Tell Tail Sign

While the rest of the Texpatriate clan was traveling to and fro, Zambezi enjoyed an extended stay at a dog day care center offering "bespoke service" and "a uniquely spacious outdoor dog creche." Sounds lovely doesn't it?  Like most dog day care centers, LondonWoof posts pictures of the dogs on their Facebook page so that owners can see how much fun their pet is having. After over a week with no pictures, I emailed to make sure everything was ok and was assured: "Zambezi is doing great, he is playing most of the day outside with his friends.There are many guests and not enough days of the month to show them all on Facebook ;)" Hmmm...not exactly the "bespoke service" advertized, but I felt confident he was fine and maybe just wasn't photogenic enough for their artistic pictures posted online. But alas, five days later I saw this post and it occurred to me that maybe I had just been taking pictures of the wrong end...

Royal Oak Roundabout

Taking advantage of the nice weather, we "hired" a car to drop Zambezi off for his trial visit at the Country Canine Retreat (more to come on this). Familiar with stylish Eurowagons unavailable stateside (reference our VW Polo or our all-time sexiest ride, the Honda Jazz), we were pretty happy with the Kia Cce'd and its dog friendly "boot."

Royal Oak Pub #1

The drive appeared to be a straight shot through the village of Dorking (actual name) and down a few country roads. True to stereotype, the directions to the country retreat were based around a local pub. I plotted our route on Google Maps and happily, the pub popped up right away. We arrived without a problem but the directions onward to the retreat didn't add up from there. After much circling around, several phone calls to the owner and consultations with local residents, we determined that we were a town over, at the wrong Royal Oak pub. I re-googled the location, not relying on the apparently-common pub name this time and typed in the street name instead. Off we went. To yet another wrong pub, on a street with the exact same name, again just a village over from our destination. Back in the car. Although the third time was in fact the charm, we weren't able to locate the country retreat without at least six more u-turns and one incident in which the driver might have been driving on the American side of the road (oops).  

This makes me feel a bit better...

Upon finally arriving at the retreat, we unloaded the dog and immediately headed back up to the nearest Royal Oak for a calming pint and much-overdue lunch. Unfortunately although the pub offered tractor races, pantomime horses and allowed guests to sleep in the back garden, there was no food on offer other than the basket of duck eggs on the bar (which the barkeep said you could take home, hatch, raise the duck, kill it, and then bring back in August for the DIY roast. True story.).

The final Royal Oak

Just a short few months until lunch will be served... 

We sat outside in the sunshine and made the best of the situation by enjoying a picnic lunch of crisps, peanuts, and Dillon's baby biscuits. We arrived back in London as the sun was setting- starving, yet assured that Zambezi was "a friendly chap" and confident we would be just fine without driving for another four months.  

The village's finest

30 and still Keeping it Weird

That's right, this past weekend, I reached the big 3-0.  To celebrate, we headed to Austin for some fun in the sun and good times with the fam.  Turns out I am so popular that our usual crash pad (aka Kelly's house) was packed to the brim with out-of-town guests.  No worries on that front, as Jared had booked us a room at one of Austin's quirkiest institutions, the Austin Motel, smack dab in the middle of South Congress:



The infamously-shaped logo

Unusual signage to keep the guests in check

Although some rooms at the hotel allow pets, ours unfortunately did not.  Lucky for Zambezi, there was plenty of dog-action going on at Kelly's house, although I think that he might have been missing the luxuries of our apartment's central air conditioning as this is where he hung out for most of the visit:

Although the weekend was full of surprises and gifts for yours truly (another post to come), not having to do the 6am bathroom run with our little bundle of joy turned out to be one of the best presents of all...

Ocean Lounging

With a long holiday weekend and the summer heat upon us, it was time to pack up the car and head down to the Gulf Coast to introduce our new furry hellraiser to the sand & surf.  Galveston's Stewart Beach, with its sand parking lot, legions of kid-toting families, and dog-friendly ways was the destination of choice.  Despite eating a bunch of sand and getting dirtier than a little boy playing in shitpiles, everybody had a great time.

Crazy Cousin Ted

Everyone's got one (or in my case many): that crazy cousin that rolls in, hypes you up, drags you around, and leaves you exhausted from the non-stop party that was their weekend visit.  In lil Zambezi Ndeble Xhosa Nowitski Dralvin's (who you can just call Zambezi or Lil Beez) case, it is cousin Ted, a six month old, 60 lb black mouth cur looking to assert his dominance.  The video below is a sample of how things went down for 48 hours straight:

Looks exhausting, doesn't it?  Well I can tell you it was.  Between waking up at 6 am, trying to give the neighbors some relief from the high-pitched yipping from Zambezi, cleaning up all the inevitable "accidents"of a tiny bladder, and reassuring Ted that he was not on constant guard duty, Kelly and I were completely exhausted come Sunday morning.  Luckily, so were Zambezi and Ted, who are still sleeping off some of the weekend's excitement.

Faithful Hound

Meet the newest Texpatriate!  Although his name is still in testing phase, he is definitely already a part of the family. A great pyrenees/blue heeler mix with a noted oral fixation and fear of his reflection, this lil guy has already increased our sense of responsibility and "parenting" anxiety by 1000% in just a few days time.

On the his first night, we broke out a wine we had been saving for the occasion, "The Faithful Hound" by South African producer Mulderbosch.   Rated 4 stars by wine guru John Platter, it paired perfectly with our low brow pizza and helped us try to forget the wailing pup back at the apartment suffering from a bit of separation anxiety.

So bienvenidos to our new companero on the journey and feel free to send more good wine our way to help us cope with the joys of training our faithful hound...