We never seem to do anything the easy way
Travelled to the airport Ikea car park to do the pick up of our 2 adoptee puppies from a family who had just driven from Roxby Downs mine to the airport to fly out to Melbourne to care for a crook rellie ... all a bit rushed with Kelly the wife becoming emotional and the dogs not getting the "see you later, all will be good" farewell they seemed to be expecting. Rather they stood there on the leads and collars "that looked to be very recent purchases" while the vehicle drove away ......
The adoptees are a male chocolate brown and white Chihuahua about 2 1/2yrs old named "Coco" and a female long hair Jack Russel about 3 yr old named Ruby.
Negotiated the first part of the car park ok with Coco looking back to the spot the vehicle had been, through all the people that seem to just appear on a Saturday morning, but once we rounded the corner, all ideas of co operation went out the window. An attempt to pick Coco up resulted in a near miss with the piranha teeth where an ambulance trip might have been on the cards, slip the head out of the collar and off at a full gallop to where the vehicle with mum and dad and the kids had been parked. A number of circuit with many people trying to herd him off, one poor sole attempted to catch him, hope he recovers by Christmas, the hand shaking action indicated the piranha teeth had met the soft flesh. Unfortunately, didn't have time to see if he was ok, off after the dog.
From around 12 lunch time till around 4pm was spent chasing sightings of the dog and possible places he might have gone, including multiple multi lane road crossings, around sections of the airport parking area and a number of laps around a group of work yards set up between the airport and Ikea/Bunnings complex.
Even had Kelly (mum) and Kad (one of the sons) helping trying to catch the dog after Margaret fessed up and had them paged at the airport.
Even tried the Bunnings Sausage sizzle snag as bait in the grassy area he had passed through the most times .... but no more sightings .... Kelly and Kad had to catch their plane and we were just about to admit defeat and take the one remaining dog back to Mannum with us .... then Margaret received a text from the owners who had just landed in Melbourne, dog found and phone number.
Turns out Coco was finally corners in someone's yard and the local dog catcher netted him after he tried to take a piece out of her as well. Lovely lady, we negotiated a spot to meet up to do the dog hand over (that has a story all its own I'll leave Margaret to tell around the campfire) a trip to a petshop to get proper harnesses to avoid the escapes happening again (yet another story for Margaret to tell
) and off for home.
Once Coco was reunited with Ruby, all was well again, Coco settled quickly and with 11/2 sizzle sausages of bribery, I was allow to pick him up.
The meeting with the cat didn't go quite as expected, even though the cat is big enough to take them both down as a snack, the cat headed out for his safe zone in his cat enclosure out back and spent the night there it seems.
The dogs are at the workshop with me at the moment, Margaret has gone off the Aldi shopping with Brian, and I'm here typing this story out
T1 Terry