Wednesday - last day down under! I was pretty beat by this time and Jacki took me over to Botony Bay for a very short visit. At one point, I was about to put the visor down to block the sun and I saw this HUGE spider. I asked Jacki if it was fake and pointed tremulously. She looked, did a quick double take and said, "no, it's real." She stopped the car, I JUMPED out and she got rid of it...... Then off to the airport to relax and wait. The trip home was much less stressful than the trip there. I slept for a huge amount of the 1st leg (14.5 hours) and 1/2 of the 2nd leg (4.5 hours). Between those legs, I must have gone through customs at least a million times!

It's a good thing I taught Cynthia my recall whistle, because I knew she was waiting somewhere for me at the airport, but couldn't find her, so I whistled and voila! There she came! Good Cynthia!

On the way back to the farm, I asked to stop so I could get something to eat. After the absolutely disgusting plane food -I got what everyone else got even though I had requested a special meal and just refused to eat the -literally- green eggs, I was starving! I got some nachos - not on my diet, but I wanted someting easy to fix and small - ha! Here we go again with the HUGE portions! I ate it as if I hadn't eaten in 72 hours! (no I didn't finish it). Then one and a half hours back to her farm, exhausted and trying to stay awake and getting more excited about seeing my gang. Emma was beside herself - leaping 8 million times, Beau not far behind her when he could squeeze in and Shadow...well...it was almost like he forgot who I was. He was shaking and shaking and very nervous and went to Cynthia for reassurance. Very weird. He didn't act that way when I came back from Calgary...oh well...needless to say he is completely fine now and is back to being my ever-present Shadow.

Although by this time I had completely depleted any resources, I still was wired and it took a long time for me to get to sleep. Then up in the morning, relaxed for a few hours and drove the 6.5 hours home from Canada to NJ and here I am, still on a high and typing this!

DID YOU KNOW?

 Did you know that there is no lyme disease in Australia? There is however, a tick that paralyzes and kills dogs....and the dog has to be hospitilized pretty quickly or they die.

Did you know that people have to be very careful where they swim their dogs because a shark or croc might get them?

More to come!