Sorry to those I confused with yesterday’s post – it wasn’t anyone’s 21st Birthday, it was just 21 days since Dave’s Chemo started.

Yesterday was Dave’s worst day so far. He was extremely tired, ached all over and spent most of the day asleep. We used heat packs on his back last night which helped a little and he ended up taking a couple of nurofen to ease the aching, which helped him to sleep last night. Today is panning out to be similar, but we are hoping to maybe go for a drive somewhere (Bungendore? Lake George?) but other than that wont be doing much.

It’s excellent to now have internet here at Dave’s flat and also a phone that Dave’s Mum and other family can call on. Dave was able to do a bit of ‘Facebooking’ yesterday and check his work emails this morning which saved him worrying about things. It also meant we can access our Netflix account from here and we watched a good movie through his TV last night. A comedy… it was good to have a laugh!

Its great that I am able to be here with Dave on these tough days. I am very thankful to my work colleagues for taking on my workload. I need to get back to work at some point so will get through these difficult couple of days and then try to work out how I might be able to be back at Wagga when Dave is feeling OK (Days 1-6 and 11-15 of Chemo cycle) and then be here with him when he’s not so good.

The slow-cooked lamb shoulder last night was delicious, I served it with mash and veggies, on Dave’s request, and reduced the slow cooker juices to make a gravy. We then had banana, custard and peaches for dessert. We have been having dessert most nights and I have been making home-made custard which we both like, hopefully I wont put on too much weight!

Now, yesterdays story to complete.

Monday morning in Wagga, approx. 645am. Will is packing his Ute to go to work and Darryl slips by and escapes. He has been doing this quite a bit lately, I think he is looking for his mummy (me). Will is due at work at 7am, so decided to leave him out. Will has never been late to work in his life and the dog being out wasn’t a good reason to make this his first time.

8 hours later. My sister, Bek, has been collecting my mail from the post office box. She decided that since she had 5 minutes to spare before picking up her kids at the Lutheran school, which is near my house, to drop in the mail to my house. She dropped the letters on my kitchen counter, then felt guilty about not saying hello to Darryl, so went to open the back door and say ‘hi’ to him.

She was VERY shocked to see not only Darryl, but her 6 month old black Labrador puppy Leroy at my back door.

We still cannot work out how this could have happened. Bek’s house is a 5km drive, or about 2km walk over the hill through bush-land.

This is what I can only imagine might have happened…

Darryl ran around our neighborhood for an hour or two. He came back to the house but no-one was there to let him in, so he decided to go to Bek’s house. He has walked to Beks before both with me and on his own. I had been to Bek’s on the Sunday, and he smelt Leroy on me when I got home, so he thought that I was there.

He then helped Leroy break out of their backyard. A few years ago Darryl spent a few hours at Beks and managed to escape, so he remembered how to do that. He pushed the fence from the outside and Leroy squeezed through.

They ran around for a while, then together ran though the bush back to my place. I can just picture the two of them running along side-by-side!

The lawn mower man saw them there together and put them back in my back yard. 

Maybe it was the neighbor, or even some stranger walking past who locked them in there? Why they put both of them in the backyard and then re-closed and latched the gate is really puzzling me. Leroy has only been at my place once or twice so no one would recognize him.

Could this all be feasible? Can anyone think of a more likely scenario? We will probably never know!

I have ordered online a tracking device for him for next time, not that I want there to be a next time. He is my fur baby 🙂