s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Right, so. General news, because we have been slack with the blog. The rest of the vacation and pics and stuff will go up eventually.

We’re taking the plunge and going to have a go fostering ex-racing greyhounds. I was looking into this back in the States before we moved — but then of course we moved. I looked into it again once we got settled, but there didn’t seem to be any organized greyhound adoption groups until a couple months ago. New Zealand Greyhound Racing has itself put together and launched an adoption program. As a foster home, we’ll be taking a dog fresh off the track and teaching it the basics of how to be a house dog. Once it’s got the basics down, and we’ve had time to assess its personality, it’ll go on to be adopted into a permanent new home. Pretty cool ! The dogs are intially assessed to see if they are likely to be able to live with cats, and we’d only be fostering dogs that are. We’re getting a house-check from the program manager on Wednesday, and then sometime after that we’ll get our first foster. Expect photos.

We’re looking to buy another alpaca, “Homerange Cinnamon Snow”, a white female, with a white male 4-month-old at foot. We weren’t *planning* to get another one, but she actually looks like she’s got traits we’re trying to breed for (more demonstrably than any of the ones we’ve bought so far, in fact), so we know we’d kick ourselves later if we passed her up. Again, expect photos.

Last night, we went to a “road-show” put on by the Alpaca Association president, to present the corporate plan the council has come up with. MMMM, yummy politics ! However, Eric was there, and he confirmed that Galadriel has finally scanned pregnant, so we’ll be going to pick up her, Cariboo, Joy and Concetta this weekend. YAY ! FINALLY ! He says Galadriel is very easy to handle and friendly (*our* Galadriel ? The little black toad ? Huh.) He thinks Victoria has some hormonal… quirks. He says he needs to shift her out of the pen when he’s doing pen matings, because she knocks the male off whatever female he’s on and mounts in his place !! He says he’s got another female that does the same thing & he’s managed to get that one pregnant, but it takes some tricky handling (I hope to find out more about this on Saturday).

So all our jokes about “Our alpacas can beat up your alpacas”, and Victoria scaring off the stud males turned out a little closer to truth than we were expecting. Hah !