I could hardly believe it was happening. We were really moving to the country-beginning the journey to our vision of freedom. And as if that wasn't enough to delight and excite me, I could also have a dog again.
"Remember how impatient I was?" I ask Kanute, as I tell him I'm writing about Candy.
Kanute laughs. "Who could possibly forget?"
"What a honey of a dog." I smile too, as I picture that golden puppy as I first saw her, in a pet shop cage. "Take me, take me," she clearly said, with her soft brown eyes.
"Remember Kanute? I didn't imagine it, did I?"
"Definitely not. Shame we have no photos of her as a pup. She was a little beauty, that one."
"She surely was."
I think sadly of how few photos we have of those days. It was an expensive business, buying film and getting photos developed. You had to use up the whole roll of film before posting it off, and wait and wait for it to come back. That wait for its return could take another week, or more. Imagine then finding out you had over-exposed it, or chopped someone's head off. Dad always did that with his old box Brownie camera. That's one memory that always brings a smile to my face. Funny things - memories. One thought leads to another, just the way one snowball can set off a whole avalanche...
It had been a long time without a dog of my own, since the first one in my life, my sweet Kim. He was a large curly Airedale Terrier, crossed with something. Until my brother Barry joined the Navy and his career found him sailing on faraway seas for the next six years, Kim had been his dog. Kim was entrusted to my care because of the besotted love we shared. I was young to be this big dog's mother - but it was of small importance to any of the three of us.
Many life happenings conspired to create that ten-year gap from when Kim died, until I could get a puppy again. While I was in my second year at high school, Mum and Dad and I moved to a new home, and they hadn't wanted another dog. A few years later, Kanute and I married. The flats we rented in two Australian States had not permitted keeping dogs. Finally the time and place had come; we could expand our furry family.
Choosing her name was too easy. This sweet puppy was absolutely Candy. What a roly-poly golden girl; with the biggest, melted-chocolate brown eyes we'd ever seen. Despite starting life as a city slicker, she happily made the 'tree change' with us. Framed by the endless horizon of her new great outdoors, she appeared incredibly small and vulnerable.
"But Candy didn't feel small and vulnerable." Kanute is looking over my shoulder as I write.
"I know. Funny little girl - she embraced farm-life with gusto, just like she faced everything else in her world." Her ever-twitching nose showed how much the new smells and sounds enchanted and intrigued her. Every new creature she met became another friend to investigate and play with - and lick half to death.
Candy was no watchdog. Her supposedly warning bark always came with a furiously wagging tail, and the broadest, dumbest grin imaginable. A burglar could have taken everything we possessed, and she would have given him a kiss goodbye. Her role in life was obviously to live, love and help to rear anything needing a little encouragement. Like all of our animal variety children, Candy had absolutely no idea she was a dog, or even what a dog actually was.
Following her 'hands-on' (or 'paws-on'?) experience of growing up with her kangaroo sibling Ooroo, Candy confidently decided she could co-raise any species known to man. Whenever necessary, she aided and abetted rearing of numerous rescues - feathered or furred, two or four-legged; this mattered not at all.
"It seemed like she could never decide whether she would be mother or sister," I say.
Kanute laughs. "As if they cared! So long as she fussed over them, they were happy."
"They surely were. We developed quite a following, Candy and I." At its largest, I think of about 12, or even 14 little bodies, eager to go with their two mothers wherever we went. Getting through the door to our farmhouse - or the famous outside toilet-without them was quite a trick; almost an art form.
Our babies had no conception of what species they were; nor did they care. The diversity of their genetics has been amazing-dogs and cats, kangaroos and horses, wallabies and chooks; plus lambs, goats, emus, and calves. They've all simply been family. And without exception, all have been pure gold experiences.
No sooner were we settled in to Candy's version of mothering when reality struck, like th proverbial bolt of lightning. It was way too early to be possible-or so we had optimistically thought, until...
One fairly ordinary day we travelled to our nearest town 28 kms (17 miles) away for shopping and mail pickup, leaving Candy locked inside the kitchen. We suspected she was close to coming 'on heat' (the most likely point of her oestrus cycle to mate successfully) for her first time. We were quite unprepared for this yet; but on the unthinkable off-chance, we put her out of harm's way, in a room with high windows - my kitchen.
Total chaos confronted us on our return.
