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Dates & News:

ZimDog News, can be accessed from: www.vanerp.net.

Zimbabwe Kennel Club:
The Zimbabwe Kennel Club office will now only be open on a Friday each week, 14.00-16.00 CAT.

Local Shows and Fairs

Bulawayo Combine Shows:
Have postponed till later this year.

MLKA & HKC Shows:
They have booked their dates for 28 & 29 June 2008, with imported Judges. Put this in your diaries.

Mukuvisi Shows:
All sponsored by PEDIGREE and proceeds to help the S P C A in the wonderful work they do for all animals

News:

A few reminders: Any of your old Zimbo’s and Kennel club members, would you be able to help the club by donating a small amount of money at some stage? I can give you a bank account, where you can donate and I will sort things out this side for the club.

Interested in the rainfall all those years? Click on the rain chart, which is on the front page of my website. Also you might want to have a look at the ‘Africa’ button. Click on it and you will see some funny and good-looking pictures.

KCH farewell get together in February

	KCH had a fantastic lunch organized to say farewell to 8 people.Did you think we had no food? Left is the table filled with all sorts of delicious platters.
Mavis and Carl Fernandes, who are going to settle in Wragby near Lincoln city. Four of her dogs went on a long haul from here to Jo’burg and then by KLM to Amsterdam and on to America. They arrived safe. Her other 5 went to Amanzimtoti. Their E-mail address can be forwarded to you on request.	Audry Folkertson with Dinky Di, her Blue Heeler and Caroline Martin with Lady Mac are leaving for Ireland. Audry will go first, on her own, to find a cottage and work, while Caroline will come later with their two dogs. I also have asked them to contact me and keep us up-to-date with their news.

Bob and Naomi Dunkley will be going to Olney-Miltonkrans, north of London. Bob will go first and see what he can find and house and job wise. Naomi is staying behind, working with the sheep, as she is doing now, till Bob has been able to sort things out. When Naomi will go over she also will take her Lab with her.

Nora Griffin and Michael Rust have plans for later in the year.

Ann Folcarelli is back from a spell of caring and is planning to go later in the year again to top up their funds. Ann also has an E-mail given to me and I will forward any letters to her.

Good luck to all our friends and wishing them all well in their new ventures.   

More News:

Ems Wallman wrote to me:
I have two new bitches added to my kennel late last year, our new website that I built on my own is now up and running showing our three girls off, our puppy Zentrum's Vixen at Arrocheyn will be a year old on the 20th of February she is a cracker and has a lovely nature we then acquired Astroflash Delaney at Arrocheyn in October at 17 months also another cracker and this will make you swoon she is Timo vom Berrekasten grand daughter yup I got my dream to have me sable va1 dogs progeny she is a black and tan but has the sable gene she will be two in April the day after my birthday so it must have been fate we got her hehehehe have got her booked to a stunning Swiss import Ice vom Steinhauerberg from the Videx kennel here so cant wait for her to come into season hopefully I will get my male am so hoping to have another Hanno from this litter. So there you go some exciting news for you to put in the feb newsletter of what us ex zimbo’s are doing in our lives, have got both girls entered in the Kent shows on the 23^rd of feb it’s a GSD champ show for the Kent club being held in Essex should be fun, both my folks have now come back from Afghanistan and are living with us so we have a rather large household here three kiddies and four adults hehehehehehe 

A burglar broke into a house one night. He shone his flashlight around, looking for valuables; and when he picked up a CD player to place in his sack, a strange, disembodied voice echoed from the dark saying, 'Jesus is watching you. He nearly jumped out of his skin, clicked his flashlight off, and froze. When he heard nothing more after a bit, he shook his head, promised himself a vacation after the next big score, then clicked the light on and began searching for more valuables. Just as he pulled the stereo out so he could disconnect the wires, clear as a bell he heard, 'Jesus is watching you.' Freaked out, he shone his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice. Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot. Did you say that?' he hissed at the parrot. 'Yep,' the parrot confessed, then squawked, 'I'm just trying to warn you.' The burglar relaxed. 'Warn me, huh? Who in the world are you? ''Moses,' replied the bird. 'Moses?' the burglar laughed . 'What kind of people would name a bird Moses?'

'The kind of people that would name a Rottweiler Jesus.'

SHOW DATES for 2008

"Zimbabwe's Travellin Man"

And so ended my first month on this Round the Worlde trip with the Travellin' Man.

6^th Saga.

