Milo training
At my age being able to open the lid on the golden syrup assures me of a fine week-end ahead. It doesn’t take much! Is it my age and diminishing physical strength or are manufacturers heeding the warnings on lurking terrorists by ramping up security in tightening access to foods? It isn’t just lids. Try opening vacuum packed salmon or an eye fillet. It all looks so near and yet so far. I sometimes just give up and put the item back in the fridge for another day and just peel the Kipfler potato or boil a simple non challenging egg. We now just buy free range eggs and just hope the chickens realise our previous close bond with them and our sacrifice.
It reminds me of many years ago when I had a pet Leghorn rooster. He too used to come next to me in the car but in his own wicker basket. You could never put a seat belt on a rooster. It was at a time I worked in an office and the Leghorn used to like being with me. One day someone stole him when I was having smoko. I put reward pamphlets with his photograph on telegraph poles around Ultimo for his return. A week later, I heard a familiar cockle doo di doo. He was outside my office door in a box of shredded office documents. I tried in vain to read bits of the shreds in order to find out who had committed this cruel and dastardly act. I never found out.
A propos Milo’s mad bike and riders barking/biting disciplinary action. We did make it to the Robertson pie shop with H on one side of the front seat and Milo on the console in the middle. He loves a nice drive. We sometimes seat-belt him in but the harness is so complicated it slipped beyond my skills this morning. I also wanted to relish my golden syrup triumph for a bit longer. We were very hopeful of a good bike rider biting session when, after our arrival, we spotted a number of bikes outside the shop. Most of them Harleys with huge shiny exhausts. Milo pricked his ears in keen anticipation.
We did not have to wait long when a couple approached their bike. He looked as if he was approachable for a good bite. Just having eaten his pie I don’t think I was too far from this assumption. I gave him a well practised synopsis of our problem with Milo. I showed him the plastic drink bottle with drilled holes in the dark blue cap. ( remember how the ‘squeeze the water in his face’ was shown on U-tube)? He listened attentively, but when I proposed he start his bike to let Milo have his way and possibly bite him, he was not enthusiastic. However, his girl-friend seemed very taken by it. She smiled broadly. She no doubt thought a bit of fun would do no harm. She got into the spirit of things straight away. A good and feisty woman.
Perhaps sitting behind the motor- bike as a pillion rider was not her idea of much fun on a Saturday morning. Roaring up and down steep mountainous escarpments might be more the domain of men. Women like adventures of the spirit and mind. Hence, perhaps the idea of a boyfriend getting bitten was at least a safer and more creative option. A change from the normal routine. Mind you, I am speculating here. The pro and cons of things linked to the sexes can get one in a lot of strive lately. It is a precarious balance I do not want to divert from.
I could tell that he thought his masculinity was on the line. You can’t ride a Harley and not succumb to dogs chasing you and here was a chance to go one further, and get bitten. An old ditty must have come to mind; Be a man and not a fool, pull the chain and not your tool. His girl-friend was very pro the trial. He checked his bike leggings and even put on his helmet. Milo was keenly watching, wagging his tail. His Waterloo had arrived. The bike was started up and Milo flew into action. Helvi was ready with her squeeze bottle. All stations on the alert.
… And Milo? Milo attacked the back tyre. That was his aim. He would go for the legs of the bike not the legs of the rider. In doggy world it makes good sense. The motor-bike is the dog. If someone walks a dog and comes across a cranky dog. The dogs fight each other. The owner doesn’t get bitten. Helvi gave Milo the water torture and he did stop. So… We thanked the brave man and his girlfriend who could not stop laughing. They turned into the road to Kiama down the steep escarpment.
We hold high hopes for Milo being cured…
Tags: Harley Davidson, Kiama, meat pies, Milo, Robertson
Oosterman Treats Blog 
October 12, 2014 at 6:34 am |
Sometimes I worry about you, Gerard … [grin]
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October 12, 2014 at 8:01 am |
Oh, that’s so nice. Don’t stop worrying! 😉
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October 12, 2014 at 7:35 am |
You are making this up, aren’t you Gerard? Otherwise I think you may need to look out for men in white coats. People don’t normally go around saying: Would you mind awfully if my dog bit you, just for fun old chap. If all goes well, he won’t do it again. Not too many stitches expected. Bit of iodine, a quick rabies jab. Go on, be a sport!
