A dog's life

Our Dad has had a really busy week and hasn’t had time to write his blog so we’ve been asked to help out. Our key board skills may not be up scratch but we’ll do our best to let you know what we have been up to since we arrived in France.

Our names are Tess and Rolo and we are Dad’s faithful dogs. Coming to live in France has been a great adventure for us although it seemed very unfair that we had to have lots of injections for Rabies before we could come whilst Mum and Dad didn’t need anything! It was a long journey to get here but we just settled down in the car and let the miles (or kilometres as we have to call them now) roll by.

Tess (left) and Rolo

What we have enjoyed most of all about France is the countryside which provides for miles and miles (sorry, kilometres and kilometres) of quiet paths for walks. It seems that every village has its own set of way marked paths which traverse through large forests, across open granite plateaus and meander along quiet country lanes where we hardly ever see a car. Exploring these paths has been great fun and along the way we have seen quietly grazing herds of the majestic Limousin cattle, complete with cows, calves and the odd bull.

Over the summer it was very hot at times and we didn’t go too far or stay out too long in the sun because sun stroke can be a very real danger for dogs. When the temperature reached nearly 40 degrees in August, Mum would have a wet towel ready to wrap around us when we came in from a short stroll.

As we write this there is frost on the ground and so we have to lay in front of the wood burning stove or face real risk of frostbite!

Removing a tick 

Tess was the first of one of us who found out about ticks. They are insects which live in the grass and attach themselves to passing animals to suck their blood! One day she had some little lumps on her head and our French neighbour Nadine explained what they were and how to remove them. She gave Dad a small, green, two pronged fork and showed him how to get the tick out properly. The problem is that if it is removed incorrectly it can leave the mouth parts of the tick still stuck in the skin and this can become infected. They pass on a nasty disease called Lyme’s disease which can make both dogs and humans very sick.

Tess was very good at allowing Dad to remove the ticks but Rolo didn’t like it at all and got very cross whenever the green fork appeared! Fortunately for us, Dad was able to buy something called Frontline which was applied by dropping it on our necks (hurray, no injections!) and it meant that any ticks that tried to suck our blood after that would be killed – dead.

Tess is 15 years old and is getting quite stiff because she has arthritis. In England she used to get some pills from the vet and so she was taken to meet the new lady vet in France. She declared herself to be horrified that Tess had been taking these pills for so long as they can apparently cause liver damage. The vet took a blood sample (ouch!) and the results showed that her liver was not working very well and so she suggested some new tablets for her arthritis which would also allow her liver to get better. These tablets are loads cheaper than the one’s Tess had in England and her arthritis is no worse – so Tess is happy and Dad is happy! (Actually we think Dad quite fancies the young French lady vet).

Rolo has made friends with some of the local dogs, especially a Gordon Setter called Titane. One day Dad was out walking with Rolo and they walked through the little hamlet where Titane lives. Rolo didn’t know this however so when a large dog came hurling out of a house barking for all its worth, Rolo panicked and ran back along the way they had just come. Expecting he would soon realise it was Titane, Dad just laughed and waited for him to come back whilst he had a chat with Titane’s owner, Jean-Louis. And waited……and waited. Eventually Dad retraced his steps and ended up back on a country road where he shouted and shouted. Meanwhile, Rolo had made his way into someone’s garden and they tried to catch him but Rolo remembered he should not talk to strangers! He ran back onto the road and was startled to see a moped come round the corner. Rolo is frightened of many things and mopeds and motorbikes are pretty high on his list of major dislikes – so he ran for all his worth.

Titane the Gordon Setter

 Fortunately he ran in the direction where Dad was waiting for him so over the brow of the hill came the sight of a startled Rolo being closely followed by (‘chased’ is Rolo’s view on the matter) an old man on an even older moped!

Rolo and Dad were reunited and decided it was best not tell Mum about their little adventure because she is always telling Dad not to let him off the lead. They walked back to see Jean-Louis and had a bit more of a chat when suddenly a very harassed Mum appeared. It turns out that even though they hadn’t caught Rolo, the people whose garden he had gone into had managed to get the ‘phone number from his dog tag – they had called Mum and said that they had nearly caught her dog but that he had run away again! Mum had therefore come out in the car in a panic and had spent 10 minutes hunting for Rolo only to find him and Dad having a jovial chat with some French friends!

