The main reason that I didn't make it to the Iron Heart party this year was because I got myself a dog. This is Disco, he's a Peruvian Inca Orchid.
He's currently about four months old, and probably about the size of a Whippet. Like his owner, he's also completely bald.
This is a Kookaburra. They're a relative of the Kingfisher that's native to Australia, and they're about the size of a crow.
They're hunters, and I saw one today that had caught a small snake. That's the large worm in its beak. It's not a great photo, as I snapped it with my phone on maximum zoom.
The Aurora Australis was visible from outside my house this evening.
I had a guest hound, Tex, for the first half of this week. He's a Peruvian Hairless puppy, about eight months old. His owner had fallen ill a few weeks after getting him, and he'd gone to stay with her friend. Unfortunately, after a few months in hospital, she passed away. I went to pick him up in Wagga Wagga, which is a couple of hours from where I live.
Here's Disco meeting Tenor the Azawakh, with Tex in the background. Azawakhs are a really rare sighthound that were originally kept by the Tuareg people in North Africa. They can be a bit prone to biting, as they were kept as guard dogs, but Tenor was friendly. He also quite liked Disco.
I made a stop about halfway home because the weather was hot, at over 40°C or 105°F. My car's air-conditioning had been unreliable for months, which didn't help, and the compressor blew up halfway to Wagga.
Peruvians come in three sizes. Disco is about 64 cm or 25" at his withers, which is at the top of the large size, whilst Tex is 50 cm or 20", which is borderline between a medium and a large. Unlike a Poodle, the sizes exist more as a spectrum. The dogs have the same father, but Disco's mother is a large, whilst Tex's was a small medium.
The heatwave continued all week. I took the dogs out on Tuesday morning, and they cooled off in the river. Tex decided that swimming was quite fun, apparently he hadn't done it before. Disco doesn't generally go in any deeper than he is in the photo.
I had to drop Tex off at the airport on Wednesday afternoon. The heat built during the day, so I headed to Melbourne in the morning, as the weather was much cooler, and we went to the off-leash dog beach.
Disco tried to steal a ball.
Tex had a ball running through the water...
... and he got plastered in sand about an hour before his flight!
I did wash him off before taking him to catch the plane.
Tex is a lovely pup. He's gone back to his breeder, and I think that she's planning on keeping him long term.
Having two dogs was a different experience, and I've only had one before. I think that Disco enjoyed having a playmate, which meant that they entertained each other, but handling two on a walk was much trickier than one.
There's an area of native bush or woodland in the park near where I live, and there's some wildlife that frequents it.
Yesterday I saw a couple of older gentlemen on the bridge across a creek that runs through it. It turns out that they were watching a Platypus. It climbed out onto a log, and I got a rather poor photograph with my phone's camera.
The sighting came about half-an-hour after I'd been verbally abused by a woman for having my dog off-leash in an off-leash area...
I saw an Echidna back in December. They're a spiked marsupial that resembles a Hedgehog or Porcupine.
I've seen a couple of Kangaroos, and several snakes. I don't have any pictures of them, because I'm normally trying to stop my dog from sniffing them or following them into the undergrowth.
Continuing the theme of clean and dirty, here is Disco on Sunday afternoon posing after winning Best of Breed at the Royal Sydney show. I should cheapen the victory by pointing out that our rival failed to turn up, after she unfortunately injured her knee. But the advantage of a rare breed dog is that it is likely to win its class by default.
And here he is on Monday morning after he spent an hour chasing a Pitbull and a sheep around a small farm on the outskirts of Sydney. It was probably the highlight of his weekend.
Disco got a lot of attention at the show. I probably had to explain what a Peruvian Hairless was hundreds of times over the two days, because it's a fairly unique breed. Well, except for the Xoloitzcuintli who were further down the aisle...
I've still got the Mountain Parka, and occasionally wear it. Here it is being modelled with Flash, who I was walking at the Greyhound Adoption Programme on Saturday.
@Oaktavia Thanks @Oaktavia. I've still got mine. It's a 3XL, and I'm a 4XL or bigger these days, so it's getting rather snug in the shoulders. Mine hasn't had a lot of fading, and I'm sure yours will look better by the Spring.
Bonus shot: My dog decided it would be a good place to sit.
I had a guest hound, Tex, for the first half of this week. He's a Peruvian Hairless puppy, about eight months old. His owner had fallen ill a few weeks after getting him, and he'd gone to stay with her friend. Unfortunately, after a few months in hospital, she passed away. I went to pick him up in Wagga Wagga, which is a couple of hours from where I live.
