Goodbye Simon :(

Today we had to let go of our sweet, sweet Simon. The sweetest, friendliest dog we ever had. He was with us for more than 15 years, he came when he already was an adult, and it was instant love. He was always cheerful, sweet and gentle to both people and all the other doggies we have and had throughout the years. We will miss him terribly.

For the past 2 months he has been having seizures from time to time, but the past 2 days he had 5 and was clearly suffering. He had already been on Rimadyl for the past 15 months to manage arthritis. It pained both him and us to keep him around so we had to put him to sleep today to let him go peacefully, he now is resting between trees, flowers and butterflies in the mountain close to our home next to more fur babies we lost in the past. Even with the amount of dogs we have they all have their own place in our hearts, Simon's place is big and impossible to fill. Words can not describe how special he was and how much we love him, our home is not the same without him :(

Happy Easter!

We wanted to wish you a happy Easter weekend, or if you do not celebrate that,  a happy weekend :)
We kind of tried (bribed them) to picture Mimi and Ernie as Easter bunnies.

As sweet as our doggies are, we do not train them to 'stay' and such, they are adorable and sweet and come as soon as you call them but we do not train them strictly which is why we did not manage to take pictures like BarkHaus, the difference is funny to see how miserably we failed :)

Anyway, Happy Easter :)

Hide and Seek

Remember the Juanita's?
One (Lulu) is missing in this picture...

Even though there is a cushion and plenty of space for her...
Did you spot her yet?

Between stashes of fabric she somehow discovered a little hole for herself and happily lies there these past two days (she does get up in between of course).

Lulu the little flying sausage, now looking very innocent. We discovered that everything we heard about Dachshunds is true and than some; they are incredibly naughty, but also a delicious delight :)

New Family Member

We have a new family member. With already 10 dogs we didn't really 'need' another one but she happened to just be a dislocated family member who now found her home :)

She is a terrier and sausage mix, and has a super long body with short legs and a very funny walk. She is super sweet and the rest of the pack was very quick to accept her. She came last Friday and not even a week later she is completely at home. Like all the other family members she is adopted, we are all for the 'adopt, don't shop' movement :)

We called her Lulu and we already love her :)

After a Winter Sleep

As soon as the weather gets warmer the mountains become greener, poppies and daisies appear and the turtles wake up from their Winter sleep and you see them everywhere.

Our house is at the end of a dead end street, no traffic and in front of our door is our garage which is open but only our car gets there so it is private and calm. We often get turtles in Summer there, I'm guessing that as it is at the end of the street they plan to go down the mountain in search for water but instead end up at our front door.
I always give them food and water. For the past week we had one right near our door, which is kind of unique as normally they eat and go, but she stayed for a week, most likely as it rained for 4 of those days so she was hiding in her little house.

Today a second one arrived, clearly younger as it is smaller but also the shield shinier and not roughed up yet :)

One plus one makes two :)

And a love story began... 3 makes a crowd so I left them in peace and gave them their privacy. A few hours later both were gone (without a goodbye *sniff*), I guess she was waiting for her prince charming :)

Another sad Goodbye

Just when we started to get used to a house without Lucky, our old little Bibi passed away, 1 week after Lucky. Two losses in such a short time is heart breaking and we have a few more old dogs and the thought of loosing them is horrible.

Bibi has been with us since 2002, we do not know her exact age but it must have been around 15/16. We found her on the streets in very bad shape but thanks to a never ending appetite she recouped well and never had any health issues in all these years.  Until we discovered a lump in her breast last year. As you might remember we lost Daisy and Lily from breast cancer, we both had them operated which did not help much and took weeks for them to recover. Because of this we did not have Bibi operated on. She actually lived longer than the two who we had operated, but I think her good appetite helped a lot. When she all of a sudden stopped eating we knew it was her time.
Instead of letting her go on her own, we took her to the vet to have her put to sleep. This decision was because we know that even when they do not eat and drink it takes days for them to pass away, which is painful for them and agony for us to see them suffer. Bibi's tumor was swollen due to an abscess and looked horrible and painful.

This the last picture I took of her, the day she passed away, she now lies in the mountains with her other brothers and sisters.