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October 12, 2014 at 8:07 am |
A bit of freedom of expression Andrew. Poetic license? I did ask H for permission to ask a bike rider. She opposed it and thought it outrageously silly.
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October 12, 2014 at 9:03 am
H is a very sensible lady.
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October 12, 2014 at 8:08 am |
I don’t have these problems with my goldfish.
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October 12, 2014 at 8:30 am |
Do you train them? 😉
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October 12, 2014 at 9:00 am |
Milo being cured? I doubt it. 🙂
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October 12, 2014 at 10:27 am |
Well, so far so good. We have had about three motor-bikes driving past with Milo getting the water spay in his face treatment. He looked perplexed but at the next motor-bike he looked at the water bottle. He still strained at the leash but did not attack or bark. We rewarded him with a treat and said ‘good boy Milo, good boy…They are still early times!
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October 12, 2014 at 12:32 pm |
Brilliant, Gerard, just brilliant. Can you picture the biker meeting up with his Hell’s Angels gang later and relating the tale? Or the tail, as it were. As to your other points: just this morning I waged war with a jar of honey. I won, barely. And do you remember the Looney Tunes cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn? I never knew “Leghorn” was an actual breed or variety. Do you see how you are enlightening me? Was he perhaps kidnapped to provide “services” to some lonely hen?
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October 12, 2014 at 9:24 pm |
Silver in the Barn
I think my leghorn ‘Brkon’ from Bratislava’s heritance and genetic pool, was taken by a jealous office worker who was also breeding leghorns. Your astute observation astounds me.
Poor Brkon was exhausted and you can imagine the post-coital rests were well earned. His off-spring still wins blue ribbons all over Sydney’s very competitive poultry fraternity.
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October 12, 2014 at 9:38 pm
Gerard, is it like dog shows? Would the culprit have to prove lineage or is each chick judged on its own breed characteristics? I had no idea such nefarious doings were possible in the poultry world.
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October 12, 2014 at 9:57 pm
Oh, it is it is. A murderous world like any show. I believe all sorts of conniving going on. Roosters especially would be found liveless, throats cut. I once showed a stud male alpaca and had to wear a doctor’s coat. Animal showing is a world on its own. Not for us.
Brkon lies buried at Brayton, NSW were our farm was.
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October 13, 2014 at 4:40 am |
We once had a dog similar in makeup, but quite different in size to Milo, a local mines mongrel with a dash of American Pit Bull. Despite its intimidating appearance, Milly never bit anyone, throughout her fourteen years on the planet, in fact was quite a gutless creature really, until it came to the lawnmower.
I think, in her doggy mind, that Milly thought the lawnmower actually captured people, especially my wife, she was attached somehow to the metal handle at the back, dragged unwillingly around the lawn by this growling, farting, revving monster, it bought all the Pit Bull out in Milly, she would come in from the side, all fangs, ripping at the front hard-rubber wheels with a vengeance, and with my wife screaming at the dog above the howling mower, and Milly’s aggressive threatening barking to boot, well it was quite a scene really.
Invariably the mowing would stop, after about ten raids from under trees and behind bushes, surprise sideways attacks at the monster that had kidnapped a good householder, family member, whom Milly had come to love and respect.
Dare I say Milly would spend most of the mowing shut in the laundry, as it was hard work mowing with a dog, more or less attached to the front end of the mower.
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October 13, 2014 at 4:54 am |
Hilarious Chris. It sounds as if Milly and Milo are as but one united in protecting their owners. I think perhaps that is also something that we feel might have something to do with our dog wanting to kill motor-bikes and their riders.
Mind you Milo might be so cunning as to turn the water torture around and actually start to enjoy it. In which case all is lost, he’ll just attack anything in order to receive the water treatment. Who knows?
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October 14, 2014 at 12:14 am
There is a bird in NZ, a Kea, quite large, bronzy green colouring, until it lifts its wings, when a heart-stopping, pure red underwing reveals itself.
Bronze green and pure red, with a parrot beak, perfectly designed to rip/strip rubber off cars, wipers included; a voracious predator of car parks, especially down at Milford Sound where it awaits in all knowing droves.
They are protected of course. Really, if you were serious, and justifiably worried for your parked vehicle, then I firmly recommend tarping up; it only takes a bad ten minutes for these humourless, corrupted rubber seekers to do their work.
Often, their much feared visitations attract serious disbelief, whole rubbers, or plastic insets, gone within minutes, their knowing practiced beaks going about anti-tourism activities, with a sullen vengeance.
