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Jumbo Yorkie - it's not for girls

My parents visited us last weekend and brought their two dogs, Molly and Flash. Molly is meant to be a Yorkshire terrier, but she looks like she was brought up on steroids. Look the size of her!

  My dad with Molly the mega-weight

 



I love Molly's unimpressed expression as Tan and

Flash play!

Bone of contentment

Tangent's expression couldn't embody the phrase "I love you so much" any better!

Hallowe'en

This year Gareth and I had planned on having a Hallowe'en party and invited several of our friends. Unfortunately, the closer the time came more of them were unable to make it (fair enough; our friends are dotted all over the UK, so it was a bit of a trek for them). In the end only one of our friends was able to make it. We still decided to have mini-party, as we are rather fond of hallowe'en!

Pumpkin pie with a pecan and gingersnap layer.

I also made up some maple syrup whipped cream (recipe for

pie and cream can be found here - although I would use

your own shortcrust pastry recipe as the one provided

was a bit stodgy).

Razor blade door hanging!

Continuing our 'Chop Shop' theme!

Taking 'raw feeding' to a new level!

Our take on 'Psycho'

The dogs partaking in the horror.

Ashton Court Estate

We took the dogs to a Ashton Court Estate a couple of days ago. I've heard about this place a few times from other dog people, but didn't quite know where it was. It turns out we drive past it on our way to Leigh Woods! It's very nice, and is exactly the sort of place (apart from moorland) that I've been missing since moving to Bristol - except for the golf course, but you can't have everything!

Fish tank!

Here are some rather blurry photo's of the fish tank. The panda corydoras are a lot quicker than their bodyshape implies, so the photos of them are particuarly terrible!

Siamese figher (Betta splendens), or Tengu

as we like to call him! It means Japanese

spirit warrior or something to that effect.

We have one male fighter which we spent a long time choosing as the males must be kept alone - they can be agressive to other males. I was tempted to buy him a harem of females, but as he seems to have quite an attitude I think he may be a bit of a wife beater. If nothing else then he would probably terrorise the other fish if he had girlfriends to impress. It's a life of batchelorhood for Tengu!

Black phantom tetra (Megalamphodus megalopterus).

The image doesn't really do this fish justice!

We have a shoal of 5 phantoms, but I suspect one of them is actually a rosy tetra, or possibly a hybrid as it has white tips to the pectoral fins. She (Twinky, as she was the only survivor from the first batch of phantoms we bought) is perfectly happy shoaling with the new phantoms though.

Panda corydoras (Corydoras panda).

Man, the pandas are busy! We only added them to the tank yesterday and they were scoffing their faces before they reached the bottom of the tank! They are proving quite endearing though. We have a shoal of 5, although the smallest one seems to prefer to forage on his own!