Here's Disco meeting Tenor the Azawakh, with Tex in the background. Azawakhs are a really rare sighthound that were originally kept by the Tuareg people in North Africa. They can be a bit prone to biting, as they were kept as guard dogs, but Tenor was friendly. He also quite liked Disco.
I made a stop about halfway home because the weather was hot, at over 40°C or 105°F. My car's air-conditioning had been unreliable for months, which didn't help, and the compressor blew up halfway to Wagga.
Peruvians come in three sizes. Disco is about 64 cm or 25" at his withers, which is at the top of the large size, whilst Tex is 50 cm or 20", which is borderline between a medium and a large. Unlike a Poodle, the sizes exist more as a spectrum. The dogs have the same father, but Disco's mother is a large, whilst Tex's was a small medium.
The heatwave continued all week. I took the dogs out on Tuesday morning, and they cooled off in the river. Tex decided that swimming was quite fun, apparently he hadn't done it before. Disco doesn't generally go in any deeper than he is in the photo.
I had to drop Tex off at the airport on Wednesday afternoon. The heat built during the day, so I headed to Melbourne in the morning, as the weather was much cooler, and we went to the off-leash dog beach.
Disco tried to steal a ball.
Tex had a ball running through the water...
... and he got plastered in sand about an hour before his flight!
I did wash him off before taking him to catch the plane.
Tex is a lovely pup. He's gone back to his breeder, and I think that she's planning on keeping him long term.
Having two dogs was a different experience, and I've only had one before. I think that Disco enjoyed having a playmate, which meant that they entertained each other, but handling two on a walk was much trickier than one.
@Giles the Dale looks lovely. I checked out their website, and I really liked the Classic 37 despite not being a motor yacht sort of person.
I love the shot of the boat during sea trials. Something that can cope with the rough stuff appeals.
The cool change that @Brian sent arrived this morning, and the emergency map of Victoria is no longer red.
A woman in Melbourne posted this on X, complaining that the fire advisories were an unnecessary restriction on liberty.
Lake Eildon was in the path of the bushfire yesterday. She had a lot of replies calling her out on that.
Thanks @Brian!
My dog's breeders are in Lewiston, which I believe is just north of you. They've been complaining about the heat, so they'll appreciate the cooler weather.
@Mizmazzle thanks.
This is today's emergency map. Most of the red area is considered at catastrophic risk of a bushfire, not actually burning.
My dog has the right idea.
It's been over 40 degrees here (105 Freedom degrees), so a little fire has started to keep us warm.
The red area is considered at real risk of being incinerated; the orange is you might want to get out of there; and I think that the black outline is what's actually on fire.
I'm in Benalla, and the fire is heading southeast, so I'm not too worried. I can, however, smell smoke in the air. If you're wanting scale, it's about 105 km or 65 miles from Benalla to Seymour along the (currently closed) Hume Highway.
I was walking my dog Disco this evening in the local park, when I noticed him tap something just off the footpath. I looked down and saw an enormous Eastern Brown Snake slithering into the bushes.
(The Brown Snake is the second most venomous in the world, so you really don't want to get nipped by one.)
I did check him for bite marks, and I couldn't see anything. The snake had been facing away from the footpath, so he didn't pat the business end, fortunately.
@mclaincausey the Node is a similar size to my underutilised Loyal Stricklin roll-top. That's probably the main reason why I haven't got one yet.
A number of airlines in Australia and Asia have a 7 kg or 15 lbs weight restriction on cabin baggage. An Ultra Node with a couple of ULA's packing cubes would be less than 700 g or 1.5 lbs, and probably less than half of what my Loyal Stricklin pack and pair of Evergoods TPC8s weigh.
You and @Anesthetist also commented on durability. I've found that most bags will give about two or three years of daily use before they start to wear out. One of the things that put me off a Racing Atelier pack was that the fabric part would probably fail before the leather harness, and I wasn't sure how easily it could be repaired. I think that the same argument would apply to Rofima.
@mclaincausey unfortunately (or fortunately for my bank balance) I don't have a need for another bag right now. I got a lovely backpack from Loyal Stricklin last year, and I've probably only used it a dozen times.
The ULA packs look great. I've been tempted by an Ultra Node as a lightweight travel pack.
@mclaincausey the asking price was enough to cure any FOMO that I might have had about not getting one! 
I'm not a fan of the pass-through strap on the collaboration. All the Carryology followers on Facebook are obsessed by them, but here it looks like an afterthought. That's probably because I hate rolling luggage, so it's a feature I would never use.
I didn't realise that rofmia is two people in an old house in Japan. I could see myself going very deep down that particular rabbit hole.