All is not what it seems in NZ. Perhaps it’s a telepathy thing going through all the southern animals – attack rubber, now!!
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October 14, 2014 at 12:30 am
Parrots used to strip my brother’s house at Dungog NSW. The house was in a national park situated on a community 200 acres title. He ended up putting steel wiring across all windows. The birds were keen on sharpening their beaks on cedar architraves.
If it wasn’t the birds, the ticks used to be just as verocious. Poor Milo once came home from this property and started wobble after a few days. We found ticks, took him to the vet who washed him and pulled off over seventy paralysus ticks. He was very sick for a few weeks but recovered totally.
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October 14, 2014 at 12:54 am
We should each be allowed to carry an elephant gun.Git them vermin, them pesky li’l critters, broad-shot, blow out the floorboards – just git em. Poor Milo with 70 paralysis ticks, as repellant an image as the doodlebug – fut,fut,fut,fut – silence – bang!
It’s not all beer and skittles…
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October 14, 2014 at 1:05 am
Yes, we could not believe it. The vet had put the ticks in a jar, all seventy of them. Some where still crawling, trying to get out. You could almost hear them breath.
JRT like sniffing things out. He was left on his own for perhaps thirty minutes. My brother’s house was in a rain forrest. Ticks galore. (and leeches)
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October 13, 2014 at 7:45 pm |
It takes more than one swallow to make…
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October 13, 2014 at 11:01 pm |
Ha, ha. 😉
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October 13, 2014 at 9:57 pm |
The golden syrup caught me eye. I get it for gingerbread. Good stuff. Only one place in town has it though.
Could you perhaps train Milo to be careful with those motor bikes? He might hurt his teeth.
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October 13, 2014 at 10:08 pm |
Golden syrup is being sanitised. It is hard to get the real stuff. It used to come in tins with the lid to be levered open by a knife. Now it appears in plastic squeeze jars and is corrupted by sugar loads and lighter in colour. I really liked the original dark stuff with a tangy dark taste as well.
Milo is now much wiser (if that is possible) and around motor-bikes less nervous. There is hope.
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October 13, 2014 at 11:05 pm |
Golden syrup. Now that’s put me down good old memory lane. A year or so ago we took our daughter and her partner out to a really flash Italian restaurant, half suspended out onto the Torrens River, Adelaide City central. Her birthday treat, or at least part of it.
It was just a whim on my part, the restaurant was owned many moons ago (over 30 yrs) by a an old mate of mine, an Australian born descendant of Sicilian Mafia, major SA brothel owners back when it was a crime to pay for sex. Between him and his brother they owned a swathe of restaurants, hotels, Windy Point being another, and the massive five star Grand Hotel down at Glenleg beach just to name a few. Serious money, very Italian, rat pack stuff.
I met my Italian buddy back in the early 70’s, when he was studying engineering at Adelaide Uni, but after a couple of years X decided
that this was not the course for him and quit. So we met up in NZ, where he stayed with my Uncle and Aunt in Nelson, yeah that was quite a time. Censored.
Anyway, I rang the restaurant thinking my mate would have moved on by now, (we hadn’t been in touch for a few years) and lo, after a quick self introduction and a short wait while they located him, X, came to the phone and the booking was immediately sealed. It was going to be fun, celebrating a birthday and catching up with an old mate, all in one.
Well, we parked close to his Ferrari, in its separate park, wandered past the ubiquitous River Torrens ducks, and entered the grand foyer, resplendent with tasteful original oils by talented local artists. Somewhere along the way X had lost his hair, Kojak, beaming, putting his arm around me, steered us into the bar, where in true Italian style, the drinks were on him.
During the course of the meal X came down and pulled up a chair and then of course the reminiscences began and a particular period of our early friendship came under the microscope.
It was our working holiday in NZ, I had applied for and gotten a job for a work gang to ‘clean’ trees in a massive pine forest in the Marlborough Sounds, not far from Picton, top of the South Island. We were given an old farmhouse to live in plus a four wheel drive to get around in, all we had to do was grub away the foliage that had grown up around the young saplings, thousands of them, planted in even rows up and down the hills, all descending into the bay. Pretty straightforward really.
But, well, we didn’t have much money, not until our first pay at least, so survival was something foremost in our minds. I came up with the bright idea of golden syrup dumplings, cheap and filling, and with the very cheap NZ fresh cream, well they weren’t half bad, a stomach filler for four hungry, sex-starved men.
