NOVEMBER

ZZZzzzzzz, just come back from shooting and so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.  I had a few Miniature helpers with me this time and they were extremely helpful with carrying the pheasants and pointing out the direction in which I should be retrieving.  I rewarded them handsomely with large licks and a few tail flicks.   The season is warming up nicely and we shall be having pheasant for dinner along with the odd duck or two.  I just love all the leftovers and spend a large part of the evening waiting patiently to see if the Boss and the Mrs manage to eat all their dinner or if there will be some left for me.  I have to sit nicely before it is offered and have learnt not to be too over confident about what is left on the plate as they both seem to like their dinners as much as I do.  In one unfortunate instance impatience got to me and I executed one of my upward bounding jumps to have a ‘look see’ what was left on the plates the Mrs was carrying back to the kitchen.  The accidental nudge the Mrs hand received in my ill-timed bounce resulted in disaster, there was a loud crash and not only did I miss having my rations that night but I was banned from the kitchen for quite a while with dinner reduced to the usual Biscuity stuff and served to me in the solitary confinement of my bedroom.  The Boss kept out of it saying I had made my bed and now I had to lie on it – thank you, that’s a big help!  This situation lasted until I managed to ingratiate myself back into the Mrs good books by showing her my undying love with fluttering semi-closed eye lids, expressions of total obedience, plentiful demonstrations of my obsequious belly crawling and being extremely quiet and good until she had forgotten all about the incident – humility always helps and as I told her with a lick to her hand, it’s never a good thing to bear a grudge for too long…

OCTOBER 2016

This is my ball and you are not having it! So there!  OK, OK, you can have it, as long as you throw it for me.  I love jumping over the flower borders and bringing it back to you.  It is a bit tatty now and I am not sure you could score a goal with it but I do love ball games and so do the Miniatures.  I never tire of returning it to their little feet so that they can give it a kick for me to fetch.  There is a slight downturn to the activities pertaining to my mention of jumping over the flower borders.  Although I can easily clear them with my gigantic leap it appears the kicking and throwing abilities of the Miniatures and indeed occasionally their parents fall far behind in the desired lift and direction.  The Mrs becomes very agitated when this game is played and the cry ‘not in the flower beds’ is often heard lilting over the air from the kitchen window….  Oops, there goes another pelargonium!! 

In between ball games there has been a lot of work on preparing for the imminent shooting and beating dates and I am benefitting from a clearing out of the freezers in readiness for this seasons booty.  I always take an interest in the game stock in the freezer and look forward to any bits and bobs tossed my way that are not required for the Boss. Actually the Mrs is a bit ambivalent about the game stock sometimes and longs for prepacked neat meat from the supermarket so my ears always prick up when I hear the phrase ‘not again’, then I know that whatever the Boss has suggested for dinner will end up on my plate.  It’s a dog’s life – food and ball games, but someone’s got to live it.

SEPTEMBER

It has been very hot here and you have caught me napping.  Over here in France it is normal to have a little sleep after lunch which can last for one, two or even three hours depending on the weather, the amount of work or exercise undertaken in the morning and of course, the lunch!   This particular morning had involved a pre-breakfast walk and diving lesson in the lake and many retrievals of sticks, along with a very tiresome bout of sitting still whilst the Boss did a spot of fishing, followed by a game of tag with my new friend next door and another boring bout of sitting still while the Boss and Mrs sat bird watching.  

Why they seem to be so interested in these flighty feathery cheepy critters I cannot fathom.  No sooner has one been spotted than they instantly fly off and become heavily camouflaged in the nearest tree, never to be seen again.  However, there was one interesting flyer at the lake recently who executed an even more perfect dive that I can.  He was a very striking turquoise blue and emerged from the water carrying a fish in his beak even faster than I can retrieve a stick - I was actually impressed by this feat and the Boss and Mrs seemed very pleased to have seen him, I believe he had some connection with Royalty and fishing….

Just in case you are wondering - the pink bone was a gift from a predecessor and I am manly enough not to be bothered by it’s colour.  It has a lovely little squeak and fits neatly into my mouth for carrying.  The Mrs has a nasty habit of hiding it when she thinks I am not looking - hence my guarding it tightly in my paw while I sleep.  I like the squeak!

JULY / AUGUST

You know that feeling of boredom that comes over you when you have to wait for any length of time – well it overcame me at lunchtime recently.  So much so that I had to come and look in through the window to see if they had finished lunch yet as I was getting peckish, wanted to play and was fed up sitting around doing nothing.  There was an alternative motive as well – French sticks – not the sort made from trees, but the sort made from bread – all crispy on the outside and gorgeously tasty on the inside.  They make such a satisfying crunchy noise when you bite down on them and are conveniently sized to just fit into my mouth without too many gaps round the edge.  I do know from experience that once the Boss and Mrs have finished their lunch, not only do they emerge from indoors to play again but they usually come bearing the remains of the French stick they had for lunch and I am given it as a treat.

