Animal Farm, Gladstone

G'day Mates,

We finally reached Gladstone, actually the house sitting is not really in Gladstone but just a 23 k's out in the hills which was marvellous.

All house sittings are special in their own way, not only the locations but also the new people you meet and of course the pet family members.

This time we were looking after a cat,

Stuey

a dog

Cheddy

and three horses;

Cherish

Bodey

Warren

They all were abandoned or badly treated by previous owners and now being lovingly cared for by the couple owning the property; Jeff and Denise, they went for a nice holiday and we looked after their premises. As you can see we had a great spot;

On a previous sitting we had three cats and after that we swore never to do cats again because I don't like cats who walk all over the kitchen bench when you are preparing food and at the time you pushed the one off, there was another one there again.

But Stuey was a very well behaved cat and you only saw him either when he was hungry or for a little rub against your legs.

Cheddy was a copy of Jack from Broome. Always wanted to play but couldn't do much because of arthritis. The first few days he was always looking for pieces of hard plastic tubes from an old irrigation system in paddock with the mango trees and when he found a piece he would wanted you to throw it so he could catch. We thought these pieces a bit dangerous and were afraid that he would get it in his throat so later we bought him a tough piece of rope specially for dogs.

after playing he always jumped into the bathtub for cooling off and to drink...

We only played with him once a day as after that he could hardly walk, but how do you tell a dog it's for his own good. Every time we walked pasted the cupboard on which we put his toy, he was begging to play. It was piteous sometimes but yeh..... what can you do.

We also have been to Gladstone a few times to do some shopping. It's not a place to go if you are on holidays because its a real industrial town with power stations, coal industry etc.  Still of course we always find a nice spot to have our lunch;

Most probably because they want to compensate the industrial area, they made beautiful parks....

Waterways for kids to play in.... 

Back to the house;

And then the horses, they also had a special treatment. There were two stallions, Bodey and Warren and one mare; Cherish. Bodey, the black one actually is a brumby (wild horse) and was the highest in rank. The brown one was named Warren and he was a poor bastard as when he was little, he was attacked by wild dogs and since then he has a bad hip and a limp. He still does OK though, he can walk, I even saw him running one time.
And then there is Cherish, the grey one. She is the female and is very old.

Just before we came, Jeff and Denise noticed that Cherish was getting very thin and then they found out that the two stallions were eating her food so our job was to see to it that she got enough and to get back strength. So the boys both got a small container with pellets and Cherish got a big bucket with twice as much pellets as the boys.

actually there was also enough grass to eat .....

Look how thin she is.

Anyhow, the two boys weren't pleased as they are not stupid you know! They saw Cherish getting much more and of course it also took more time for her to finish so when the guys had emptied their own bowl, they came down to bully Cherish so she would left her food for them......

 but then we were there with a broom.......

Naughty Warren is coming closer and closer, sometimes he even bit her and then we had to do some hard talk and waive with the broom so he would nick off!

Sometimes I walked the driveway up and down also to give Cheddy some exercise as he was always around us.....

As I said Cheddy always was around us and when one of us was f.i. up stairs doing the dishes and the other was down stairs, he didn't know what to do.  When we went to feed the horses he of course also liked to come with us but he was always chasing Cherish so we had to think of a trick to lock him up on the balcony.

In the afternoon it was too hot anyway to stay in that area in front of our caravan, so we took our books and sat on the balcony till approx. half past 4, horse feeding time. Cheddy of course was with us on his bed and we gave him a treat so his attention would be on the treat for a while. We then sneaked through the fly door, closed it behind us and went down stairs to feed the horses.

He wasn't very amused and was squeaking and barking when he saw us walking down there with the feeding buckets. We did the trick three weeks haha!

We were amazed how a dog and cat can get along, we always thought they hate each other;

Just a few more shots of our lovely place;

and enjoying beautiful sunsets....

And of course is not only relaxing but there also was work to be done;

and also the horses got a treat now and then......

Out of this beautiful orchard Jeff picked us two big backs with mangoes of which we hope will ripen afterwards as unfortunately they were not ripe yet and we love mango's !

We are thankful for this house sitting again and hope to see all of you; Jeff, Denise and the animals again one day.

And to my fans I want to say, also on behalf of the fluffy family, thanks for reading this post again;

See ya!

Cheers!