The story of chewed Kindle (Amazon is great)

Barbie has a habit of eating pens and other things that are left on the coffee table, but she usually doesn't eat things that are bigger than, say, a TV remote.

For Christmas N bought me an Amazon Kindle WiFi - and it was excellent - I had read about 5 novels on it, and it had been living on the coffee table, next to my Macbook.

So dear readers, you can see where this is going. N works away, and when she goes, sometimes the doggies suffer from Separation Anxiety. I went to work as usual, and came home to see my Kindle was on the floor. It was still inside it's cover. A closer look revealed that the cover was mangled, and when I got the Kindle out this is what I found.

You can see the two teeth mark dents, one in each corner. The screen had been broken and the 'ink' had leaked so that only part of the screen still operated as it should. I posted on Facebook lamenting the Kindle's premature death and a friend suggested I contact Amazon, tell them the truth, and see if they could do a deal.

I logged into the live chat and told the operator what happened - my dog ate my Kindle. They asked me to try to reset it and I said it still didn't work, so they said 'the only thing to do since your Kindle is still under warranty is send you one free of charge'. They e-mailed me a return label and then sent out my new one. I got UPS to pick the broken one up from work.

The new one arrived today.

Thank you so much Amazon, you are awesome. Now I can keep buying and reading books from Amazon - I guess that's kind of the point. I can't buy books if I don't own a working Kindle now, can I?

Barbie would also like to thank Amazon, for without their generous replacement Kindle, she would be banished to the wasteland of the backyard every weekday for months.

Belated Wordless Wednesday

Beach video redux....

Well you saw my photo post on Saturday, here is a video of the shenanigans. It is actually pretty rare to find a dog that is willing to race and chase with Barbie, so she always enjoys having a buddy aside from her brother.

Also, I know a lot of my blog followers have probably already seen this as it's doing the rounds on Facebook, but here is some agility inspiration. These dogs are so fast and fearless on the course, it's pretty amazing to watch.... and the handlers! I better get back into running.

Beautiful Beach Day!!

Whoa, where did you go Bender? Oh, all the way back there....

Come on, keep up, I'll just trot this time!

It's Greyhound AFTERBURNER TIME!!!!!

Best buddies run together...

Bender the ocean monster emerges from the deep with his treasure.

This is a very unfair game of chasey!

Wordless Wednesday

Whiteman Park - Dance of the Borzoi

We took the dogs for their weekly offleash burn at Whiteman Park this morning, and as we pulled around the corner I spotted two huge, beautiful furry sighthounds hanging out together. I didn't know what they were - I thought maybe Salukis, or Afghans, but since I have never come across these dogs in the flesh I didn't know for sure.

I took Barbie over to say hello, and then she got a small white and grey greyhound tail who followed her around the park - she seemed to barely acknowledge the other Greyhound and she certainly wasn't going to run with her right behind her. I chatted to the owner of the elegant furry sighthounds, and she told me they were Borzoi. She just told everyone they were hairy Greyhounds as it was easier. The Borzoi boy gave me a cuddle, leaning into me while I patted that luxurious coat, he was very tall, probably taller than the big Greyhounds I've met like Daddy and others. Barbie sniffed them but she didn't want to run with them, she knew they could easily keep up with her.

The Borzoi chased Bender a bit, and then spent a lot of time just gracefully gliding around the park. They are a sight to behold when they run, with all that beautiful silky hair flowing. Barbie did go for a burn, but only when she didn't think the Borzoi would come after her! Then she got chased by a small orange dog who was deceptively quick. She enjoyed the race with the little orange dog, and we ended up over near her owners. Her name was Ellen and she was an Italian Greyhound cross.

Ellen's owners asked me a bit about Barbie's recall. Ellen isn't keen on coming back when she is called. I told them we started at Whiteman and other safe places to practice recall. I told them that sighthounds often need some extra work and need to be well bonded to their owners. Ellen is three and they haven't had her all her life, so I think they will be OK if they keep working on it. She did seem to be a very dog-motivated dog, she wanted to chase other dogs but wasn't interested in me at all!

Bender, as usual, pretty much ignored all the other dogs and chased his ball. When we went to leave he didn't want to go home though - he decided he wanted to play with some labradors once we were outside of the park and on the wrong side of the fence. Cheeky dog!

Barbie's new bed

Since the kitties got a new piece of furniture, N decided that Barbie should get a new bed. We bought the biggest, cushiest bed in the whole shop. Barbie approves!

She spends most of her time on this bed - even at night, she has given up sleeping near us in the bedroom in favor of the big cushy bed in the lounge room.

Preparing for a new couch

We currently have three couches, they were all acquired second hand and are all sporting a bit of damage from the cats. One of them is stained because it was outside on a verandah for 3 months when we lived in a shoebox posing as a house.

Anyway, we have decided to finally do away with them - I think at least two of them will make good couches for a student share house somewhere. The first problem is that we need to divert to cats away from scratching couches to something more acceptable.

Enter: the delux kitty tower.

I have been meaning to build them one of these for ages, but I never got around to it. N was in a spending mood when we were at the pet shop, so we settled on this tower as it was the most stable of them all. Mittens has voluntarily jumped onto it and settled down on it, but Frou only went on it when I put her there. Neither has had a scratch at it yet.

The woman at the pet shop suggested that when we get our new couch we can use a repellent type spray to discourage the kitties. I was wondering, is there an attractant type spray we can put on the tower to draw them to it?

How do you keep your car clean?

You know dog owners who really love their dogs by the smears of slobber on the windows of their vehicles.

I bought a 'new to me' car late last year to replace my old four wheel drive which was totalled by an idiot just before Easter in 2011. We immediately took it on a 4000 kilometre road trip with the dogs in the back. I made sure I got some robust seat covers, and the floor mats that came with the car are rubber and cover the floor almost completely. The dogs did their best, filling the car up with sand, smearing their slobber on the doors and windows, and Bender even puked about 2 litres of water into the footwell behind the drivers' seat. We mopped the spew up with towels which we washed in the laundromat at the caravan park, but the car smelled pretty bad after that.

When we got home, I took the car to the car wash. I spent a lot of time cleaning the outside which was caked with dust from the outback. Then I had to carefully pull out the floormats so as to not spill the sand all over the place. It looked like I had created a beach next to the car. Then I took all the seat covers out and chucked them in the washing machine. I vacuumed all the carpet - as there was a line of sand around the edge of the floor mats. Then I wiped down all the doors and dashboard with Armourall - there was a mess on the dash that wasn't the dog's fault though, N missed when she tried to put her Coke back in her cup holder and it went all over the front of the car. The whole process took a few hours.

Now that I've had the car for a little while, there is Bender hair floating around constantly. I know that I won't frequently spend hours cleaning the car.

N's car is worse. It has ferried the dogs to the beach and back for months on end without being cleaned. She is embarrassed to let friends ride in the back.

So what does the interior of your car look like?

Dogs with new toys!

It cooled down a tiny bit on the weekend and we went shopping, so we got some toys out of the bargain bin for the dogs.

My MacBook's magsafe power cord which usually works very well when the dogs run across the power cord failed this time around. Happy to report it's OK!!!

The orange snake was removed from the rope in about an hour and it is looking sad and destuffed on the living room rug.