Kangaroos and K9

I commented in yesterday's post about daffodils that a small fence was to keep inter alia 'roos away from the daffodils.
I watched this roo (photo taken through the kitchen window) sniff at a few daffs, but totally ignore them.  I do like the colour of the fur in the morning sunlight.

Now, I might say that the title does not contain a reference to Doctor Who's mechanical offsider but to our small dog.  Shortly after the image above was captured a Great Cacophony broke out in the spare bedroom.  (That isn't Tammy in the video, but does look a lot like her.)  This image is Tammy, and a couple of interlopers.
 You want cute, this is fairly cute.
We then took Tammy for her morning walk.  Now everyone knows that kangaroos get very stressed by dogs walking by regardless of whether the dog is on a lead or not.  Taurine excreta.  Tammy walked past (on lead as always) less than 10m from this pretty young person who stayed posed to demonstrate what really cute is like!
In fact the whole mob- at least 20 of them - just carried on with the macropod business of eating grass or lying down catching a few rays.
Had Tammy deigned to notice them she would probably have barked a bit and they would probably have loped off about 50m and then looked round and carried on grazing.  Things would of course have been a bit different if she had been an unleashed pig-dog: my point is that one size doesn't fit all when looking at dogs and wildlife.

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Young Joey is beyond "fairly cute".
Beautiful and so good that the Mob trust you and the K9 companion.
Denis
31 August 2012 at 10:30:00 GMT+10
Ian Fraser said…
Without in the least disputing your point with regard to the roos, there was an interesting study done a couple of years back with regard to dogs and birds. In brief, in a UNSW study over 90 sites, it was shown that bird numbers dropped by 40% in immediate vicinity after a dog (on leash) passed, cf a person without dog. No point being made here, just that it's interesting!
31 August 2012 at 14:15:00 GMT+10
Flabmeister said…
Thanks Denis and Ian

I will confess that the mob are pretty much habituated to us wandering by, so it isn't really a fair test.

However I am recording a bit of data about the birds in an area encompassing part of our 3 days a week walk. I also visit the area sometimes without Tammy and will add in a "dog present" variable to see what difference she makes to the winged presence. Don't hold your breath for results: that is intended to be a 12 month project (minimum)

Martin
31 August 2012 at 18:07:00 GMT+10
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