If you want to avoid your female dogs to get breast cancer, please let them be spayed as soon as possible, best is when they are 5-6 months before they produce hormones. The older they get the more risk, especially when they have had pups spaying doesn't help much anymore.
We learned this the hard way by loosing 3 girls in 1 year, our 3 remaining girls are all spayed and hopefully will stay with us for a long time.

A Sad Goodbye

Our dear sweet Elsie passed away yesterday. It was not a surprise, she had been ill for almost a year and we have been preparing ourselves mentally for months but still it is a hard blow to the heart.
Elsie was like no other dog we have ever had, she had the attitude of a Royalty even though she was small and thin she was the Queen of the house. Incredibly smart and very moving her being very proud but she also hated to be alone (meaning without my mother).

Elsie and my mother were inseparable from the first day we found her in 2005. Elsie was incredibly thin, dehydrated, full of ticks and had a bad healed rib (most likely of someone who kicked her). The night we found her was also the night that I had to fly to Holland so her first 2 weeks I was not there, and when I came home the two had bonded like they knew each other for years.
Elsie never forgot her bad times, and never liked being held on a lap, she always wanted to be stroked with all feet on the ground to have control over the situation. But she would always follow my mother to each room she would enter and kept her eyes always open to watch, unlike our other dogs who usual always sleep.
Her entire behaviors and character made her a true one of a kind and she will be missed so very very much, I don't think my mum's broken heart will ever heal entirely without her.

The last few months she lost a lot of weight and lost most of her hair too, we tried every medicine available all over the world but unfortunately nothing was enough. Her always watchful eyes looked at us while she passed away, and they never closed, just like when she was alive she wanted to keep her eyes open...
She is now in the mountains next to Daisy who was her best friend.

Goodbye Sweet Lili

Today we lost our sweet Lili. She was diagnosed with cancer in May and had her ups and downs, but the end was still unexpectedly fast.

She was the sweetest little girl and will be terribly missed by us. The past week she wasn't doing good and had a hard time breathing, we tried everything but nothing helped, she also barely ate and she lost a lot of weight the past week. Today we decided to put her to sleep to end her pain  just when I put her in the car to drive her to the vet her last breath left her right in my arms I kissed her until her heart stopped beating. She left by herself without a sound and luckily quick and painless.
She now is in the green mountain near our house finally resting after her struggle.

Her sister Mimi has not made any clear reaction to her absence yet, but they were always together so we are not sure yet how she will react.

The Adventure with a Dromedary

Yesterday we were in Aydin again to the veterinarian faculty to have two of our doggies checked.
You can see here that it is quite a strange place, mostly with cows and goats but also dogs. This time there was a dromedary. The faculty is like a labyrinth, oddly shaped all corridors look the same and it has a round center so you can go round and round and round and you can go crazy there.

Our two girls have both bumps under their skin, afraid that it might be bad tumors we went straight to the faculty instead of a vet in our own town. We went through the maze a few dozen times for blood tests and X-rays and I kept seeing the dromedary in different kind of states, first totally knocked out as it had a wound and needed to be treated. Later a bit awake looking around.

Here is Lily waiting for X-rays, it was all mighty interesting for her, and both the girls behaved very brave and sweet :)

While Daisy was recovering and Lily was being operated I saw that the Dromedary was now completely awake and what a sweety he is.

The owner and the dromedary had clearly a very good relationship as they kept kissing each other which I found very endearing especially when it is in a macho country :)

The mouth was so silky soft, and he had very sweet eyes, I didn't know that they were so endearing, never been close to any of them before.

In the mean time we were waiting for hours as both girls needed to be operated separately. We got up before 6 in the morning as Aydın is a two and a half hour drive and we needed to be there by 9, we were back home at 7 and after 12 hours we all four needed recovery!

While waiting mum discovered that one of the bird species have gorgeous black and white feathers.

I got hold of the ground-keeper and asked if I could get inside to collect the fallen feathers which he kindly agreed to and opened the locked door for me.

They were very curious and extremely noisy making noise constantly.

Back home our two girls are recovering very well (knock on wood), I learned how to give them the antibiotic injections so it all goes calmly without taking them to the vet. They are treated with yummy food and lovingly made soups.

And although they do not know why they had to be cut and suffer they still love us so I think they do know that we would never do anything to harm them :)

And here are the treasures I collected from my curious friends, totally cruelty free feathers, so beautiful!

Newly Listed: Sea Love Ring Sea Urchin

Sea Love Ring Sea Urchin Pink Duo Ring with Heart by StaroftheEast
Love photography art mint beach art prints decor heart balloon pink love print by CarolineMint
rose photograph, nature photography, graceful decay petals garden botanical, aging beauty by MyanSoffia
Ocean photography, Beach home decor, seashore,seagulls, sky, clouds by VintageChicImages

The Season of Kindness

I am sure that all our readers remember our Etsy friend Sandra, who lost her husband almost a year ago.

Sandra has a hellish year behind her. Besides her grief she has encountered lots of ill will from the people that were supposed to stand by her.

Sandra and her little boy lived in an old farm house and used an other space as a workshop that both belonged to her husband and his siblings. It was accorded that she could stay there and pay the taxes and the upkeep.

A few weeks after her husband's death, they told her to vacate the workshop. She didn't protest and converted  the stable of the farm in a new workshop. She did most of the work herself, but still, she had to make expenses to do it that she could hardly afford.

And, of course, when that was done, they wanted her out of the house. They started a pestering campaign , cutting her phone, her electricity, when she had work in the kiln, etc.
She has resisted as much as she could, but the stress was too great and finally she caved in and has moved to a rented apartment.

Sandra is a very brave young woman, and in the middle of all those unsavory maneuvers, she never stopped working, making products to sell locally and on Etsy.

Despite her best efforts, she is really struggling financially.

Kindness should not be limited to this season. But it is the season of celebration, family warmth and joy, and the season to remember those who lack all that.

Sandra has a bunch of great new items in her shop. She has the most lovely Christmas ornaments for a price that most people can easily afford. And we all need Christmas ornaments, don't we? And presents for a bunch of relatives, right?

If every one that reads this would buy at least a small item from her shop, Sandra and her little boy would have a Christmas, maybe not happier, but at least a bit more carefree.

To thank you for your kindness, we will send one of our Christmas trees (in the color of the winner's choice) to one or more of the people who buys from her. We will lot a Christmas tree  for every fifty entries.
Leave the transaction nr. in your comment here (or contact us through Etsy if you like to keep it private) to enter the raffle to win a Sea Urchin Tree.

Please, spread the word among your friends and let's share the kindness.  It is the Season of Kindness.


P.S. We had written and planned this post for the weekend, but are posting it earlier because Sandra is in hospital since last Wednesday.
She has pleurisy, and they have put a chest tube in her back to expel air from the pleural space.
She will be home probably on Monday, but as you can imagine, the situation is even more dire now.
Please help if you can.

Zeyno Update

So yesterday morning we go up before sunrise and went to Aydın again for Zeyno's operation.
We were welcomed by a calf and a herd of students.

We waited till Zeyno fell asleep before we left to the centrum of Aydın to kill some time while she was operated.

When we came back Zeyno was already starting to wake up. The operation went well and to our relief it was not a tumor but as suspected her spaying operation wasn't done correctly and part of her uterus was left behind. This part had grown through the years and now got badly infected. The vet told us that it was a miracle that Zeyno was still alive and so healthy as it was badly infected.

This was the terrible piece of meat full of bacteria which was removed from her, sorry for the ugly detail but we couldn't believe our eyes when we saw it. It is the size of an adult man's fist and if we would cut it open terrible stuff would spill out of it. If it had bursted while it was in Zeyno, she wouldn't have made it.

Zeyno didn't want to see or hear about this ugly piece of meat, but is doing well. She is on a fluids diet but is in good spirit and still waggles her tail when she sees us. She is getting an antibiotic injection every morning and evening to prevent infections. Thank you all for the good vibes, I'm sure it helped her a lot!

Close to the faculty was an old abandoned cemetery. At first glance it looks like a dirt pile with some wonky stones, I think even the relatives of these souls are long gone by now.