MaryMass Festival 2010

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Paul

We didn’t even know about it until a few days ago, but every year around this time Irvine holds a 12 day festival known as “Marymass”. I’m not quite sure about the origins of the festival; the name suggests a link with the Virgin Mary and a bit of googling confirms this, but there don’t seem to be any religious overtones now. If anything, it’s more of a fusion of pagan and country tradition.

Regardless, there’s folk singing, parades, strange contests (greasy pole climbing and “duck races” anyone?), a festival of light procession and a firework display. We quite fancied the festival of light and the fireworks, but these are hardly suitable for doggies, so much of the day was spent getting them nice and tired out so that they’d happily nap through the distant bangs & whizzes in the evening. We took them for a long walk on Irvine moor – the site of the firework display – and gave them lots of play time in the garden.

As the evening grew closer they could tell from our preparations that something was afoot, but they still managed to get themselves thoroughly tired out and happily went into their crates for a sound nap. As soon as they were settled, we headed off to Irvine moor.

Earlier in the day the moor had been empty save for a lone van and a guy slowly assembling the firework gear, but now the area was buzzing with people, music and fairground activities. As darkness started to fall people lined the streets around the moor, and the fairground music gave way to the drummers in the festival of light procession.

Almost as soon as the procession ended, the firework display began. A selection of well chosen Jean Michel Jarre tracks came booming out of the loudspeakers, and the sky lit up:

MaryMass 2010 Firework display from Paul Roberts on Vimeo.

It was really, really impressive. Of course once it was over we had to find our way back across the moor to our car in pitch darkness. Fortunately there were plenty of young Jedis ready to illuminate the path with their lightsabres.

When we got home there were no obvious signs that Beanie Biggles had been distressed by the fireworks, but they did greet us very enthusiastically. Beanie put her paws up on our shoulders and kissed us both, and Biggles wagged furiously. It was late, but we couldn’t really put them back to bed without a little something to chew on…

Eeeeww I put my foot in it, Dad!

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Paul

Tonight on our short second walk Beanie got distracted by Biggles and accidentally trod in a particularly revolting piece of the brown stuff. Her reaction was not what I was expecting at all! She shot away from the poo pile and did a couple of little circles holding her smelly paw up all the while, just as she does when she’s got grit between her toes or a thorn in her pad. Her reaction was all “eewww I trod in some poo!” Ordinarily I’d have picked her up and rubbed her paw but this time she was sh*t out of luck, as the saying goes.

Now remember this is the same Beagle that redefines the word disgusting. I’ve seen lots of David Cronenberg films, but on walks her actions still leave me struggling to hold on to the contents of my stomach. If there’s something really vile on the pavement that even I can smell a mile off, she has to stick her nose right in it for a power sniff. If there’s some dog, sheep or cow poo around she’ll eat it. Or roll in it. Or both. But for some reason, tonight our little princess reached her limit and I couldn’t help but laugh. Of course right after that I put my own foot in a juicy turd, which I guess made us even.

Beanie, recovering from her poo trauma

Ticked Off!

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Paul

Back in June we all went up Goat Fell on the Isle of Arran. On the ferry back, a couple we got talking to warned us to check Beanie & Biggles for ticks; apparently Arran has a big population of these unpleasant little critters. We carried out a half-arsed examination of our two pups but unsurprisingly found nothing, so the whole subject was completely forgotten.

A couple of days later, it became apparent that our tick search should have been much more thorough. Now fully engorged on our dogs’ blood, they were really easy to spot. Beanie had one on her eyebrow and one on her neck, while Biggles had a couple in the area around his naughty bits! We didn’t have a proper tick tool, so I grabbed a pair of tweezers and proceeded with the extraction. It was actually quite easy to remove Beanie’s ticks, because she held very still while I got a good grip, twisted and pulled. As far as I could see I got both ticks out fully (without leaving behind their mouth parts) though they kind of exploded from the pressure of the tweezers once I’d got them clear of Beanie. It was way, way harder to remove Biggles’ ticks. He’s never liked anybody, human or dog, messing about around his joy department and he wriggled about like a thing possessed. Trying to bullseye ticks with the tweezers while he was struggling like that was difficult in the extreme. It would have been easier to play “Operation” on the top of a washing machine doing its spin cycle. Anyway I eventually pulled the ticks, or at least their bodies, off my boy and happily neither our two dogs nor us suffered any ill effects.

The experience convinced me that we needed a proper tick extraction tool, so I hunted about on Amazon for a bit and eventually ended up with an “O’Tom Tick Twister‘.

It was the only device that didn’t seem to be a variation on tweezers and had good reviews. I popped it in our doggy care kit and promptly forgot about it – until yesterday that is! A couple of days ago we had a long walk around Culzean Castle, and then yesterday Susan spotted a tick on Biggles as he rolled over for a tummy tickle. Curiously it had chosen to attach itself to his nether regions again. Biggles’ nethers have always attracted other male dogs, but now they’re clearly a magnet for ticks as well. It’s a hard life being a Bigglet.

I went to get the tick twister, while Susan prepared to put our new Biggles handling routine to the test. Happily both the twister and the handling worked beautifully. Biggles struggled for a couple of secs then calmed right down, allowing me to go to work unhassled.

The twister kit contains two different sized plastic er.. well, let’s call them “forks” for want of a better term.

The idea is to slide the appropriate sized fork in around the tick’s attachment point. Once the tick’s mouth is securely gripped by the “V” of the fork, twist slightly and pull the nasty little critter off your dog. When I tried this on Biggles it worked perfectly! The tick came away intact and alive, so I wrapped it in toilet paper, squished it and gave it a burial at sea (flushed the bugger down the loo).

So now we’ve got a tick remover that really works and a little boy that doesn’t mind us handling him as long as we go about it the right way. We do however still have a spoiled little girl who tends to get stroppy if she doesn’t get her own way. We’ve been taking care to win all our little battles with her, but she still vocalizes her indignation when her demands aren’t met, as evidenced by this photo from our visit to Culzean:

Beanie seeks an answer from the heavens! It’s time for more treats but the humans aren’t taking the hint! Why??!!!

A couple more shots from our dreary but still enjoyable day at Culzean: