Mischievous pets

When Lys and I lived in Italy, we had a dog named Aurea for a short while. Lys and her son had found her in the canal, where somebody had wrapped her in a plastic bag and thrown her in the water. She was very intelligent and obeyed commands in four languages. She was also devious enough to leave a few drops of pee here and there rather than dumping her load in one spot. When we went on our honeymoon to Venize, we left enough food and water for Aurea to last for three days + set up a sandbox for her on the veranda to do her personal business. But when we returned, we spotted the usual small puddles.

When she had a litter of five puppies, the management of the appartment building ordered us to get rid of the little canine family, so we placed them at an uncle's farm nearby. After a few weeks, they were all gone and the uncle, who didn't live there himself, was of the opinion that they were either taken by fox or people that wanted to keep them as pets. I've never met a more clever dog than Aurea.

I'll trawl my old albums later and see if I can find some photos of Aurea and her offspring.

Unfortunately, today didn't have enough hours for that. I have more or less been continuously active sine 8 am, so I have written it on my agenda for tomorrow afternoon.

My family had Aurea from 1994 to 1997. I have no idea which breeds she may have been a hybrid of, but I suspect that both chihuahuas, prague ratters/pinchers and fox terriers may have been parts of her pedigree.

The same goes for the father of her litter of five puppies, although he must have been bigger and fluffier, as judged by the offspring. Like their mother, they were mostly black, with a few white spots here and there.

I couldn't find good pictures of Aurea, but here is one of her newborn babies and me holding one of them.

Yes, just a pity that they were gone soon after. What you see in the pics is when we left them at the uncle's shed, about a week after they were born. When we came back some days later, they were all gone. I remember when we were driving home that day, Aurea was following us - running alongside the car at full speed on her little legs - for about a mile before she gave up and returned to her puppies, as if she begged us not to leave them there, but we had no choice, since nobody wanted them and at the time, we thought it best to let the mother stay with her babies. Anyway, we soon moved to Norway without possibility to bring a dog or six with us, so there was little else we could do.

Sadly, the Brindisi area is full of stray dog groups, almost like wolf packs, lurking around the outskirts of the city and the sea port. If they become too many or start to threaten people, the police will kill them. As a consequence, the animal shelters are overcrowded and cannot receive more dogs. And we could't affort to keep them in a private kennel.

But we sometimes mention Aurea and feel guilty of betraying her and the little ones...

Yes, it's importatnt when you have more than one pet that they go along well.

For a while when we were working we kept Niki in the garage. One time I came home and she had eaten the trim of the door part way off. So I put 2 X 4's around the area and made a slot for a heavy board. She chewed it up a little but it was just scrap wood I had. Just before we sold the house Replaced the trim board. But she was really a sweet dog with people. Guess she had separation anxiety. But we had to both work to feed that small horse.