"Oh no... burglars?" My heart was suddenly pounding hard, thundering painfully in my ears. It was just too much to take in all at once. Initially we really believed our home had been burgled through the window over the kitchen sink. A dish-drainer full of crockery, cutlery and saucepans had been overturned, and broken china littered the cupboard top and floor like a drunken mosaic.
"Look at the window," I said. "I didn't leave it that far open." It was big and heavy, and it was a casement window that could only slide up and down, so there was no way a sudden wind could have moved it.
"Look at the window? How about the fly screen?" It was ripped almost completely off. It hung by some splintered shreds of frame. "I don't get it," Kanute continued. He was frowning and shaking his head in bewilderment. "... a burglary? Out here?"
A burglary would have been novel indeed, because when I suggested the door was 'locked', I actually meant 'closed'. We never locked the house in our time there. Had there ever been a burglar, he needed only to walk straight in through front or back door.
Sounds a bit slapdash in today's world - but back then it was the 'norm'. There'd have been nobody except our animals to hear an intruder breaking a window or door down, given the distance to the next farm. Would also have been a long way to travel for a dubious heist! How nice to have lived in days like that - far from city lights and frights.
Our shock and horror worsened as we realised there was no Candy in the kitchen.
"That's impossible - surely a little dog like her couldn't have climbed up and out of there?" And yet the scattered cutlery and smashed crockery said that she most certainly could. I wasn't sure if I wanted to laugh... or cry.
A quick check through the rest of the house found everything intact. Definitely not a burglar - as we would discover some hours later, when she returned. She was bedraggled and woebegone, and guilt was etched deeply into her sweet face as though stamped with a burning brand, a Scarlet Woman. The story of Romeo and Juliet and the balcony scene is a familiar one to most, but this was the case of the Mystery Marauder and Candy - and the windowsill scene. We never discovered who the faceless father of her children was; obviously a total 'fly by night' thief who left her to face a swelling stomach and subsequent motherhood on her own.
"He was black, Christine. That much we're sure of" Kanute's words bring me back to today.
"Hmm, and not only in his big bad heart." Back then, I chose to ignore the normality of Nature in these matters - choosing instead to blame all on this dark invader of our territory. "The babies' total blackness was somewhat of a clue, that's for sure. Not a hint of golden hair to be found anywhere."
It was a tough call for Candy and me nine weeks later, when the saga reached its climax. In a delicate case like this, to whom else would you entrust serious midwifery duties, except your own Mother? Candy's restlessness began from early morning; her bulging belly hanging extremely low; almost more of a burden than she could manage.
"This is going to be the day. I'm sure of it." I felt excited and a bit scared too. It was, after all, a first for both of us. After having already witnessed many sheep giving birth, Kanute was relatively unimpressed - or so he pretended. Not me. I was totally involved in this one. I made up a bed of old jumpers and towels, and Candy scratched them into a rumpled heap. She turned around six times, lay down and got up again - then repeated and repeated this procedure. There was no way to calm her, and each time it seemed it couldn't possibly get worse; it did. Gradually her contractions escalated into a more rhythmic pattern, coming closer together each time.
Poor little mother Candy - she was hardly past her own puppyhood. Far too young for this painful experience. It's the one bit of Mother Nature's plan that I don't 'get'. Maybe to ensure 'only the fittest survive'? Hmmm...
At last the first black head appeared, but she had no idea what was happening -except something was hurting her and it was unbearable. She twisted sharply around, ready to punish the cause of all this angst. She would have bitten her first-born I'm sure, if I hadn't quickly lifted it out of reach. But then she became too preoccupied with giving birth to the next... and the next.
"How about the way she panted so heavily in between those big, deep breaths before each new arrival? Just as though she'd been going to the best of pre-natal training classes." I feel my eyes narrowing. "Isn't it strange how an animal instinctively does that puffing and panting?" Kanute nods. He's seen that same breathless gasping and great deep breaths many times over the years; cows, horses, sheep - all do the same, naturally.
Already, after only the second birth, Candy's full motherly instincts kicked in as she washed the first tiny faces, and cleared mouths and noses with her searching tongue. All these sudden motherly duties made her even more gratefully accepting of my comforting pats and encouraging words than before the births began. As another, and yet another baby appeared, it felt like The Never-Ending Story would be an appropriate title for this happening. Candy's worried face showed she couldn't believe her increasing family. Nor could I. Several were already nuzzling her teats as she was still giving birth to the later ones. Finally - eight babies later - Candy could lie back and let them jostle and squeak and feed. At last they had a bellyful of milk, and fell asleep in a line -mouths still attached to her teats.