Am now about to leave Canada and the baggage is kaos!!!  Too much of it - 3 cases, plus laptop and bag, plus equipment bits and pieces, plus handbag, all into one trolley case (wheellee to u), jest don't go so we have somewhat of a challenge on our hands. This cud be, of course, because en-route to Toronto, we consumed enormous quantities of Strawberry Milkshake and Pineapple Sundae, instead of putting our minds to solving the baggage problem.  Having extricated myself from a large snowdrift, my friend, Joan, and I found a Montana eatery for dinner, before I fell in a bigger snowdrift!!   It was a "farewell to Canada" dinner and I was so sorry to be leaving - you've been wonderful Canada. Disaster struck, of course, I missed my 3 a.m. wake-up call and only surfaced at 4 a.m. - with the airport bus due to collect me at 4.15!!!  All hell broke loose obviously and if anyone finds an expensive gold compact engraved SLT - it's mine and was dropped in the panic somewhere in the airport I think – like looking for a needle in a haystack!!!  I again joined the unending queue at Toronto airport to go through USA Customs and Immigration;   weird - I've never struck this anywhere else in the world.

The regs. made by our cousins in the States, bless their little cotton sox, seem to change every day of the week and this time it was the turn of American Airlines who decided to re-write the  baggage rule book - they didn't like my 3 suitcases one little bit - cud only be 2 they reckoned - until some kind British Airways individual wised them up - in no uncertain terms, judging by the speed at which AA back-tracked!!  They did at least serve Breakfast on this flight which was more than other AA flights have done on which I've flown, but if I repeat this world trip at any time, I certainly wont have AA on my flight schedule.

I had the day in Dallas/Fort Worth and it's a big sprawling city (so named, I now gather from a friendly American passer-by) because the airport building straddles the boundary between the 2 cities) and is in TEXAS - of which fact you are left in no doubt within 10 seconds of hitting terra firma!!!! I  dutifully bought my souvenirs of having been in Texas!!!  I found it somewhat gory, though, to be asked if I wanted a guided tour of where their President had been killed whilst visiting their city - yeurgh.  Plus, the food I was unwise enuf to buy was almost poisonous - so today has gone from bad to worse!!!  The next flight, AA again (there has to be a better way of crossing North America??), didn't serve scoff and so that night I ended up starving once again - we were now in Los Angeles, California (maybe my imagination folks, but I feel that the West Coast of the States is immeasurably more expensive that the East Coast, i.e. a fridge magnet in LA cost me more than a superb dinner in North Carolina a few weeks earlier).  Another odd thing struck me - having just come from Canada where Christmas/snow/Santa Claus/fairy lights/everything and anything connected with Christmas was available and in full swing - it really was a White Christmas Winter Wonderland - to find that Christmas seems to have been forgotten in D/FW and LA!!  Maybe they're like Africa - think it's too hot!!!

However, LA had a bonus, because  v e r y  late that night I checked in with our Oz friends at Qantas and they, along with BA, had the most fantastic Club Lounge that I've found on this trip (BA in Manchester had a superb one,  also at Heathrow 4,  altho I haven't had the need to sample others on this trip), so I went and showered all the grime off myself in their magnificent facilities, sampled all the perfumes etc. and then partook of a superb 3 course dinner; having stocked up from their supplies with the latest newspapers and magazines from around the world, I was ready to face the next sectors.

The long haul across the Pacific down to Auckland and on down to Christchurch in the South Island of New Zealand, has to be one of the world's longest commercial flights there is today, so everything augurs well for the next stage in this saga.  We were upstairs in their 747-400 and the conditions, food and service were fabulous - beds thank goodness!!  We ordered what we wanted for dinns and brekker - how's that for service - and settled down to a dreamless sleep.

One crosses the International Date Line of course when flying over the Pacific Ocean and the next morning it was wonderful to see the huge cloud formations beneath us as the sun crept slowly up over the earth's rim, and then to realize that thousands of feet beneath us was the massive Pacific.  I have, in actual fact, sailed half way round the world, across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal and right across the Pacific, when I first went to live in New Zealand - GOC.  The Pacific is an ocean that in its northern and central areas consists of gently rolling swells, so that it is difficult to believe she is so huge.  She has some wonderful Islands which are worth visiting, many of them remote and unspoilt - Pitcairn lives vividly in my memory - because of its history of course.  Only at the tip of New Zealand, up at Cape Reinga, is it possible to see her massive power when the Pacific Ocean finally collides with the Tasman Sea.

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