…but she says that we’re going to do a couple of “fun, light posts” first because otherwise my blog will just get bogged down with all this political dog training stuff and she doesn’t like that – and a lot of our readers who are not so interested in training will be bored out of their brains!!

But first Hsin-Yi wants to say a few words:

Comments, Spam & Censorship

I’m sorry if any of you have had your comments ‘disappear’ after you submit it – don’t worry, it isn’t lost – it’s simply gone into the Spam folder. I check that every day and will fish out any genuine comments as soon as I see them. So if your comment disappears in future, don’t worry about it – it’ll be restored when I do my daily Spam folder check (there might be a delay ‘coz we’re on the other side of the world to most of you – so we’re usually sleeping when most of you are awake! ).

Unfortunately, WordPress can get a bit “over-enthusiastic” at times and think certain genuine comments are spam (especially if they’re long comments with many words – or have several links, this seems to trigger the spam filter). It’s very frustrating as certain of our friends seem to always be targetted (eg. poor Angi & Princeton!), no matter how many times I approve them – argh, the spam filter never seems to learn!!

I also want to say that I never have ‘Comment Moderation‘ turned on because I believe very strongly in “free speech” and people being allowed to express their opinions/thoughts – regardless of whether it coincides with mine. (One of my strongest memories of arriving in London as a 6yr old was going to “Speakers Corner” in Hyde Park where anyone can stand on a box and say whatever they like – shout, swear, criticise – the government, royal family, police force, businesses, whatever – without persecution. I think that is a wonderful right to have. I also grew up in a Muslim country which employed censorship liberally – so I am very sensitive to it and strongly opposed to it.)

So if your comment “disappears”, it is because it has gone into the Spam folder (or a rare computer glitch) – not because of censorship. I will never delete any comments based on their content (well, unless they’re full of yucky words about “big honeys”! …Ahem…when I chose the name “bighoneydog”, I never realised how ambiguous those words might be! The number of spam comments we get per day and people coming to this site searching for another type of “big honey”…well, I draw the line at allowing porn “free speech”! ) – so yeah, I won’t delete (non-porn) comments unless they are offensive/abusive in nature to us or other readers. There is always a polite way to express your opinion.

~ Hsin-Yi

******

OK! So back to the REALLY important stuff: the adventures of Honey & Muesli!!

Well, first we want to tell you: we’re back to Square One with Muesli the Bed-Thief. Yup. Hsin-Yi’s idea didn’t work.

Why can't we just do THIS all the time??

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So you see – in case you people always think that Hsin-Yi is some kind of training guru or something – she doesn’t always have the answer and her ideas don’t always magically work; she fails & gets it wrong too. Yeah, Muesli’s been taking my bed in the middle of the night again and I just can’t get her off – so I have been getting stressy and pacing the house and Hsin-Yi has had to get up to “help” me and stop Muesli bullying me. The only good thing is that it doesn’t happen every night so we don’t know if that’s an improvement, because of Hsin-Yi’s training? So we’re still working on it. (Hsin-Yi says she doesn’t mind getting up once a week or something to help me – just once in a while – but just not every night!! )

Don't be taken in by those big eyes & innocent little face!

My humans say that if it keeps up, they will try your suggestions of shutting Muesli in another room. The only room they can do that is the study – but the door of that is broken and doesn’t shut properly so they”ll have to find some way of wedging it – and Muesli can be REALLY determined when she wants to open a door!

When she was just a tiny baby kitty when she first came from the RSPCA rescue shelter, my humans tried to shut her in 1 room at night, the first couple of weeks and my God, no matter how they wedged the door, they could hear her banging and jumping and scratching and pushing and she would always eventually squeeze her way out -

(Note from Hsin-Yi: I can’t believe it but Muesli actually learnt – by herself – how to turn a doorknob!! Cats are unbelievable. Honey would never figure that out in a million years – whereas Muesli learnt that just from watching us!! ) -

- plus Muesli is awfully NOISY when she wants something. She WAILS and SCREECHES and HOWLS and SCREAMS. Hsin-Yi had to go apologise to the neighbours in those early days. So my humans really don’t want to have to try shutting her in a room, unless there is no other option…coz they’d probably not get much sleep that way either!

