The dogs at the Duck Hilton

We have 2 dogs, a crazy boxer called Toad, who my daughter Freya adores, and the incredibly cute Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Loli, who loves everybody.

Toad has a heart murmur (moderate) and an irregular heart beat, but is on meds and is enjoying life to the full, though we've been warned its going to be a 'greatly reduced life expectancy'. She's had a lot of black outs, and we think that's probably caused some brain damage - she doesnt always recognise us and is sometimes very slow.

Toad is a big sook, and Freya has voted her the best dog ever.





Loli has been the making of Toad, she's taught her heaps, she's a delight to have around, always wants to play ball, have a pat, go for a walk, watch TV and snooze on the couch or supervise your activity. My son Alan has voted her the best dog ever.

Taking the morning sun

Yesterday was a cooler morning, and the ducks enjoyed the elevated position to take in the warming rays of the sun.



We had some very welcome rain recently, and pond 2 has filled after being dry for months. We have enjoyed watching the ducks on pond 1, which is shallower, but with the extra water we mostly see bottoms up everywhere!!



Ari's babies taking a swim yesterday afternoon.

Razor - a special duck

This is Razor, she is pigeon toed, and has recently developed a wonky leg, but she is becoming more and more expert at flying... which is kind of frightening for me, but I've got to think its the best outcome for the duck!! My daughter named her Razor - not sure why - she's not the sharpest tool in the box ;-D There are some less than flattering pics here but I think our gorgeous little girl will forgive me.

Ariadne's First Clutch

Ariadne is my lavender bibbed Call duck. On 26 December I hatched 3 ducklings from her eggs in the incubator, on Decmeber 27 she hatched 4 ducklings and in the afternoon I offered her 'my' 3 babies which she accepted instantly.

These are the 3 babies I hatched.



Ariadne and the whole bunch, the incubator babies took a little while to get the hang of getting underneath their mum, but once they did the little gang was a very cohesive little group.



This was taken yesterday when the babies enjoyed their first swim, although not while I had the camera pointed at them!! They had a lovely time eating the finely shredded lettuce I added to the water and had no trouble leaping in and out of their little pond.