X loved them, not a part of his Italian upbringing, but he was fascinated, delighted when they swelled up out of the pot and soon they were fallen upon by the starving crew who declared them “good tucker”. The boys named them “gutbusters”.
So in his swank restaurant, ‘Kojak’, with a wistful air, reminisced about the good old days, when life was fun and free, no responsibilities, and then almost sadly, he bade us farewell, he had a meeting to attend, but not before a rapid series of “we must keep in touch more, and what about next month…”, and then he was gone, my daughter’s partner saw the red Ferrari sliding away along the riverbank road, heading into the city.
Golden syrup dumplings. Gutbusters! To be recommended.
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October 13, 2014 at 11:46 pm |
Yes Chris, Golden syrup features far more in people’s lives than is giving credit for. Your story proves it. My Golden syrup introduction dates back to the WW2. In Rotterdam to be precise.
The bombs had flattened most but our street was left standing being on the edge of Rotterdam, a suburb called Pijnakker, which translated means ‘acre belonging to family Pijn’.
Memories of that period are somewhat anxious and it wasn’t a good period for growing babies, however, the Golden Syrup made me what I am today. Flour and water make a foundation for good food, especially when there was no choice of much else.
Apart from the kerosene cooker having to be pumped up by my mum, it was my father who than cooked the pancakes. I remember my mum hand -dipping a spoon in a dark sweet substance and encircling the pancake on my plate in ever smaller round-a-bouts. It was a fascinating event. The beginning of creativity and artistic visual expression. I remember it so well. Nothing else has ever approached anything else in importance of my childhood. It was my entrée in the world of Golden Syrup. I can still get a tear.
I retold this to my mum years ago, and she vowed I was just two when the pancakes memories and Golden Syrup eventuated and took hold in my brain. Together with the V1/V2 rockets swishing over the sky with sometimes a landing not far away, causing explosions so loud, bloodied people were hanging out of broken windows.
The original Golden Syrup has now been corrupted and defiled, like so much else. Molasses might have been an ingredient. Anyway, I will always be a friend to those that are in sympathy with Golden Syrup. You wrote a great post Chris.
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October 14, 2014 at 12:38 am
Yes, we touched on this ‘corruption’ thing the other day. The loss of (physical) taste in our products, maple syrup too, may become a victim, but certainly the English mustard, miraculously restored after a severe public backlash, bread no longer tastes quite like bread?
The taste parasite is genetic modification, an unmodified crop of wheat/barley/corn/canola, whatever would carry a high degree of mutual strains, but now, modified, only one strain. Is the taste caught up in the complexity of strains?
Well the English mustard, definitely. Case proven. So it stands to reason where the corruption culprit lies. We fell for the three card trick – genetic modified, for our own good apparently, and we lost the thread, the complexity factor, and now we are at the mercy of a virus….
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October 14, 2014 at 1:10 am
Yes, most maple syrup is maple syrup substitute. Read the fine print underneath the word Maple syrup.
Yestrday at Aldi; a crunchy, salty, sugary, fatty cerial. The packet like something out of a tropical Movie. It had ‘tropical fruit’ written on it.
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October 20, 2014 at 7:32 pm |
In the day of You Tube and everyone clamoring for their fifteen minutes of fame, you’d probably have lots of takers being willing to be bit by Milo. As long as they could post it on You Tube…
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November 6, 2014 at 10:08 pm |
Taste is a sad casualty of life in the 21st century, I blame GMO too. I was beginning to think my taste buds had lost the plot until I grew my own spuds again last year. They were delicious!
I am with you on the ‘hard to open’ thing Gerard. It’s like we buy these things just to sit in our cupboard to give the impression we have food in there or something? Actually I try not to buy anything packaged (preservatives and other horrible shelf life additives) but being of limited means I do resort to it occasionally.
The story about the syrup dumplings brings back fond memories of my mum’s. She also made apple dumplings that were equally as scrumptious. My dad loved syrup and molasses was a regular item on his shopping list. It was too strong for my liking but he assured me it had nutritional goodies in it.
Milo’s just doing what comes natural. Many a dog would chase car tyres up the main street of Coramba when I was a kid. Even bicycles, skateboards and scooters were not immune from some dogs. Back in the day when dogs and kids were running free in the street and we even played tennis on the road, cars were that infrequent.
Times have changed.
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