Fun Monday Jan 7

Lisa is our host for this weeks Fun Monday, here’s da rules.

Let’s meet your pets. I think most of us have at least one pet and I would like to see your fluffy or scaly pal. If you don’t have a camera you can tell us about him/her/them. If you don’t have a pet tell us about a pet you had or a pet you want. If for some weird reason you hate all animals we want to know why gosh-dang-it.

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For anyone who is confused by all the Fun Monday stuff at the top of my sidebar;

The first dropdown list is the one prepared by Carrie Sue (thanks CS)
The one beneath it contains names that were missed in the first one.
Beneath that again is a link to all the players names that are known to me, again I would
love to hear from anyone who has been missed, or any new players who would like to
be included on it.

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While in the strict sense of the definition “Boston” was not a pet, he was a working sheep dog, he definitely had all the characteristics of a pet, he was loving, loyal, friendly, and playful (when not working) in short he was man’s best friend, here is a short excerpt about Boston from a previous post.

A farming friend who had heard some of our stories (pre motor bike) took pity on us and gave us a beautiful black Border Collie-Kelpie cross puppy, we named him Boston, (soon shortened to Boss for obvious reasons) after the serial detective Boston Blackie, Boston was introduced to sheep at a very young age which is the right thing to do with a working dog.

Boston trotted alongside the motor bike with his boundless energy, he was never at home riding on the back as some dogs are, perhaps he just didn’t trust my riding ability? he had a very competitive nature and I’m inclined to think he just wanted to be able to run free.

On a daily basis we would have a race down the driveway to the mailbox, a return trip of a bit over half a mile, if I beat him to the mailbox, as I usually did, he would stop where he was until I started back towards home then take off lickety split and with the head start often beat me home, we both enjoyed this ritual a lot, he NEVER tried to race the bike any other time only to the mailbox.

No matter the reasoning he did come to think of the Honda as his mother I believe. At a quite young age he began to question my directions to him, when I sent him around the mob of sheep in a certain direction he would sometimes look at me quizzically and proceed to head of in the opposite direction, he obviously thought he knew more about herding sheep than I did, most times he was right too the instinctive ability of these purpose bred dogs is legendary. With Boston's help Though I was learning.

There were times however that for reasons of my own I wanted to do something different to the obvious with the sheep, at times like these we would come into conflict with me yelling at him to do as he was told and him generally ignoring me.

One day after heated debate about his parentage I roared of on the Honda to do the job myself, Boston followed along and I noticed that each time I turned the bike he would automatically head there too, It didn’t take me long to figure out that if I let the Honda give him directions he followed them very well.

So was born a very good team of man, dog, and Honda, just the slightest of change in direction were noted by Boston who then interpreted them into messages to guide him in his duties, often he seemed to sense the changes perhaps by the difference in the sound of the bike as it changed direction but the visual observations were unmistakable he would pause almost as though asking a question before moving on.

Sadly I couldn't find a photo of Boston and his "Mom" but here he is regally surveying his domain.

Only slightly more in the genuine sense of a "Pet" was "STREAKY" a cat who
owned our family for a little over 13 years.
Streaky was the consummate hunter who delighted in presenting his humans
with a food offering each morning, usually a rabbit (which were a huge problem
all over Australia at the time) or that foolish "early bird" who had been careless
while looking for the worm, the least appreciated were the snakes that he
seemed specially proud of.
You might have guessed that during Streaky's stay with us we mostly lived in
the country where he honed his hunting skills.

This photo is of a very young Streaky when he first came to live with us,
if the photo looks old its because it was taken when I was about two years old,
so its........................ Bloody Old