My life-long affair with hairy beasts

In case you haven't gathered from my blog, I love animals. We got my first dog when I was three years old. Her name was Tina and she was a lovely German Shepherd, but Tina bit my cousin (lightly, thank goodness) on the nose, so Mum returned her to the breeder, then got the first of the five English Setters she had in her lifetime.


Here I am at age three with my Mum and Tina. Clearly I had no fear of her, and I was told she was very protective of me, which is why she taste-tested Timmy's nose...

My mother loved lace curtains and knicknacks, btw. I think I still have that flamenco lady packed away somewhere.

Let's go back a bit more. I believe this is 1966, and I was feeding the pigeons in England. I loooooved feeding the pigeons. Even more amusing: check out the snoozing dude in the background!

Even more amusing is the fact that my mother clearly framed this photo to include him!

And here is English Setter #1, the delightful Gina:

My mother used to make almost all of my clothes. I wore a LOT of dresses.


And here I am with the lovely Gina, when I was age seven:

Gina had no prey drive, and thus had not interest in eating my guinea pig Heidi, seen in front of my knees.

And let us move on to more exotic animals. Here I am with my Dad, investigating alpacas at the Bowmanville Zoo in 1968:

Perhaps this is at the root of my current llama fixation!

And at the same zoo, we have my encounter with a donkey. I look less than impressed...

...but I think it went better than this encounter in 2005!



There now. Wasn't that all a lot cuter than a post about a severed head in a jar?