GETTING VERY GROWN UP

 Hi everybody!  This is me, Zeus, telling you about some of our doings. You would be amazed if you saw us now. We’re getting quite big. Well, me and Zorba and Zza Zza are, but Zoe and Zelda are different and aren’t as tall as we three are.

We’ve been eating some really good stuff that our Cathy mom makes for us. She calls it ‘being weaned.” I don’t know what that means, but she tells Ron that making baby food for human kids was easier. She started this weaning business by giving us human baby porridge all mushed up with tinned dog food and these little dry bits that come in a packet and are for weaning puppies. Those she’d first soak in hot water, and then with this noisy thing she has, she makes it what she calls “just right’ for us.

We’d sort of slurp it up when she gave it to us. It was fun because we were running from our own plate to each other’s plates, but it seems we all had the same food. Nobody got anything different. We liked it a lot – Cathy mom was worried we wouldn’t like being weaned, but we do. It didn’t taste like our mom, of course, but we would drink as much as we wanted from our mom. But our mom was getting a bit tired of us – so Cathy said. Anyway, Cathy was giving us this quite yummy stuff four times a day, and after we got used to it, she’d sprinkle the little dry bits into it without first soaking them. We like those dry bits – they make little crunching noises when you bite them.

Cathy and Ron spend a lot of time with us, and especially when we get our wet food – that’s what they call the yummy mixture they make for us. We have bowls of the dry puppy food there all the time for us and we like it, but for the wet food feeding times, they have to take turns to keep our mom busy because she really likes to eat our soft mixture. She’s not hungry – not at all – our mom gets some very good food for grownup dogs. She gets fresh meat, but Cathy thinks maybe she’s a bit jealous…Anyway, whatever we don’t eat, then our mom comes and finishes it all up.

We had to have pills that our mom got from the vet. Hmmm – we weren’t too sure about that, I can tell you. Cathy and Freddie were trying to get us to eat them – they were wrapped in some nice stuff. Ground meat, Cathy called it. Zorba, Zza and Zelda ate theirs quickly, but me and Zoe…well, we’re thinkers, we are, and so Cathy and Freddie had to really make sure we did eat ours. Seems it’s good for us. I dunno, but I did like that meat business. Quite delicious.

Apparently, I’m the biggest of all of us, and Ron and Cathy are always telling people I’m the leader. Whatever that means.

I really like to be with my brothers and sisters, and I ‘specially like to look after Zelda. She’s not furry like me, and she’s a lot smaller, but she’s a very feisty little girl and runs after me all the time. I look out for her because her legs are kind of short and she can’t always reach where I do. But she never cries – she just keeps on and on trying. She’s very determined, and she’s a really nice little sister.

Zoe is also different. She’s not like me, but she’s also not like Zelda. The humans say Zoe has a lot of labrador in her – mostly labrador it seems. She’s very gentle, very quiet, very loving. Zelda, the humans say, is a real mix. But they say mixes are good – being mixed makes them very strong. I don’t really understand all that, but we’re well and very happy and we love our lives.

 

WE’RE SIX WEEKS OLD…AND LIFE’S REALLY GOOD

Zeus

 Hi, this is me, Zeus, and I thought I’d tell you a bit about us and what’s going on here in the Ham household of Kalamos. Our mum, Bella, hasn’t got round to telling us who was born first, but Cathy, our nice human mummy, seems to think I’m Number One around here. Well, in our puppy world, I am. Seems that pesky white cat with the grey blob on his head and that short grey tail is important to the humans here. Raki, I believe he’s called. Anyway, I don’t mind him ‘cos I’m bigger than he is and he’ll find that out soon enough if he bugs me too much.

I love our humans. We all do. We can’t wait to see them in the morning, and we hate to see them go after they put us to bed at night. They are always very kind to us. They stroke us and tickle us, and say all kinds of nice things to us. They play a lot with us, and tell us how clever we are, and that they’re amazed we’re so calm and not frightened by loud noises. This is true – we’re not scared of people and other stuff because nobody’s ever been nasty to us. But our mother tells us that not all doggies are as lucky as we are, and though she doesn’t talk about it much, we’ve come to understand that mum didn’t always have the nice life she has here now.

Zorba

Zorba’s my best buddy. He’s very like me. He thinks like I do, and always wants to do what I’m doing. It’s such good fun to have a pal like him. I don’t know who’s going to be bigger – me or him – but he doesn’t try to be the top dog around here. He’s very nice to Zoe, who’s the smallest of us.

Zoe

She loves him and runs behind him a lot, but she’s more careful than he and I are, and watches and thinks before she does something. Our humans think that’s a very nice quality she has. She’s very pretty, our little Zoe, and very gentle, and she likes to play with us.

Zelda

Zelda’s like that too. She and Zoe are our baby sisters, and we love them, and we look after them, but they aren’t the same size and shape as us. Our humans tell each other that Zoe and Zelda have a different father to us, and that they will be just like our mum, Bella. I don’t know about this fathers stuff – we just know our mom and we’re only interested in her. She really is the bestest mom.

Zza Zza

Zza Zza, it seems from what our humans say, has the same father that Zorba and I have. She’s smaller than we are, but that’s apparently because she’s a girl and won’t be quite as big as we are. But she’s not a sissy girl, for sure she’s not, because she does just exactly what Zorba and I do, and she often has even better ideas than we do. Our Cathy mom tells Ron that’s because Zza Zza’s a girl – this makes her more clever than us boys. I don’t know about that but Zza Zza is always up for anything. We love all this exploring!

There’s such a lot to do around here. You can’t get bored, and now that we’re not sleeping as much as we used to do, there’s all kinds of things we’re learning about. Especially the cats.

They have a lot of cats, these Hams, but this one doesn’t like us much. His name is Mythos, and he’s old and grumpy, and he’s actually quite big, so we leave him alone. Zza Zza hasn’t learnt yet that it’s best if we don’t bother him.

Zoe and Zorba are pals, but I have a lot of time for Zelda. She’s grown up a lot lately, and is not so timid. She thinks I’m a very nice big brother, and I try very hard to be, but I have to keep remembering that she’s little and make sure not to stand on her.

  Zelda often gets too crowded when we’re eating, so Cathy tries to give her a plate of her own.

But sometimes I try to take it from her, and she always lets me. Yes, I know I’m bad, I know I shouldn’t, but Cathy always has lots and lots of our special puppy food she makes us, so nobody is ever hungry.

There’s this sort of water place where we love to play around now that we’re big enough to climb in and out of it. The best fun is when Ron turns on that thing that lets the water run out and we can chomp on it.

This morning I found this lovely chew thing and I kept it quietly to myself, hoping the others wouldn’t notice.

No chance!