"Eight beautiful black babies." My eyes still mist over, though my mental picture is clear.
From day one, they seemed to have two speeds. Full ahead, pushing and shoving their way into the squirming tangle of tiny bodies, each trying to latch tightly onto a teat. And full-stop - as they slept, finally resting their pink bellies, swollen impossibly large with Candy's milk. In sleep, their tiny mouths and noses still twitched; no doubt dreaming of milk - the focus of their tiny world, whether awake or in dreamland. Their preoccupation with teats and mouths even found them sucking furiously on the paw or ear of the puppy alongside. Other times, one mouth would make a sloppy connection with another and suction continue until both realised their efforts produced nothing even vaguely like mother's milk.
"You'd guide them to a vacant teat if they started crying," Kanute says. "Sometimes they were like those little kittens who'd lost their mittens..."
"... and didn't know where to find them!" I chuckle. "Except these were eight little puppies with enough teats to go around. So why do you suppose there always seemed to be one starving baby left over, frantically searching and scrambling over the others and needing help?" I don't know why I ask really - there is no answer to this. We've seen the same thing happen with baby pigs and kittens too. A normal multiple birth problem, I guess - closely related to their blind greediness.
"The guppy-puppies. That's what you called them from the beginning." Kanute's smirk shows another memory is pushing its way forward. "What about when I nailed those boards across the doorway of the shearers' room, low-down so Candy could step out over them but the guppy-puppies were trapped safely inside?"
I laugh out loud this time. What a delightful picture those words conjure up. Like the old woman who lived in a shoe, with so many children, Candy didn't always know what to do. She would get so tired of the puppies' incessant demands and-in common with all mothers - need a break now and then. But every time she stood up, some babies would remain latched on to a teat, grimly hanging on.
"As she stepped over the barrier, she was able to 'scrape off' her excess baggage." I say.
"... and all the babies would start their crying - even though only a few knew what was really wrong. Mmm, those guppy-puppies... "Kanute shakes his head. He couldn't help loving them as much as I did.
Far too young to produce all the milk her growing family demanded, but desperate to meet their needs, Candy was rapidly losing weight. Increasing her feed wasn't enough. Both mother and babies needed an extra supplement. We decided warm, fresh cow's milk was the answer. Despite current advice from experts to totally avoid giving cats or dogs milk from a cow, the one puppy we kept from this litter, lived 17 years on this diet. Bizarre! Maybe country bred critters create a hardier exception to that rule? Or maybe it was the purity of that additive-free product? Blissfully unaware of this expert fact, we were thankful to find a cow Kanute could milk every morning.
"I was just grateful I'd learned how to hand-milk a cow when I was a kid... on school holidays, on my Uncle's farm." Kanute rolls his eyes. "At least in Denmark it was in a proper dairy. That small shed I used in Western Australia was really just half a small storage shed. Sam kept hay and feed in the other half."
Melba was the 'moo' we found, with an over-abundance of milk; as she had recently calved. She was bought with her calf at foot. If she were not hand-milked as well as feeding her baby, her milk production would drop back to only meet the calf's needs. The previous owner couldn't be bothered with milking her to deal with this excess, but she filled our needs perfectly. Thanks to Candy's large family, it was not only the guppy-puppies getting extra milk, but also Sam and his family, and ourselves as well. With the calf shut away from the cow overnight, we all received our daily quota of calcium. Her calf supervised the surplus of the milk bar for the remainder of each day.
Each puppy started on the same bottles and teats I used for my baby kangaroos, quickly learning to drink from a bowl after being led there numerous times by sucking on my fingers. Multiply that by those eight babies, and you can imagine I was kept fully occupied with my share of the mothering duties.
"How about the mess those greedy babies could make - slurping and shoving; slipping and slopping; slithering every which way over each other - until every last drop was gone and the bowl cleaned until it gleamed like new". There was little washing-up to do after the guppy-puppies demolished their dinners. All too soon it was several bowls - equally bright and shiny at meal's end.
At last they would be exhausted, and need to sleep again. Usually they started in a heap together, then rolled off and ended in all manner of inelegant poses. Mostly they'd be on their backs, legs sprawled in every direction, and great bloated bellies protruding from the mound of bodies. Young mother Candy would have battled to survive without a little help from her best friend, and would gratefully accept any time out and R&R I could provide. It was no chore to share play and nuzzle time with those babies, and smell their delicious baby puppy breath. I close my eyes, and that sweet scent fills me with love and tenderness once again. Better than the most expensive perfume money can buy.
