Furry Friends Festival

Simone with Brad and Pudding and Nell with Gingi Baru

My Roadtrip co-host Simone O'Brien and I recently took our pooches to the Furry Friends Festival in Bangalow to interview a few participants. Listen to our conversations here.

As first-time dog-owners we share a kind of bewildered amazement with our fur babies. They can do no wrong and are pretty much spoiled to death, but the sheer joy they give to us is so endless that we just can't help treating them like the enlightened beings that they are.

Unlike most kids, I didn't have canines when I was growing up, just a beloved feline who walked in off the street and into my heart. I guess that's why I could never understand why people were so mad about their dogs. And the silly voices they used when speaking to them baffled me. It took an old rescue bitch to make me see the light.

It's now been four years since I first patted my friend Susan's black-and-tan Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She was curled up in her basket next to the runt of her last litter with a face specifically inbred to elicit instant adoration.

'I love her!' I squealed, melting under the touch of her velvety fur. 'Do you want her?', Susan asked. She wasn't joking. Ginger's first human had died of cancer two years prior and had gone to live with Susan and little Mini. Susan was obviously fed up with having two dogs pulling hard on leashes. And so, as if by divine intervention, I became Ginger's third mistress.

Ginger now goes by many names; Gingi Baru, Bu, Lady Snorington, Bujuboots, Bujeaulais, Bougey - the list goes on. And I can be heard making those same stupid sounds when addressing her. It's kind of embarrassing but I can't help it!

Gingi is now on heart meds and costs me a fortune at the specialist canine opthalmologist but she is my spirit animal and has surely made me a better person. Following the death of her 16 year-old Shitpoo, another friend said that dogs should come with a warning. And it will no doubt be devastating when Gingi herself dies, as all living creatures must. In the meantime I am destined to pick up her pooh until either she or I can no longer do the business we were put on this Earth to do.