When no doesn’t always mean no… Meet Jack Streeter!

So, we did our road trip to Rutherford to the RSPCA on Easter Saturday to have a look at the little staffy with my other half still muttering to himself that he hadn’t said yes yet! Unfortunately the ‘little’ staffy turned out to be not so little and possibly crossed with a ridgeback! Way too big for our yard! I was preparing myself to walk away puppyless when my other half called me over to another pen.

It turns out while I was checking out Ruby the staffy, John had found the little kelpie pen! There were 4 brothers and another chocolate kelpie all vying for our attention. To my amazement John had already picked his puppy, well actually according to him, the puppy picked him!

Next thing I know, we’re asking to have a closer look and play with him, then we’re organising a premise inspection; yes the RSPCA won’t allow you to adopt a pet until they inspect your yard. 8am Easter Sunday inspector man arrives, hands me the approved inspection papers and we’re off to Rutherford to collect our 12 week old kelpie puppy ‘Jack’.

He has fitted in perfectly to his new home and of course has his Dad wrapped around his little paw!

Astonishingly we have gone through the whole process and now have our puppy at home all without John actually muttering the word ‘yes’!

The moral of this story, never take no for an answer and even then don’t wait for a yes!

To adopt a pet please visit: www.adoptapet.com.au.

Why does NO give you all the power

Why is it that in a situation where 2 people want different things the person who is saying ‘NO’ gets all the power?

Not following? Takes these examples:

‘I want to paint the house pink’
‘No’

So we don’t paint the house pink.

‘I want a puppy’
‘No’

So we don’t get a puppy!

Get my drift! So while I haven’t asked to paint the house pink, I have been for a while now on the puppy bandwagon. I gave up for a little while, probably because I was preoccupied organising the wedding, but a couple of days ago the ad for the upcoming episode of Bondi Vet came on and showed Dr Chris with some staffy puppies. Seriously, just too cute! Actually the vet and the puppies, but we’ll stick to the puppies for now!

So with the wedding all but under control the puppy mission was/is now back on the top priority list! I jumped on the RSPCA adopt a pet website and whattaya know first puppy looking for someone to love it is a little female tan staffy! At just 4 months old she’s still young enough for us to train. I call it fate, other half calls it, well he just said no!

I will be honest with you and confess that we don’t have a yard with grass and it would be slightly unfair on her but there are plenty of ways around this, I’m just still compiling what they are! Some of them, well, I’ll take her for lots of walks – a great way to help lose some weight before the wedding! She can go for playdates at friends places who also have staffies and big yards. We had always planned to pull up the stones in the backyard and lay some turf, so we can just bring it forward! And I work across the road from where we live and go home for lunch so I can check on her every day.

My final heartfelt plea to anyone that will listen….  well actually trying to cut a deal with the other half, if no one takes her and she’s going to go to doggy heaven then we were meant to have her.

Right well I’ve stated my case now have to wait for the verdict.

Sneaky road trip to Rutherford RSPCA on the weekend anyone?!

I do… but I don’t want the stress that comes with it

I always vowed that I would never be one of those brides who stressed themselves silly during the planning of their wedding day.

So when I got engaged a few months ago I was determined to be organised, and organise everything without a fuss. It was all on track and within only a couple of weeks I seemed to have most of our wedding planned. I was quite pleased with myself as we were only having a relatively short engagement of about 8 months.

So with everything but planned, something of course had to go wrong, and it did. We had some issues with our reception venue not wanting to cooperate with certain aspects of the reception and I found myself blubbering those dreaded words “I’ve turned into one of those brides!”

I was stressed out and taking it out on my future hubby. Of course it wasn’t actually his fault but I sure as hell made it out to be!

Thankfully I had great friends to turn to for help and within a week or so everything was back on track and I was in control again. (Control issues is another story all together!) I was quietly pleased that everything was once again going smoothly. Then….. we added up the budget. I was back to having a blubber and muttering “I vowed I was never going to spend this much money on my wedding!”

It was actually future hubby who said that we were only going to do this once, we’ve cut costs where we could and at the end of the day it was only money. Music to my ears of course, and how wonderful was he to say that! I should have realised there would be some stress along the way and budgets always blow out no matter how hard you try. Feeding 150 odd people is always going to be expensive, even if it is a cocktail party and if a great photographer is more important to me than table decorations then that’s what I’ll spend my money on!

Weddings are a very personal thing and it’s always going to be hard in some cases, but thankfully we are down to relatively small decisions (but sometimes seem large and stressful!) like do we have a gift registry, a wishing well or both. Apparently a wishing well isn’t as common as I thought, must be a new age thing! At the end of the day it’s the I do and the party afterwards that will be all that matters! Oh and a long happy marriage afterwards!