But you know what? I’ve figured out a brilliant way to get Muesli off my bed, all by myself! I even demonstrated it for Hsin-Yi today: I just stand over Muesli and let a lot of slobber dribble down my jowls and fall onto her head. Hee! Hee! She scoots out of the way and off the bed very quickly!

Winter is finally here and the weather has been really lovely in the last couple of weeks – my favourite kind of weather! – with crisp, cold but sunny days, perfect for walks…

…and chilly nights, perfect for snuggling in my bed!

And a couple of weekends ago, I had a lovely surprise! Remember my friend, Phatso the Bull Arab back in Brisbane? He was in my RSPCA Demo Team and we used to have great playdates together on the beach…

…well, his human came to visit Sydney! And she sent Hsin-Yi a message asking if we’d like to catch-up (well, of course we would!) – and so we took her on our favourite walk around Pyrmont, our favourite part of Sydney…

For those of you who remember Phatso’s human, you might have noticed something different about her: she’s cut her hair! Yup, she used to have these amazing, long blond dreadlocks which she had been growing for 11 years(!!!) but she cut them off in a fundraiser for the Brisbane RSPCA, to help raise money paper for the homeless doggies & kitties. We think she looks cool with her new hair!

And finally, Hsin-Yi is very busy this week because on top of everything else on her plate (she’s very stressy at the moment ‘coz she has too many things to do and and our Rental Agent Human is being very nasty and making trouble and we’re so behind on my blog adventures and there are so many messages & comments to respond to and we haven’t visited ANY of our blog friends for ages (nor been on Facebook for DAYS) and feel bad about it…and so Hsin-Yi is just feeling very “overwhelmed” trying to keep on top of everything… )

…well, on top of all that, it’s the Sydney Writers’ Festival at the moment! Hsin-Yi has been looking forward to this a long time, although she’s not enjoying it as much as she could ‘coz she is so stressy & busy with other things. But she has been busy  trying to go the festival as much as she can – and one of the events she went to was an “Author Talk” by Jeff Kinney, who wrote Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He was talking at the Sydney Opera House – so it was a great chance for Hsin-Yi to go visit (my humans haven’t had much time/chance to go into downtown Sydney much: when you’re not visiting as Tourist Humans, life sort of gets in the way! )

And guess who she met there? My friend, Carmel, who is also a Bookworm Human and loves going to stuff about books & authors!

Jeff Kinney had got on a Big Flying Machine and come all the way from a faraway place called Plainville, Massachusettes to come and speak at the Sydney Opera House, for the Sydney Writers’ Festival. He was very funny and gave a lovely talk – and was so nice and didn’t have a Big Head about being a World-Famous, Best-Selling Author Human. Hsin-Yi says it was so amazing to see the whole Concert Hall full of human pups, all clutching his books, their eyes bright with excitement – and that would be her dream: to one day be an Author Human too whose books can make children look like that and inspire them to want to read.

And I’ll leave you with some of the beautiful pictures that Hsin-Yi got of the waterfront, around the Sydney Opera House… (she specially took her big, fancy, SLR camera machine coz she hardly ever goes downtown so this was a great opportunity!)

view of Harbour Bridge from Circular Quay...

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What a lovely place to have dinner! (if you like oysters! This is the Sydney Cove Oyster Bar...

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the "Opera Bar" (waterfront eatery) - with view of Harbour Bridge & Sydney Opera House in the background

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view of Sydney skyline & Circular Quay, looking back from the Opera House...

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ps. And just to show you how ‘frazzled’ Hsin-Yi is at the moment – she posted that Wordless Wednesday picture of me yesterday – and only realised this morning that yesterday wasn’t “Wednesday”!!!

pps. Oh! Also, forgot to tell you – unfortunately, I didn’t win the Best Australian Blogs 2012 Contest – some stupid HUMAN won it with their stupid human blog! But thank you all so much for voting for me and supporting me so much – you’re the best friends & fans!!

Most doggies I meet for the first time react a bit like this – which is why my humans are always careful about me meeting strange doggies. ‘Coz if they’re confident & sociable, they’ll recover quickly and start inviting me to play (like Kaos did) but if they’re a bit more timid or nervous, they might lash out and then there might be a dog fight…

So it’s always important when strange doggies are meeting for the first time to give them lots of personal space, keep the leashes LOOSE if they’re on lead (although ideally meet off-leash if possible) and watch their body language carefully – if either doggie looks like it’s feeling overwhelmed (licking lips nervously, turning head away, yawning lots, cowering, rolling eyes…or worst of all, suddenly VERY STIFF body) – then quickly but calmly separate them. Better to split them up for a “break” and then let them back together for more sniffing – several short sessions like this – rather than one long meeting where they might get too “intense”. And never let leashes get tangled and tight!!

