One Christmas in Melbourne

This is the last of my Melbournian reminiscing, at least for a while. After this post my memory bank will be depleted of Melbourne memories.

The memory, I will write about, was triggered by my friend, blogger Pharlap, who on the way from Sydney to Melbourne, traveling by car, stopped in Gundagai for the night. This reminded me of my first trip to Melbourne, also by car. It was a long time ago, the time when we had a new dog Argus. Argus – All Eyes, my guardian. This is perhaps another story. He was one of the very important appearances in my emotional life.

At the time when we traveled to Melbourne, he was just over one year old and since we bought him only two or three months before, we did not know what to expect from the trip which we decided to take in one stretch.  Long journey, but we were in a hurry to reach our Swedish friends in Melbourne for Christmas celebrations. For Poles and Swedes Christmas Eve is the most important and we were working people. We did not have much time for the journey.  Argus was already a very important part of the family and taking a plane and putting the lovely dog in a kennel was not an option. So we packed our festive cloth, presents, essentials for Argus and set for the long journey. Argus was not a complaining dog, but he was a bit of a wimp and I was an overprotective dog’s mummy. It turned out that Argus without showing any dissatisfaction decided to travel standing up. There was no way we could convince him to sit. I am not sure about the dog, but I suffered anxiety the whole trip. And this was a very long, many, many hours trip.

Eventually, we arrived in Melbourne. Our friends had a beautiful big home with exceptionally big garden and two grown up, confident, biggish dogs. Argus was a Welsh springer spaniel and, as I said, a wimp. The local dogs were rather boisterous and got interested in my sweet baby. One showed a lot of aggression barking, growling and snapping at Argus and the other took a fancy to him. Normally, sexual preferences do not play any role in my judgment, but this time I was worried about emotional effect of these amorous advances on Argus.

Yes, I was overprotective and silly, but first month of love makes one so, and I loved Argus with such a fresh love. He was a beautiful dog, too. Kept for one year by the breeders together with Apollo and Aphrodite (it was an A litter) to make an assessment which one of the three is the best and should be kept. Maybe they made a mistake, maybe not, but for me Argus was the most beautiful and clever dog in the world. It just came to my mind that it happens sometimes with people not being sure who would be the best potential partner, so they run a couple of them for a while for later selection. This is rarely such a good idea and for the subjects of such selection may be annoying. However, people are capable of acting in their best interest and move away. Dogs do not. I would like to think, however, that even if Argus’ canine career finished on a Best Pup in bread ribbon at a Royal Easter Show, he had a good happy life without fame, but with caring master and dotting mum.

One can imagine that it was not one of the most harmonious Christmas ever, but it certainly was memorable.

Relieved that the Christmas was over, we wondered how it will be for Argus to travel back, standing up again for so many hours. Me, sitting in the back seat with him did not help the matter. He was determined to travel his way. We decided that and we all need a rest on the way and stop over for the night. The choice was Gundagai, the same place as Pharlap chose. For us it was partly because Gudegai is half way to Sydney from Melbourne and 

partly because The Dog on a Tucker Box. 

   

It was only fitting that the place with such monument is the right place for us. The motel we stayed in did not accept dogs, but well behaved Argus, quietly sneaked in with us into the room without giving a peep and he illegally spent the night in the motel room. He was a worldly dog. But if one would think that he slept in bed, I must disappoint. My silliness did not go that far.

I love my current lifestyle that includes spending few months in Europe. This means no dog for me for while. But when it changes it will be bliss!