"... and if I mention the words - rainwater tank? Do I need to say more?" Kanute stirs me from my reflections.
"No! Absolutely not," I reply, chuckling again.
A rainwater tank outside our back door, on the corner of the verandah, proved to be an unexpected ally in a constant drama, called going inside. I was simultaneously co-raising Candy's eight puppies, a couple of kangaroos, an orphan piglet, two lambs and a goat. This motley crew made it near impossible to slip through the narrowest opening. Without fail, a little body or two would be caught by the swiftly closing door. And a few uninvited guests often joined me inside. Necessity once again demanded action, and a novel solution evolved. I would run around the tank three times, then keep running to the door and through it, to the safety of the great indoors. Through the half-timber/half-fly-wire door, I could watch the confused babies frantically searching for me, somewhere out of sight around the tank. They figured if they ran around enough times and yelled my name loudly in their own languages, they would find me! I confess to much silent and somewhat fiendish chuckling back then - and again now, in my memory album.
We kept one puppy. Gypsy was named in dubious honour of her errant father, who remained anonymous. Her siblings went to loving homes; one pair even staying together, to our great satisfaction. We often wondered if the others had such a long and happy life as Gypsy enjoyed. Unlikely that the others had the added bonus of the love and care of two mothers, plus three human siblings, two grandmothers and two more doggy siblings. What a supreme advantage! Gypsy's life continued on two more of our farms, after our return to our home state of South Australia.
Our dairy-farming career began on our next farm, where we inherited a tiny old corrugated iron farmhouse with no carpets (and lacking many other essentials also). Due to this - and the bitterly cold Winter of our first year - the dogs were allowed in at night for the first and only time in our farming career.
"Normally, it required new puppy, sick or dying status." I say, taking a sneak peek at Kanute for his reaction.
"That's for bloody sure," he responds, right on cue. He has loved our dogs dearly, but always with the strict proviso - only outside.
One night, after our usual hard-working day we were finally relaxing in front of the TV and fire - milking all done, animals and humans fed. Time for all good farmers to put their feet up - if no unexpected drama reared its head and demanded action.
Kanute leaned back in his faithful old rocker/recliner and sighed heavily. "It's been a good day, but I'm glad it's done. Don't know what's aching more - my shoulders or my feet. Those bloody bales of hay got heavier and heavier as the day wore itself out - just like me!"
"Hmm. I agree - the aching is pretty well equal, almost everywhere over my body. This is definitely the best part of our day." I was stretched out comfortably on our lounge; some days the waiting for this moment seemed to take a lifetime. For quite a while, we let our eyes and brain do the work of being entertained by a favourite TV program.
Abruptly Candy came to me, lifting my arm with her nose, and quivering strangely. She had an unusually worried expression in those soft brown eyes. Normally before bed, both dogs went out for a last whatever, and so we assumed Candy had an urgent call a little earlier this night. Or maybe she needed to be sick? Such a clean and well-mannered little lady would have been deeply humiliated to make a mess anywhere, but particularly inside the house. I grudgingly stirred myself to get up and let them out the back door. Off they went into the dark as always, but this night was different. This night only one came back - our Gypsy.
We never saw Candy again, and nor did anyone else. We waited and we called. And we searched - that night, and for many days and weeks afterwards. Our neighbours carefully investigated the possibilities wherever they went in their own paddocks, or bush areas. All knew how much we loved her, how great our loss. We never found her body and so never knew the answer to her mysterious disappearance.
"Still wonder if it could have been a delayed reaction from a snake or a spider bite?" As always, I get teary when I think of my golden girl.
Kanute pats my shoulder and says, "Yep, could have been a bite... or maybe a slow-acting poison. The 'not knowing' never got any easier, did it?"
I shake my head. The pain is as raw as ever, and I still speculate about the loss of my Candy girl. It remains a sad and perplexing enigma.
Gypsy grieved as we did - openly for a long time, and privately forever. Candy had created an extra-special space in my heart no other would ever fill - but finally, there was no escaping the fact our golden girl would never come home again.
Don't forget... if you just can't wait to read the rest, the full eBook is available to buy at
http://www.amazon.com/Old-McLarsen-Had-Some-Farms-ebook/dp/B00R6Y81BS