Of course, this is much more for adult doggies – puppies usually love everything and haven’t really understood the concept of “personal space” yet – ha! ha!   Although you can still get timid, shy puppies and it’s easy for them to get overwhelmed when meeting strange doggies and have a bad experience – so even with puppies, it’s better to be careful!

Also, you can see in the movie that I wasn’t behaving very nicely either when we first met – because me & my humans had already slept 1 night in the batch, so I was already a bit territorial about the place and suddenly there was a strange doggie there, so I was being a bit intimidating – can you see that in my body language when I first went out of the batch? That’s why I got a Telling-Off from Hsin-Yi…and why she quickly moved us to a bigger, open space so that nobody feels “cornered”.

But soon, you see that we started playing and our body language becomes very different – lots of bouncy playbows and bouncy, happy running (relaxed, not predatory). And of course, when I get really happy, I start to do ZOOMIES!!

* For more great information & pictures of doggie bodie language, check out the fantastic Lili Chin website: http://doggiedrawings.net/post/842176625

(Oh, there’s also a really sad bit in the middle when I went into the batch for a rest & break from Kaos – very important for us senior doggies to have breaks from puppies, so that we don’t get grumpy – and he was outside the windows crying. We would have let him in with us but his humans were very strict about him not being inside the guest batch so we had to follow their rules.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg86Q6mRaaw

If the movie doesn’t play, try here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg86Q6mRaaw

Hsin-Yi actually also got some other video footage of her doing some training with Kaos: teaching him to take treats gently and also teaching him to walk nicely on loose leash…so we’ll be doing posts about them soon!

Before I go, I must tell you about another excitement this week when I received one of my Mango Minster 2012 prizes!! This was my Readers’ Choice Award for the Adventure Animals category, sponsored by Jack & Moo the Cyber-Sibes. It was a lovely portrait painted by their human (PAWS Painter Pet Portraits) – there were lots of different kinds we could choose from but my human really loved the idea of an ‘ATC’ – “artist trading card” – a mini-portrait that she could carry around in her bag or something…

…and so it arrived this morning! Isn’t it cute? And wow – Hsin-Yi’s done a bit of drawing & painting herself – so she thinks Jack & Moo’s human is so talented to be able to paint on something so small, coz it’s really difficult!

Thank you so much, Jack & Moo, for my great prize!

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******

ps. If you have a chance today, please don’t forget to pop over and vote for me in the Charlotte Reeves Bark Stars Photography Contest on Facebook! If I win, I will be donating the prize to Great Dane Rescue Australia.

Remember – You can vote once every 24hrs and the doggie with the most votes by next Wed is the winner!

Thanks to all my wonderful blog friends & fans, I am now in 1st place!! But the doggies behind me are panting at my heels so I need the votes to keep coming! Just another 2 days – the contest ends at noon Wed 28th Mar (Australian time). Thank you so much!!

Here is the link: http://bit.ly/FOWsCV

Continuing my adventures on our annual ‘doggie holiday’ – last year in Port Stephens, where we stayed in a lovely ‘batch’ in its own private park gardens and with a resident Mexican Jumping Bean – er, Staffie pup, very aptly named Kaos!

Well, after our lovely walk on Bagnalls Beach that Sat evening, I had an early night while the humans went out for dinner…and then since it was Sunday the next day, we all had a quiet, lazy Sunday morning at the batch together…

Well, quiet, that is, until Kaos arrived!

Since we couldn’t let Kaos into the batch to laze with us (his humans said he’s not allowed in the batch coz he “can’t be trusted” and would chew things up and destroy things and the batch has to remain nice for other guests!) – and anyway, I don’t think Kaos knew how to “laze” – ha! ha! – so we decided to go for another little walk around the lovely park gardens of The Donga…

And then me & Kaos had a great game of Bitey-Face!

