About house rules and Dachshunds.

​One of the sites we market on, just asked to give the 'house rules' Which had me thinking... In the end this is what I gave them:  Fairview Homestead is a 7 bedroom guest house in B&B style - that means we, the owners, live on the premises. Our guest rooms are private, but we have a communal lounge/breakfast area for the guests. The only rules I can think of are : no non-paying guests in the bedrooms for longer than 10 minutes ; no cigarette buds in the garden, no unsupervised children in the swimming pool, be nice to the hosts...

That was said 'tongue in cheek' ! We have had paying guests in our house for more than 17 years and I've never had to pin down rules, so I do not think I am going to start now.
So often friends will ask if we do not get tired of sharing our home with guests. After all these years I can honestly say that we still enjoy it. ! But being put on the spot to think about house rules, I also realised that those mentioned are the only things that sometimes gets me upset. I once found two children playing by themselves - their parents had gone shopping. We have not had much trouble with the cigarette buds in the garden, but we find cigarette buds on the beach repulsive, so I can just imagine what Desmond would say if he found them amongst his flowers. About 'be nice to the hosts' you'll understand if you read the post  http://www.fairview.lithe.co.za/right-of-admission-reserved/
And the rule 'no non-paying guests in the bedrooms for longer than 10 minutes' is because of another incident which ,I think, is any guest house owner's worst nightmare. I woke up with a start one morning at 2am , walked downstairs to get a glass of water and then got a start as the front door slammed , accompanied by  female laughter as someone  came in. Not so abnormal, but what woke me up completely was that I had two single businessmen booked into the two doors at the front. As I contemplated how to handle this, the laughter just became more raucous. It dawned on me that both these gentlemen had ladies in their rooms. As I said to Desmond afterwards - I went from scared to angry in 3000 revs. I stormed down the passage, banged on the doors, shouting: 'every non-paying guest in these rooms have  exactly 5 minutes to leave. How dare you abuse my hospitality like this?'.
Now, the evening before, Desmond saw a program about Dachshunds and thought a baby Dachshund would make a good friend for Juno our Bull Mastiff and he always thought they were such cute looking dogs. Juno is such a softie and in the television program they said that Dachshunds have more aggression than most breeds and make the perfect guard dogs.  So he argued that the  Dachshund would be the guard dog, while Juno looks scary because of her size.  South Africans have a thing about guard dogs that I find so overrated.  I would have none of this. I do not like yapping dogs ; my father had a little Dachshund that yapped incessantly - I had enough of yapping dogs as a child to last me a lifetime. As I crawled back into bed Desmond whispered in my ear: 'who needs a Dachshund, I've got you babe...'