That’s it from us, hopefully Dad will be back with more stories of life in the Perigord Vert next week.

All our worldly goods

Everything I had read about living in France had prepared me for the weight of paperwork that would be required to support most major transactions and renting a house was to be no different. Fortunately for us we had the services of Silke from Piegut Immobilier who carefully explained everything to us in her excellent English (one of the many languages she speaks).  She then jumped in her car and led us the last few kilometers to Busserolles.

 Having only ever seen a few photographs of the house we were renting we had deliberately set our expectations low. In our minds we were moving into a dirty, smelly house which would need us to spend the first week doing nothing but cleaning out grimy bathrooms, trying to make the kitchen into an area free of botulism and banishing spiders and lizards from their cosy haunts.

Talk about having expectations exceeded - they were blown out of the water. Silke opened the door to a sparklingly clean house that was furnished beautifully and was much larger than we had anticipated. The bathroom was immaculate with a Jacuzzi bath as a lovely surprise and the kitchen was modern and well equipped. The only thing that seemed strange to our English eyes was that the oven was installed in the utility room rather than the kitchen. Time would prove the sense of this arrangement – when the weather gets hot it is great to be able to prepare food in the cool kitchen whilst the oven churns out the heat in a separate room.

But the best discovery about the house was the basement – it was a cavernous wonder! Why such joy? Well, we were moving from a four bedroomed house in the UK to a two bedroomed fully furnished house in France. Clearly we would have to put much of our furniture and other belongings into storage but our tight budget did not allow for any kind of third party storage. We had therefore gambled on being able to store everything at the rental house and in our minds we were going to have boxes piled ceiling high in every room.

Only once we set our eyes on the huge basement with its fully tiled floor and wide access doors at ground level did we realise that when the removals lorry arrived in a weeks time we could simply say to the guys ‘just put it all in the basement’. Fabulous!

The centre of Busserolles village

 We were therefore able to spend our first week in Busserolles recovering from the journey and finding our way around the locality. Tess and Rolo loved the huge garden at the house and we discovered some beautiful countryside walks right on our doorstep. We also met our delightful neighbour Nadine who spoke no English but was happy to explain things slowly and to help us with our French. She soon became our guide to rural France and humbled us with her generosity as she brought us haunches of wild boar to try, vegetables from her garden and bottles of the local plonk.

Rolo discovered lizards and became obsessed with these charming little creatures who nervously scuttle away whenever they sense any movement nearby. They move so fast it seemed unlikely he would catch one but one day my wife discovered a twitching lizard tail and assumed the rest of the lizard had been swallowed by Rolo. We waited anxiously to see what effect fresh lizard would have on his stomach. 

One of our friendly lizards

Nadine was duly consulted as to how serious the outcome might be for the poor dog. She smiled knowingly at us and patiently explained that when these lizards feel in danger, they actually shed their tail which then twitches invitingly to distract their predator. Rolo would be fine she said but we would probably see a tail-less, but very much alive, lizard in the garden.

Relating this story (or should I call it a tale?) to another local we were informed that his cat was an avid lizard hunter and their garden was full of short tailed lizards!

On our third day we went to the local Credit Agricole branch for our meeting with Marie Lambert. Once again there was going to be copious amounts of paperwork to sign but Marie hit a problem. A computer fault meant that she could not get any of the documents to print. We sat there patiently whilst she called her IT helpdesk but the silent looks we exchanged between ourselves hinted at our increasing exasperation. We knew what was coming next, a grudging apology and a request to come back another day.

How wrong we were. Marie instructed us to waste no more of our time at the bank, we should go and enjoy the local market, have lunch and she would call us on the mobile when she had found a solution. What emerged was the proposal that she would come out to the house later in the day and we could sign everything there. Just tremendous service, I can’t imagine any British bank employees leaving the cocoon of their branch office and making home visits.

