’t want to risk her biting someone on the street. And we couldn’t guarantee that she would never get out of the yard. She was a blue heeler mix which is a very territorial breed so once she had claimed the entire street as her own there was no way that was going to change. Given that she was about 9 years old the chances of her being adoptable were very low so Stephen was seriously thinking about having her euthanased. But being very ambivalent about what to do because nobody wanted to do it.
So for the last few days she had been either tied up or locked in the house. But we are sure that she had known. The first day she managed to slip her collar but she did it by putting her head between the wood in the outside stairs. Knocked over a couple of my container vegetables and made a hell of a mess and even attacked and chewed an old bike helmet that one of the kids left on the stairs. I hated leaving her in the house because she had a habit of jumping the baby gate at the top of the internal stairs and would hit the kitchen demolishing anything that hadn’t been put away eg the Weetbix. And then this lovely sandy grubby dog would get into the bedrooms and lie on the beds. Usually MY bed.
So she hasn’t been my favourite mutt recently although its more in the sense of being annoying.
Anyway we tied her up this morning, and Stephen called around about lunchtime to find that she had gone totally berserk. She had wrapped the chain around the laundry baskets, got tangled up in the greywater hose, eaten a big hole in a plastic laundry basket…and was already in rigor mortis. Doggy suicide. So Stephen buried her in the garden. In the corner by the intersection so any ghostly Kala can see everyone that is coming, run up and down the fenceline and set off all the neighbourhood dogs barking.
Hanna is the one who is taking it the hardest at the moment. She was drawing Kala pictures tonight and has been a bit teary.

Kala managed to knock this over when she tried to slip her collar. What a mess!

Despite little rain, the corn is taking off. The kids are ecstatic.

First shoot is showing!

First shoot is showing!