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.....