The following Friday afternoon we had a knock at the door. I was taken aback to find a large white Britannia Appleyard removals wagon outside with Nigel and Jonjo, the two men assigned to our job, standing on our doorstep. “I wasn’t expecting you until Monday” I blurted out. Not a problem they said, because French laws meant that they were not allowed to drive at the weekend, they were going to spend the weekend locally and thought they would come and see where the house was so as not be late on the Monday morning. They were clearly chuffed at the idea of unloading most items straight into the basement and so, despite the heavy showers that blighted the day, they cheerfully set about unloading our worldly goods.

By the end of the day, everything we owned in the world was with us in Busserolles. Project Cinquante was complete; the dream was now a reality.

Don't forget the dogs

I think its time in this story for me to introduce you to our two furry friends, Tess and Rolo.

Both were rescue dogs and both are real Heinz 57 types with perhaps an unspecified terrier gene being the only common thing between them.

Meet Tess (left) and Rolo

 We took in Tess as a puppy and she is now 15 years old. She has an adorable temperament at home but her dedication to the sport of chasing rabbits and squirrels has meant that we have spent many hours stood around in woods waiting for her to come back from her latest foray. She was always super fit with a whippet like body and for years we kept hoping that one day she would “settle down”. We were right, but she was 14 before arthritis set in and it was only then that she finally decided it was easier to walk at our pace.

Rolo came to us as chubby little 10 month old whose lack of house training became evident in his first few weeks with us. He had neither inclination nor energy to chase furry woodland creatures and he happily waddled along beside us. With regular walks, his tubby bum soon disappeared and whilst he showed no interest in hunting with Tess, he started to demonstrate two obsessions that plague us to this day – a hatred of anything in a fluorescent jacket (postmen, road workers, refuse collectors all included) and an obsession with other dogs which includes the desire to be very angry indeed with anything big enough to eat him as a snack!

These two characters were joining us on our French adventure and so in plenty of time we set about getting them their EU Pet Passports as part of the Pet Travel Scheme (PETS) which provides for qualifying domestic pets to travel to and from the UK without undergoing quarantine. The first step was getting them vaccinated against Rabies and having blood tests done to confirm that all was OK. They were already micro chipped and up to date with their other normal vaccinations so in due course our vet was able to issue their passports.

Whilst both Tess and Rolo were good travellers in the car, the furthest they had ever gone was about three hours so this was going to be beyond their (or our) experience so needed some thought and planning. One option was to arrange for them to be taken over by a specialised animal transport company but we didn’t like the idea of handing them over to complete strangers (particularly if they might be wearing fluorescent jackets!).

Having concluded that they would travel in the car with us, whilst they normally sat loose in the rear of our estate car we did decide that it would be safer for them (and for us) to have them enclosed within a travel cage. This was a small investment but undoubtedly gave us great peace of mind that they were secure in the car and also appeared to help them to settle very well on the journey.

Testing out the Travel Cage

We also decided at this point to utilise the services of Eurotunnel as it would mean that we could stay with them in the car throughout the crossing rather than having to abandon them on the car deck of a ferry. Eurotunnel have clearly recognised the market opportunity and promote their pet friendly services on their website. With secure exercise areas at either end of the tunnel and complementary poop bags, its great to see they have thought about the needs of the travelling pet.

Except of course they are not providing services for pets out of the goodness of their hearts. For each dog it is an extra £15 per trip. That’s an awful lot of money for a complementary poop bag. The irony is that we could have loaded up the car with 27 small children and it wouldn’t have cost us a penny extra to travel through the tunnel even though they provided complementary baby changing facilities. But for two dogs and a complementary poop bag – that will be £30 extra please!!

That said, the staff at Eurotunnel were extremely courteous and friendly and the train supervisor even came to say hello to Tess and Rolo as we travelled beneath the waves. Just a shame he was wearing a fluorescent jacket…

The journey down to Busserolles was incident free and we were able to stop regularly to exercise the dogs in the superbly maintained rest areas that crop up regularly along the length of the French motorway network. We made one overnight stop in the Campanile hotel at Chateauxroux (pet friendly with a charge of just €5 per dog) and arrived fit and fresh to collect the keys from Piegut Immobiler on Monday, 4^th June 2012.