Billie

 Today we've said goodbye to our Billie

I remember the day we bought her home, 14 years ago, in one of the small cat carriers. Which she fitted in, with room to spare. Her sister, was a bit delayed, the other piglet originally put aside from us wasn't well and Lillie was being neutered and we'd go and get her a couple of weeks later.

In the meantime we got Billie home, and settled into her new home, layered in straw and made as comfortable as we could make it. She promptly laid down and went to sleep, but when I went back to check on her 15 minutes later I nearly had a fit - couldn't see her anywhere in the shed. Until she suddenly emerged from under the straw and bounced around at me - telegraphing the behaviour of a lifetime. The number of times in the intervening years where she's frightened the living daylights out of us by disappearing from sight, reappearing with no notice and frankly, you don't want to know the slight feeling of panic that comes from the sight of a piggie running straight at you.

Like the night they both went missing and we hunted the area looking for them for hours. Only to return home pigless and bereft - we thought they'd gone for good. Only there was a bag of manure that wasn't where it used to be, and then there was the snuffling noises coming down the drive half an hour later as they both trotted home - very proud of themselves. Which lead to the development of a huge moveable pen and the shenanigans involved in moving it, and them on a regular basis, until they aged and we all agreed they could free range. Which meant our back dam has been substantially altered, the shelter shed out in the paddock is now somewhat more "airy" than it used to be with the back wall obviously considered surplus to requirements, and on the never-ending saga of crazy went.

Until 8 months ago when we found Billie lying in a wallow, unable to get up. Long story short - torn cruciate liagment and not a lot of options. Our wonderful vets gave us pain relief, and then got in touch with the equally magnificent Pam Ahern at Edgar's Mission who provided some excellent suggestions for managing potential pain and building some strength so we've kept her limping along, happy, and eating well, confined to a largish pen though, until this weekend. When the other back leg gave out as well and she was unable to stand. Which meant unable to toilet properly and pigs (contrary to the bullshit myths) are incredibly fastidious and clean creatures. So she was okay with not being able to move much but keeping her clean wasn't possible. Plus it's no life if she can't move at all. So we booked the vets and the bloke with the excavator for this afternoon and steeled ourselves.

This weekend she's eaten all the fruit (she was not allowed fruit to keep her weight down), and himself developed a porridge cake with dried fruit which she bloody loved - and got a lot of over the last few days, until our kind and very compassionate vet came today to euthanase her and the equally wonderful, kind and very caring Jason came down from St Arnaud with his excavator to bury her beside Pascoe the alpaca who died earlier in the year.

She leaves behind a very big piggie shaped hole in our lives, but one that left us with lasting changes in how we see "farmed" animals.

That's her, buried in some straw with her sister.

And her on the left lying down - her favourite position.

And because there's nothing like a bit of embarrassment, she had to be knocked out sometimes so we could do a pedicure on her tootsies. She snored. A lot, when under the influence of anaesthetic.

Cassie, Laverne and the solution to a toppling by the bed issue

Because - here's one of Cassie, enjoying a cuddle, while himself watches his nightly array of YouTube videos or whatever it is that he does over there. She looks smug because she's pretty darn pleased with her nightly routine.

Contented Cassie sitting on himself's lap enjoying a snooze

And Laverne - who turned 14 on the weekend. How I'll never know. The list of health challenges we've had with this dog are longer than your arm, and part of the reason the bank accounts never quite seem to recover. She's been a joy and a worry since the day she arrived. (That's her at the bottom of the photo - enjoying a snooze with her life-long companion Shirley).

Shirley to the top of the photo, who incidentally will be 13 in a couple of weeks, and Laverne who turned 14 last Saturday

Finally - I've been dealing with a bit of a threat to life and limb for me and them for a while now. There's been this stack of books beside the bed, which is also next to their night beds, that teetered, rocked and threatened to tip over onto everyone in the vicinity all the time.

Bamboo spinning bookcase stuffed with books waiting to be read

Allowing for all the problems that go with getting stuff delivered when you live on a main highway in a regional area, this finally arrived last week - after a bit of a wait and a lot of "depot searches". 

Spins on top of a nice little storage cupboard which is now stuffed full of the bits and pieces that had nowhere to live. I can see the books, find them without having to constantly restack, and am now not constantly on wobble in the piles alert. 

(This is not the only MtTBR in the place mind you - this is just the lot that have shuffled beside the bed. Now you can see why I'm hoping to live another 60 or so years (and desperately wanting a few rainy days when I can stay inside and read) ...)

The unexpected benefits of driving an EV

Not posted much recently (it's still as dry as anything in these parts so most of the day is spent just trying to keep everything ticking over), but aside from that, there's been no great insights or observations to make.

