If you have a bit of time on your hands this summer why not try out your kitchen skills with the below recipe. Kindly supplied by Maureen Irvine from Colville.   Ingredients   1 cup rolled oats 1/3 cup unsalted butter (5 and 1/3 TBSPN) cut into pieces 1 cup boiling water 3/4 cup cornmeal […]

I’ve been sitting here for hours trying to recall what’s happened in Wiz and Lucy’s lives over the past two months and the answer is, as is almost always the case, a collection of small instances and occurrences that all combine to make life eventful, even if it doesn’t look that way from the outside. […]

Lilo had settled in. Yes, the perfect child had come to stay.  We proudly went out for walks, the New Kid on the Block was admired and talked about and it was all very jolly. People rightly and wisely advised that until Lilo had bonded well and I could be certain that she would come […]

Sunny (Ibiza Fling)  is settling in very nicely.  He and Penny (our Rottie) get on so well, they have not had one disagreement.  Sunny is now a Canine Friends dog (pet therapy) and has had 2 visits to the Rest Home.  He was very well behaved and the residents thought he was great.  He is […]

Smiler lives with his friend Bree the nuggety cattle dog just outside Helensville on 5 acres. They went down for their annual vaccinations recently and the Vet asked if she could take a blood sample from him. Up came the paw, in went the needle and out came the blood without him even twitching.  It […]

a’ngel (-nj-) n.1. Lovely or innocent being; You might be wondering where all this ‘angel’ stuff is coming from. Well, that is how Lilo’s last trainer described her for the GAP adoption process. “Lilo is an angel, she has no bad habits€¦€¦€¦a beautiful quiet girl€¦€¦€¦the perfect dog€. And later she wrote to me€¦€¦€¦€¦€¦€¦€¦€¦”beautiful looking – […]

The house was deathly quiet in the small hours, just as it had been for many weeks. No crashing dog-door (sometimes thrown off its apparently “robust hinges€ and into the garden), no more distant sound of a frantic cat-claw scrabble up the fence and no more slobbering lip-flapping snore coming from the dog bed. My […]

Lucy isn’t talking to me currently, and Wiz, as usual, is asleep upside somewhere so without their invaluable input into the happenings at Casa Stevens (aka ‘Tumbledown Manor€) over the month this will be a difficult blog to write but I’ll try my best. “Why is Lucy not talking to you€ I hear you cry, […]

Sunny has settled in extremely well and he and Penny (Rottweiler) have become great friends and are always together.  We took him to the Lake earlier this week and he walked into the water as if he had done it all his life.  He is walking very well on lead, does a “sit€ with a little […]

Gypsy is enjoying the spring weather in the Wairarapa in her usual slightly loopy style! She’s now an ‘only child’ so has been going on a lot of walks to keep her amused as she’s still a very active girl at nearly 9 and loves chasing balls and her squeaky toys. The photo shows her […]