In fact, I got so excited at one point, I grabbed one of the sofa cushions and took off on a ZOOMIE!!! Hsin-Yi thought it was the funniest sight and she was so busy laughing that she didn’t catch it fast enough on video or camera machine…this was the only picture she got!

Well, since it was our last day in Port Stephens, my humans said we couldn’t stay all day at the batch (even with Kaos’s begging! ) – and so they took me for a ‘proper walk’ out in the Stockton sand dunes, beside Birubi Beach.

Do you remember I blogged about visiting these dunes before? You can see my other posts about them here:

• A Desert Adventure!
• ‘Honey of Arabia’…
• A Season of Dune Delights (which includes the video of my Arabian dancing ears! )

They are actually very near to Port Stephens and although they are not an official off-leash dog park, lots of local people take their doggies there to run & play. We loved it because it was the place with the widest open space we’d seen since moving to Australia – it was almost as good as being back in NZ again!

And that was the day that Hsin-Yi got that great photo of me, sitting majestically, looking out across the dunes – you might remember I used it as my header picture for a while. Hsin-Yi loves this picture!

Well, it was getting late in the afternoon now and almost time to start for home…but just before we left, me & Paul decided to teach Kaos how to play football!

My humans said it was good for Kao’s training to teach him some manners and practise “self-control” – so I showed him how he could only get the ball if he “earned” it by sitting politely first. See, my humans have taught me that whenever I want something in life, I always just have to look for what I can do to earn it!

Kaos was a fast learner!

He was also a fast learner when it came to modelling for the camera machine…well, you know that my human, Hsin-Yi, is crazy about taking pictures. It’s constantly click-click-click in our house and all the pets in our household know very good “Wait” and “Stay” commands – and we know how to ham it up for the lens! I mean, look at this pictures of Muesli as a baby kitten – she’d barely been with us for a few weeks and already Hsin-Yi had her posing for photos!

So after a weekend with Hsin-Yi, Kaos had a crash course!! Of course, as a veteran, I helped give him modelling tutorials…

…such as the Casual Side-Glance (ear toss optional)…

…and the Regal, Dog-of-the-Wild Look…

…and the Wistful Puppydog Eyes (not to be confused with Mournful Puppydog Eyes, which is an advanced skill)…

Hsin-Yi was really pleased with Kaos. See, when we first arrived at The Donga, Kaos’s humans told us that they could never get a good picture of him, because he never stays still long enough to pose nicely. Well, you know Hsin-Yi – whenever you say “You can never…” to her, it just makes her want to rise to the challenge! So she was determined to get some nice portrait pictures of Kaos before the end of the weekend. And we did!

What do you think?

And he even mastered The Smile!

Kaos’s humans were delighted with the pictures when we gave them some copies!

Well, I had the most wonderful, wonderful time on my Port Stephens holiday but now it was time to go home. Poor Kaos got so upset when he saw us leaving – he ran after our car, crying and chasing us down the road! We had to turn around and take him back – and then he did it again! And again! So in the end, I had to go with Paul and take him back to his own house, for his humans to grab his leash (they told us they leave it on him all the time, because otherwise they can never catch him!) – and then finally we were able to get away.

But poor Kaos was heartbroken – his humans told us later that he came and sat outside the batch, waiting for me to appear, for days and cried & howled for me. Oh! We felt so bad! But we couldn’t take him home and we lived too far away to meet up for regular playdates so…I guess we will just have to have our happy memories together!

Hsin-Yi got some video footage of me & Kaos playing which she is making into a little movie but she hasn’t finished yet so I can’t show you here – hopefully in my next post!

Well, I hope you enjoyed coming with me on holiday in Port Stephens!

******

ps. Hsin-Yi has entered a picture of me in the Charlotte Reeves Bark Stars Photography Contest on Facebook! And if I win, I will be donating the prize to Great Dane Rescue Australia.

So if you have a moment, please can you pop onto Facebook & vote for me? You can vote once every 24hrs and the doggie with the most votes by Mar 28 is the winner!

I was sort of in the lead earlier today but am now  being overtaken by other doggies! So I really need your help to claw my way back up and stay ahead of the game! Thank you so much!!