Until I suddenly realised over the past weekend there's a bonus to driving an EV that I've not seen commented on - and that's the effect that the quiet / lack of motor noise has on a chronically carsick dog.

We loaded all 4 of the dogs up on Sunday last week to take them to the river in Avoca and the lake in Maryborough for a bit of a stroll about. Cassie (the new younger Aussie) likes more exercise than the twice nightly meander around the paddocks gives her, and besides, they all love to meet new people and see new things. Even the old girls who are only up to a gentle stroll about, love the fusses they get from strangers, and the chance to sniff something new.

These trips used to be fraught with complications because Mambo, the nine-year-old male Aussie, has suffered from chronic car sickness from the day we collected him. The first night we had him involved a mad scramble to the vets because he'd thrown up all the way home from Ballarat and ended up dehydrated and very uncomfortable. The rest of the night was spent with me keeping hot water bottles warm for him to lie on (I read something about colicky babies and thought why not - it worked), and then there were the pain killers we had to administer and the sheer panic that we'd harmed our brand new puppy. 

But anyway, he survived that, but has never been able to do more than about 15 ks in a car since then without projectile vomiting and panicking big time. Tried car booster seats to change his view, tried him in the back and front seats, tried all sorts of things - nothing worked.

Until we got the EV - in which he's never shown the slightest sign of throwing up, is happy to be in the car, doesn't whinge when he's put in it (until we get to a 60k zone when they all start whinging to get out and go for a walk), and generally is really easy now to take for a drive. We've been doing quite a lot of miles since the EV arrived with all the dogs and it is such a relief.

The theory is there's no low level engine frequency noise / thingie / something technical himself mutters about. Whatever it is - worth the changeover to an EV at double the price!

But it takes HOURS to charge an EV, when I can be in and out of a fuelstop in 5 minutes

Leaving aside the obvious call of bullshit on the 5 minute thing, the number of times we hear this argument it makes us think it's yet another piece of FUD put out by the fossil's to confuse potential EV owners ... yet again.

Our car has a 420(ish)k battery range.

We charge it when at home - either off the solar system when there is excess capacity (ie when the battery has reached the optimum level to keep the house running in the event of an overnight outage when there is no solar input), or in offpeak mostly.

The home based charging system we have allows us to set the thing up to charge on offpeak rates / overnight, immediately, or from the solar (combinations thereof). So mostly it charges when frankly we don't care how long it takes, we're asleep. Or reading a book. Or having a glass of wine. 

So we rarely, if ever, leave the place without 420ks of driving range before we even hit the first town with an EV charger (20ks away). 

As 99% of our trips are those day to day things like heading to the vets, the shops,  the doctors, the pub, or local events, we've rarely need to stop to charge it anywhere - even when a "to the shops" trip takes around 200ks in total, give or take another 20 or so driving around Ballarat, Bendigo or Ararat (mostly). 

On the occasional longer drive, most of our charging stops are dictated by our need for a loo and coffee. We always coincide a "top up" charge with the location of (preferably) both of those. 

The amount of time required for those charges differs based on the capacity of the charger, but for example:

• A stop at a 50kw charger (typically an Evie in our area) would take 5 minutes to add 30ks capacity.
• A stop at a SuperCharger (typically in the larger towns around here, for example Bendigo / Ballarat) would normally take 5 minutes to add 70ks capacity. (Double that with some of the newer supercharger installations).

I don't know about anybody else, but we plug the thing in and head off. (Although I will also admit we've sat in it and watched a YouTube video once because we could ...). I've never yet had the urge to stand there hanging onto the charging cable, had to wash the fuel off my hands or shoes before I got back in the car, or had to monitor the fill / charge. There's an app that tells us what the charge is up to, and in the event it's getting close to fully charged, warns you to return so you're not hogging a charging station. 

Aside from all of that, because you can wander off, we do. I can't do loo, coffee, stroll to and from the car, and be ready to go in under 5 minutes these days (if ever really). Add another 5-10 minutes because we're not that important and don't mind a bit of a sit around sometimes. It would take longer obviously if you're on a big road trip, in which case, we think a driving break sounds like a good idea.

So that's range anxiety / too long to charge down to yet another example of very transparent FUD.

What's next? Oh it'll probably be BUT THEY CATCH ON FIRE. Look up the stats.

Bit more on our new "old" dog

As mentioned in the post about EV's and our trip to Mt Gambier we went there to pick up an Aussie Terrier.

