Pictures of Graham & his Harley!!

 

HARLEY!!!

Graham has been scouring the net, visiting all the car/bike websites, all the Harley Davidson dealerships in the Gauteng area, looking for a reasonably priced "entry level" Harley Davidson.

There was a Sportster at V Custom Cycle in Centurion on the website, we'd gone around there last Sunday, but they were closed, so looked through the window - it was reasonably priced, but the paint job was a rather lurid bright yellow... not terribly appealing.

Graham call the sales person at VCC and organised to go around on Saturday to have a look at the bike. Which we did yesterday, and sadly (or happily as it turns out) the "yellow peril" had been sold!

Instead they had a 2007 883XL Sportster, a decent dark red colour, with only 3865kms on the clock. It's got forward foot controls, Vance & Hines pipes, a touring seat.... all the good things.

On Monday we'll do the finance thing, and take delivery on Tuesday. I'll be out of town again, travelling around the country stores, so will only see the new "family member" when I get back later in the week!

He is so excited.... I can't wait for us to go on our 1st Breafast Run together!!!

William's Toy Box

We've never met a dog that likes playing with toys as much as William does. Georgina even made him a toy box, which we put all his toys in, (she covered a cardboard box with coloured paper and pictures of Bassets) and he spends many happy hours unpacking and playing with them all.

Graham's Learners

We have one happy Graham - he passed his Motor cycle learners License....

Harley kit

We went to get Graham riding boots yesterday - Harley Davidson of course!!! We got a really nice pair at Tekkie Town - at about a third of the price of a pair from the Harley Davidson dealership!

We're hunting madly for a Sportster, spending lots of time on the "Interweb" - Googling all the dealerships in Gauteng, as well as places such as V Custom Cycles, Mean Machines and the Auto-Trader type websites....

We've given ourselves a deadline by the end of January to get Graham the Harley. To ride in the HOG pack, Graham first needs to complete Pack Rider Training. This entails him having to attend a presentation/lecture about rider safety, the rules of riding in a HOG  pack, hand signals etc. He will then get his colors and qualify to ride in the pack.

Today we had a dress-up session, I got out all my riding kit and because I've two of most things, and Graham and I are pretty much the same size, we've found that he has pretty much everything :

Boots - check
Jacket - check
Chaps - check
Helmet - check
Gloves - check
Waistcoat - check

All he needs is the Harley!!!!

Charlotte is a week old

Charlotte is a week old now, got a message from her 'Grandpa', Stephan, who used to work with me - "The first ones started opening their eyes today. It's cute the way they squint at everything. They should be ready to go mid Feb, so first week in Feb you can come pick her."

Here are the latest photo's of the litter...

 This little dude is a "lemon basset" - almost completely white with very pale brown spots.

1 to 1+1 to 2+2

Well , the 6^th January 2013, was a Red Letter day.... Charlotte was born.  That is the impetus to start this blog.... Hounds and Harleys.  I want to chronicle our lives with our growing numbers of the H’s!

 This is Lienkie - our puppy's Mum, a few days before giving birth.

 These are pictures of the litter shortly after being born and on the few days afterwards

I can’t tell you yet which one is Charlotte.... we haven’t been to see them yet, but will in a couple of weeks once their eyes open.

The journey of Hounds and Harleys started in 2008 when I got my Harley Davidson Sportster.  Here is a story of how that happened.... printed in the magazine of our local Chapter of HOG (Harley Owners Group) - the Pretoria Chapter.

Up until now, I've been a solo rider - well in my family, but now Graham is also looking for a Harley - he's shopping around and also wants to get a Sportster.

This is "Baby" my 2003 883R Roadster. A 100th Anniversary model.

These are a couple of pictures that were taken for a Ladies of Harley Calendar back in 2008.

The Hounds part of the story began in November 2012. I was at one of our branches in Bronkhorstpruit on a Saturday morning, and a customer came in carrying this little puppy, he wanted to place an advert on the community board, and gave the puppy to one of my colleagues to hold while he filled in the card. The pup was passed onto me to hold onto for a while, and all my colleagues said, "aaaw Steph, you must take it...", "come on Steph, he's so cute", well he was cute, very cute. But I tried to be strong, I knew that we didn't really need another dog, we already had 4 dogs at home. But then I held the puppy up like this.....

And that was it.... William was coming home with me - what a face!

There was much jubilation from Georgina when I got home - she finally had her own puppy, she'd been asking for one for absolute ages. Of course we had to dash off to the pet shop to get him puppy food, a blanky, some toys etc. We took William with us, and much to our consternation, he piddled on the shop floor! But this was after we'd spent quite some time choosing just the right squeaky toys, cuddly toys, the right colour blanket (navy blue with a bone design!) a spaniel bowl - one that has higher sides, so that his ears don't trail in his food, and a luminous green harness & leash - Georgina is going though a luminous phase!

Here's William and his blanky

 Look at that sad & droopy face!

William has settled into being the most loved dog in the whole wide world with all that is due to him. He doesn't need his own basket, because he allows us to share our beds with him.

William is his most common pose - on his back on the bed! This is a funny thing about him - but it is a Basset thing, they seem to have very liquid joints, when he lies down, all his joints flatten out!! It looks so bizarre.

 He looks quite disjointed! Another peculiarity about Bassets is that I'm sure they are the inspiration for the Slinky Dog Toy.... his front and back ends don't seem to communicate with each other, he'll be walking along and his back end decides that it needs a sit down, and the front end will carry on going, or his front end will want to go to the left, but forgets to tell the back end, which keeps on going straight. This results in him spending much of his time flopping into a little basset heap!

This is William with Bertie our aged Maltese Poodle. Poor Old Bertie seems to be the old man's name - that's what we call him these days. He's almost completely blind, and has very few teeth in his mouth - and halitosis of note! He has a very stiff legged gait, when he runs down to the gate, he tends to do this stiff-legged bouncing thing.

Apparently Bassets were bred to hunt rabbits, we've decided that William doesn't know that Bertie is also a dog, we think that William is of the impression that Bertie is a bunny, and thus needs to be harrassed (hence the Poor Old Bertie name being more common these days) we keep on having to rescue Bertie, he can't see what's attacking him and just stands there snarling and trying to chase of his attacker with a blast of Bertie breath!



Of our 6 cats on the premises, only one has any time or patience for William, this is Charlie - our youngest cat. Charlie has all the time in the world to play with William, although now that William is a little bigger, his modus operandi is to flump down on the cat, with all his considerable weight, pinning the cat to the ground, then chew the cat's head.

These pictures are of William and Charlie, when William was more the size of a cat!

I had a dream the one night, I dreamt that we had 2 bassets, William and a little girl basset called Charlotte - Charlotte was a little tri-colour basset. I was telling this story to the folk in my office & Stephan, one of my colleagues told me that they have 2 bassets, and that the female was pregnant. I asked him if I could put my name down for one of the puppies, to which he agreed.

So that is how we went from having just 1 Harley, to having 1 Harley and 1 Hound, and shortly we'll have 2 of each.....