We spent two wonderful weeks in Ann and John’s house in Indre. Honestly, they have a beautiful house. With two hectares of land surrounding it and a fabulous view across the hills. We took all our meals outdoors, we swam nearly everyday in the pool and we very much enjoyed watching the dogs play.
The cats were no bother at all, and neither were the donkeys. Though we did of course spend one afternoon cleaning out their shelter. The dogs were another matter. They are all friendly but not educated the way we like to educate our animals, and their behaviour often bothered us.
Trying not to judge
It isn’t easy to refrain from judging, and we kept saying to ourselves and each other that, if Ann and John can live this way with their dogs, who are we to judge? So we tried our best to accept the situation and live with it. After all, we were only there for 2 weeks. And will be back in September for 10 days.
Badly educated dogs
But having a dog who will jump onto anything and eat and/or destroy anything and everything it finds is really hard. You need to be vigilant all the time and we messed up from time to time. So the dogs got hold of the bag containing the accessories to the table tennis set, resulting in 4 chewed table tennis bats and 3 destroyed balls. They also managed to open a cushion and take out half the filling while we took our eyes off of them for 2 minutes.
One day, I caught Beau in the sink, licking the clean dishes I had left out to dry on the kitchen counter. Fortunately, nothing was broken, but why lick clean dishes? Dirty dishes I can understand (and we caught her doing that once too), but clean dishes???
No more walks
About half way through our stay, one morning when we took the dogs out for their daily walk, Beau and Rusty disappeared on us for almost 20 minutes. At first, we were annoyed. We kept calling their names and Christophe went looking for them while I stayed rooted with Jack. When after 10 minutes, there was still no sign of them, our annoyance changed into worry. As time progressed, our worry grew. So when finally, after almost 20 minutes, they re-appeared, we were greatly relieved. We put them on their leashes and went home. And decided not to take them out again, for we didn’t want to risk really loosing one of them. From then on, they just had to stay in the garden, which is big enough with it’s 2 hectares. We played with them every day to make sure they got enough exercise.
Chasing the cat
The worst was when Beau and Rusty chased and caught one of the cats. The other cat had moved house a couple of days earlier already. The remaining cat was sitting on the outdoor table. I hadn’t seen it there when I let the dogs out after their dinner. They spotted him in the same moment I did and rushed out. The cat made the mistake of jumping down and both dogs chased him. All three of them disappeared for a few moments under the hedge, making a lot of disturbing noises before the cat raced out and left the garden at maximum speed, the dogs in hot pursuit. Fortunately, the cat escaped with its life, but we haven’t seen him anymore after that.
We’ll be back!
But those were incidents. All in all, we had a marvellous time and look forward to our second stay in September. We’ll be better prepared for the dogs then.