(Sorry – still running a bit behind on updates, so this is Saturday, 11 April 2020)🙄
After our visit to the vet, Jack had some new tablets to take which may help with slowing the progression of his illness but they have some possible side effects, including increased thirst and the possibility of resulting issues at the other end…. 🤨
Since we sleep on the first floor and it’s quite a distance to go down through the house and out to our garden (if you happen to be desperate), I opted to sleep with the boys on the sitting room floor, just in case. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary that night, so I had the.. umm… pleasure… of sharing a single mattress on the floor with no way on earth of keeping it to myself! And I thought having two dogs on a double bed was a tight fit… I knew nothing!!! 😆
I actually slept ok, considering I had the sum total of 6” of bed to myself and marginally less quilt than that. But the boys loved it and snuggled up with me pretty much all night, which was rather lovely to be honest. 💕 Getting out of it the next morning involved a lot of groaning and creaking of stiff joints, especially since we’d done a lot of bending and working in a confined area the day before. Oh the joys of getting older!! 😂
I’ve briefly mentioned it before, but one of the rather lovely differences between Austria and the UK are the quite strict ‘quiet times’ which are observed to allow people to enjoy peace at certain times. Each Gemeinde (Parish) has their own version of the regulations, but essentially, they’re not dissimilar. We are not exactly sure of our ‘rules’ but largely, between 12-2pm on week days, from midday on Saturday through to Monday morning, bank holidays and religious holidays, it is virtually silent around here so we follow the lead of the neighbourhood.
It took us quite a while to get used to it, but having no mowers, strimmers, pressure washers etc on the weekends is just wonderful. I know it does annoy people, but I can’t say it ever really bothered me when living in the UK, the sounds of mowers was so much a part of Sundays that it just felt normal. Since living here, I do now really appreciate that it doesn’t happen. Most shops shut from midday on Saturday too, including DIY stores and Garden Centres and there’s really only a couple of petrol stations with basic supplies that are open outside of those times. Consequently, you need to plan ahead more for things you need to get done, shopping you need etc. It took us a while to get used to it, but it’s pretty much second nature now.
With this in mind, we abandoned the idea of painting the balcony (as this makes no noise and can therefore be done on a ‘quiet day’), opting instead to tackle another job that has bugged us since day 1. You will have seen the lovely ski gate at the front of our house. It was made by the previous owners and is a real feature – we love it and wouldn’t consider replacing it.
The downside is that it is made from actual skis, with actual edges on the inside. Not terribly conducive to excitable boxers jumping up at it when guests pass by and say hello to them. 🙄 Consequently, we had to put a rather ugly panel of dog fencing in front of it to protect them from the edges. It’s extremely unsightly, but practical for paw protection and although it has a small gate set in to it, it’s not big enough to get much through.. particularly the wheel barrow and such like. It has been both an optical irritant and a frustrating restriction on a practical front too. We had searched high and low for a suitable to gate to fit into the gap on our side but it’s an odd size and we never were able to find anything suitable. Nothing for it, but to make our own.
It turns out that cutting the dog fencing panel down and removing the door section of it, straightening and bracing of the frame and it fits perfectly – result! It’s not the most glamorous of gates and we probably need to add something to the back to stop it being quite so see through (it stops the dogs being disturbed, or barking at every guest coming and going), but otherwise we are properly chuffed with the end result.
The last of our noisy days was wisely and productively spent. We now have two days of quiet time.. and possibly a bit of lazy time… you never know! 😉
Stay safe everyone xx