Cassie (as called by the breeder) is a 6.5 year old Australian Terrier, who has had a couple of litters of puppies in the past and the breeder is now looking to downsize. She was neutered before we collected her (which is what we wanted), and she's here now as a pet to go with our other Aussie's, Mambo, Laverne and Shirley.

(Some may know Laverne and Shirley are also ex-breeding dogs that were in need of a home a few years ago.)

Here she is with the mob - Laverne (who is the eldest / has a number of health challenges) at the front, Shirley standing up demanding a nurse, and Cassie cuddled up on the left of Mambo. 

That photo was taken a couple of days after we introduced her to the mob, which went, all in all, unbelievably smoothly. One little bit of a contretempts with Laverne over a piece of carrot (one day I'll post about Laverne and her obsession with raw carrots), but that settled really quickly and since then it's been pretty plain sailing.

Slightly different story with the cats - Penelope and Ender went with ignoring her from the start, so she rushed them a few times, then lost interest when they didn't react. Their standard mode of operation with all the dogs, but Guinness carries on mewling and hissing every time she goes near him. So she's obsessed with going near him. He's slowly coming around but he's a bit of a precious sook at the best of times...

A rare shot of the three of them together. Penelope (tabby and white) at the bottom, Guinness (Tuxedo) in the middle and Ender (Champagne) at the top

Cassie's a tiny little thing compared to the other three, very agile (runs and jumps like you would not believe). She's the only one of the 4 that can jump onto our rather high bed, so needless to say she sleeps in the middle of the bed, curled up with Guinness which is probably part of the reason he hates her - that and he hates anything and everything new.

So anyway, another dog successfully integrated into the mad house. Fingers crossed she stays with us for a long and healthy time.

There were two "long weekends" in March, what did everyone do?

We sat about in the stinking heat, trying to keep livestock alive, monitoring constantly for fire outbreaks. Not exactly anyone's idea of a "relaxing weekend". 

Did we go away? Of course not, we can't leave at this time of the year although, we did throw caution to the wind for one afternoon at a local winery - on the understanding that if anything happened my partner wouldn't be driving the CFA truck to it. He had a glass of wine. The zero alcohol requirement for drivers these days means that you either live your life based on the demands of the CFA, or you opt for can't help in the event of disaster and have a life, or at least 4 hours of a normal life.

It's been a torrid February / March period after a weird winter where we got flooded on one day, and spent the rest of the season trying to get water tanks filled. 

Around 4mls of rain in total for those two months though, with stinking heat and strong winds. Combine that with a couple of long weekends which mean campfires out of control, cars being driven into long grass setting off fires, fire bugs, permit burns getting out of control, people reporting permit burns despite them being permit burns, long weekend non-permit burns because people are ... , car / bike accidents, and generally anything and everything designed to keep VOLUNTEERS running, and you kind of get to the stage where you dread long weekends. They just mean stress, worry and sheer hard work. 

So you can imagine that there's a bit of sensitivity about messaging around. That the ABC are firmly city centric goes without saying, but their weather reporting this Easter long weekend really took the cake, which I thought they'd eaten ages ago, but here they were, really ramping up the put downs. I mean it's one thing for the ABC Wimmera to mostly ignore local fires, or report inaccurate fire information with a bit of a laugh and some lighthearted bants whilst people's houses were going up in flames, and firefighters were in danger, but you know, "ideal weather" over Easter wasn't it. Oh until it "deteriorated" and there was some rain over firegrounds that have been burning for weeks.

It was so bloody hot, and dry for most of Easter, after it being so bloody hot and dry for so long that frankly, we're exhausted. And running out of water again, as well as patience and tolerance for thoughtless fools. Their reporting was more than just the normal "well you don't matter" put down. They were reporting this in the face of fire's still burning, exhausted and frazzled volunteers, ongoing high levels of fire calls self evident on the apps, the lack of rain and stinking hot weather being noted in the same bloody report that insisted that the heat was "ideal" and the potential rain "deteriorating". And yes, there were some storms in all of it, but "deterioration". Oh I'm sorry, did our need for water and maybe some relief from constantly worrying about fires on the doorstop screw up your weekend of sitting around in the bush toasting marshmallows on campfires you can't seem to put out for love nor money? Pardon us, we'll just wait for you to wander back to your reticulated water systems and paid firefighters and the like, and belt in and fix the mess you've left in your wake shall we...

So the upside is I've finally weened myself off any pretence of following ABC News. They aren't even slightly interested in rural listeners / viewers anyway. I mean their complaint form doesn't even have an option for anything other than regional town or "remote". But then this is from the fools that reported Dunarch as "remote" a while ago. 

Weather Stats - Central West Victoria

A running reminder of the weather as reported by our Tempest weather station