"Just The Sweetest Thing..."

......PETS......
.....We don't own a dog, but if we did - I think I'd own this little one..."Tessa" her name is and isn't she just the sweetest little dog...

She reminds me of my pet fox which I had years ago and I've promised to put him on here, so watch this space - I shall get the old albums out and find him this week....

.... Little Tessa is only just over a foot long - and SO tiny and ever so friendly. She is 15 years old, and her owner, a lady we met down near the river today, said she rescued her from a pound when she was 2 years old, and you can see she is very much loved.

She just kept coming over to me all the time - I guess I am an attraction with animals - having had so many varieties you wouldn't believe throughout my life - including a couple of pigs, goats, horses (part Shetlands) a crow, my 120 chooks, and hatching chickens, calves, and dear little lambs, canaries, pretty pigeons, budgies, 14 cats in the stables I adored; the farm dogs we admired from a distance as they rolled in everything dead, the calves, until they grew up and had to go to the butcher who visited in those days, my beautiful galah, some rabbits and a ferret which bit me so I gave him back to my brother - and not to mention insects, to learn about the life of butterflies and a lizard who visited daily for some food, the magpie who came inside to the fridge twice a day for his mince, a spider in a jar which wasn't a pet at all, just an exercise in the psychology of fear, as I'd been bitten by one...
I thought that was a good idea myself to do that...I kept him in the cup cupboard (lid with holes, on ofcourse) so that I'd see him every day, and give the family a fright as well.
Naughty child....and ofcourse my darling fox -who looked at me just the same as this little dog - very much the same to look at - as the little babes from the woods..it's a shame foxes grow up and are so destructive..

Yes, farm kids grow up with animals and can still relate to them all of their lives, no matter how old one becomes, we are not frightened or put off by any of them really, if we are - then we do something about it - as I did once...

Little Tessa is not going to live for much longer, she is almost blind, but not deaf, and responds well to command, but at least we have a snap of her here and she will live on in my heart...just the sweetest thing...