Here is the link: http://bit.ly/FOWsCV

]]> http://bighoneydog.com/2012/03/portstephens-part3/feed/ 39 http://bighoneydog.com/2012/03/portstephens-part2/ http://bighoneydog.com/2012/03/portstephens-part2/#comments Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:13:31 +0000 bighoneydog http://bighoneydog.com/?p=12522 Continue reading →]]> If you missed it, here is Part 1

Continuing my adventures on our annual ‘doggie holiday’ last year in Port Stephens, when we stayed in a lovely ‘batch’ in its own private park gardens and with a resident Mexican Jumping Bean – er, Staffie pup, very aptly named Kaos!

Self-timer 'family photo'...with Kaos too!

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Well, as soon as I had rested a bit after breakfast, my humans took me to explore around the private park gardens around our ‘batch’, The Donga. The gardens were so big that it was like going on a big walk, without even having to leave the property!  And of course, Kaos was delighted to be our personal guide…

Kaos took me over to the main house to introduce me to his human – and also to his parrot brother, Charlie!

Charlie was a real character – for example, he likes to share the humans’ cup of coffee every morning!

Next, Kaos took me to the edge of the property to see the cows that live in the farm next door…

…and then to the pond to meet the ducks!

We also got to meet the most glamorous residents on the property: the peacocks!

I don’t think they were very impressed with meeting me, though. As soon as they saw me, they took off, making the most awful screeching, squawking noise!! I don’t know who was more scared – them or me!!!

And all the while, Kaos was bouncing – bouncing – bouncing around me. Hsin-Yi said she wondered if he was the product of his Staffie mummy’s illicit affair with a trampoline… He especially liked to bounce up into my face…

BOING!

BOING!

BOING!

He also had this habit of always running under me and between my feet…and tripping me up! Sigh. Puppies…

Finally, I decided it was time to show him some of MY moves. Come on, pup! You wanna see how real doggies play?

And then I took off on a BIG ZOOMIE!

Kaos LOVED it! I think after that, he thought I was his Hero or something – he just stuck to me like a shadow and hung onto my every drool. But sheesh, I was exhausted! One hour with this puppy and I needed a coma to recover!

So my humans took me back to our batch and they left me inside to have a little snooze (with Kaos sitting mournfully outside the door!) – and they went off to explore a little by themselves in the villages of Port Stephens…

Their first stop was Nelson Bay, the biggest town in Port Stephens, and guess what? They found that that weekend just happened to be the “Bush Country Festival“. Yup, you know how they have ‘Country & Western music’ in the faraway place called America? Well, in Australia, they have their own version too – with ‘Aussie cowboys’!

(another self-timer!)

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My humans also went to check out the Nelson Bay Lighthouse – which had great views all around…

…since it was the middle of winter, it was quite a grey, chilly day so my humans were really glad to get out of the wind and into the cosy ‘Inner Light Tea Rooms‘ for some hot tea /coffee & lunch!

 (…although Hsin-Yi thought dessert was the best part! )

On the way back to the car machine, my humans walked passed the small marina where fishing boats came in with their ‘catch’…and the fishermen would clean & gut their fishes…and lots of giant pelicans would be waiting to catch the “leftovers” that the fishermen flung away!

After that, my humans came back to the batch and told me all about their adventures. Hmm…I’m sorry I missed the yummies at that Lighthouse tearoom but I’m not sorry I didn’t meet those pelicans. They sounded a bit scary!

Now that I had a little rest, my humans said they were going to take me out for a ‘proper’ walk! They had done some research and found that there was only 1 official dog beach in Port Stephens (BOOOO!!! ) – which is such a shame coz it’s such a nice place for humans but it’s no good if most of the parks & beaches don’t allow doggies!

(Although, of course, as is often in Australia, people just ignore the law and take their doggies onto the illegal beaches anyway – and just hope that they don’t get caught. Hsin-Yi says that the stupid dog laws in some parts of Australia have made lots of dog owners turn into criminals!! )

So if we had to rate it, we would say that actually Port Stephens is not as great a place for a doggie holiday (unless you can stay somewhere fantastic like we did, with its own private park) – coz there aren’t many dogfriendly places to go nearby. Unlike Byron Bay, which had SO many beaches that allowed doggies on them and was a really great place for a doggie holiday!

Anyway, the dogfriendly beach is called Bagnalls Beach, near the village of Corlette.

(another family self-timer!)

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And that was the end of our 1st day in Port Stephens…wait until you see what I got up to the next day!

To be continued…

Part 3