These last couple of weeks have been busy.
We have participated in the Thornville Trivia night and met some more wonderful people, started to look at what is happening in the Cooyar district and make moves forward to becoming a little more active in this region, taken a trip to Yarraman and Blackbutt as well as continuing with Morris's training.
This past week we have had to take a quick trip to Brisbane to sort out a few things as well as deal with our first brown snake.
It has been six months since we moved to Thornville and this is the first time we have had an upfront and personal interaction with a snake.
So this juvenile brown snake, we think, has come from a neighbouring property where there had been a lot of clearing activity taking place. The property is being prepared for sale so there has been much activity. We can only guess that this has stirred things up.
We thought we could just wait it out and it would go on it's merry way........... alas no, something kept drawing it back to under our house.
Boyd came across it sunning itself on the top of the septic system and got Morris inside. The second sighting was courtesy of Morris the Wonder Dog who alerted us to it's presence.
It seems Mr or Mrs Brown Snake came across a field mouse nest under our house that we knew nothing about.
Boyd found bodies of mice through the yard. The snake had gone on a killing spree and it must have been to wet and cold for it to eat and digest them.
So we are now about 6 days on from the first sighting and encounter. We have not seen it over the last few days. Morris the Wonder Dog has not alerted us to it being any where near the house.
Probably the wake up call we needed to not be so complacent in a bush setting. Also keeping Morris inside and contained has seemed to have calmed him down.
With all the rain we have had the grass is growing at an amazing rate. The tanks are close to full so we cannot complain. We just have to keep the grass in the house yard low to ensure we can see snakes if they decide to come venturing in again any time soon.
The next project we have to attack is the issue of heating the house in the upcoming winter season.
After attempting to clean and sort out the wood stove in the kitchen it looks as though it requires a complete overhaul and refurbishment.
Boyd conducted some research and it looks like we are going to have the wood stove replaced with a pot belly stove with a new flue. This will make sure we have the capacity to heat the whole house as I am sure it is going to get mighty cold here this winter.
Next week we are talking with a guy who refurbishes old stoves and pot bellies.
Hoping to have the Everhot Wood stove as pictured below, replaced with a Pittsburgh Pot Belly Stove. Will give us more room in the kitchen and will be able to heat the whole house with no leaks coming down the chimney.
Updates soon on the progress of this little exercise.
This week has also been a big week for Morris the Wonder Dog. Boyd and I have been lucky enough to meet a wonderful Woman by the name of Tanya who has kindly offered to help us with Morris and his behaviour.
Now Morris is not a bad dog. We love him dearly. Morris seems to have a problem with people and asserting his authority over people that are not Boyd or I.
Morris, (the not so little puppy anymore) can be unpredictable as we understand Australian Blue Heelers can be. As we do not know Morris's history prior to adopting him in November 2016, we can only assume that it was not that great.
We have tried a number of things from getting an dog behaviour specialist out, training at home, having people over to interact with him and taking him to dog obedience classes. A number of things have worked. Tanya has been able to give us so much insight into what Morris maybe thinking and how he will react in certain situations and what we can do to make changes to his reactions.
Over the next few weeks Tanya has kindly offered to do some one on one work with him to see how he goes.
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