Recently I accompanied the Boss and Mrs to a shop where they sell nothing but French sticks – I couldn’t believe my eyes (or my nose)  The smell was droolingly lovely and after buying several to take home the Boss inadvertently put them into my travelling compartment for the homeward journey.  I believe in share and share alike – do you?  Anyway there were far too many for just the Boss and Mrs to eat so I helped them out by chomping half of one before we reached home…. Big mistake!  The Boss got it in the ear from the Mrs for incorrectly placing them near me and I got it in the ear from the Boss for checking the flavour had not changed. 

Maybe I should just ‘stick’ to the tree sticks in future and leave the French ones alone!

JUNE

The world underfoot has turned blue with a certain perfume in the air - at least it has in the woods surrounding The Vyne NT.  Normally I can forage where I like but, in there, you need to be led and you also need to be careful where you park your backside in case you crush any of these smelly flowers.  There is a sign up saying leave any babies where they are as their parents will come back to collect them in their own time.  I was seriously worried we would find wailing miniatures in the undergrowth but upon hearing a few hoots and a fluttering I realised they must mean the resident owls.  The only miniatures we saw were little black lambs being staunchly protected by their rather scary horn headed mothers.  The Mrs strolls slowly around clicking a small contraption which captures images which she will eventually replicate using the most difficult method she can involving pigment and water – she calls it painting, I call it boring.  I kept trying to position myself so that I could present my good side in all of the photos in the hope I would appear in watercolour one of these days but she seems more interested in these smelly flowers at the moment.  After bounding around for a few hours I decided I needed to cool down in the conveniently flowing nearby stream.   After some altercation with the Mrs it turned out she seemed much happier with this than she was with the muddy puddles of last month and thankfully I didn’t have to put up with that embarrassing bath routine when we returned home.  By the way you may be interested to learn that the dictionary I swallowed last month has now been completely digested and my language has returned to barking simplicity….

MAY

yes, you’ve guess correctly and no I am not Mother Hubbard, but it is bath time again!  The Mrs seems very keen on keeping me smelling sweet, but her idea of sweet is totally different to mine.  A good roll in the mud is always therapeutic for the fur and that was what I availed myself to on a recent walk, only to find on our return that this would be the outcome….  Nothing was said at the time of the rolling and it was pure luck we found a puddle deep enough to give a good covering but on the way home I detected a certain chilliness in the air not related to the ambient temperature. 

You will notice that I am becoming more eloquent, the reason for this turned out to be another misdemeanour which I will relate to you.  Fossicking about in the Boss’s garage, where there seems to be an inordinate amount of ‘stuff’, most of which the Mrs informs me is rubbish, I found a rather tasty book.  It must have been stored somewhere near some venison and pigeons because it had a lovely perfume – reminded me of my bones, just the sort of think I like to chew on.  Anyway there I was half way through this engrossing read when the Boss turns up and takes it away from me – I never did get to finish it.  Neither did anyone else as my tooth marks had apparently rendered half of it illegible – told you I had learned some big words.  Turns out it was a dictionary – surprise!! – and the Mrs was extremely disappointed in my choice of reading material, not to mention chewing material.  After a long and tiresome reprimand  I decided it would be in my best interest not to take up reading  to pass the time as the Mrs does but choose the TV, like the Boss does, which shows much more interesting things like golf, rugby, snooker, farming, fishing and animals, which is why I think the Mrs reads so much……

APRIL

I hope you missed me in February?  Sorry I couldn’t write in my blog but I was being transported via a very choppy overnight ferry crossing to my new playing place in France. It was so rough the Mrs said she had to sleep flat on her back to avoid being thrown out of the bunk and the Boss swore his body actually levitated several times but I slept straight through the trip, snug in my usual bed in the Boss’s pickup.  

Once at Maison Millie I ensured all the usual smells were still in place and we went to check the fish were still in the ‘etang’.  This photo shows me trying very hard to resist their retrieval by jumping in but I now know better and that the Boss has to reel them in himself! 

I spent my time in France making friends with dogs, electricians, builders, farmers and neighbours, some of whom were intelligible but gave good friendly pats and cuddles.  We also found some shooting buddies and watched the ‘shoot’ going on all around us, I found it very exciting and wanted to join in with the tangle of hounds but the Boss said no as I don’t speak the language….

Sadly, on our return the small furry spitty thing was not well and a week later saw the end of her sixteen year feline reign.  Apparently she is planted in the garden deep enough to ensure my bone burying will not disturb her.  I will miss my protagonist but not the nose batting she always gave me.  I was rather hoping I would take her place on the Mrs lap now, but that does not seem to be happening.  The Mrs explained it is a question of sizing but I am not sure if it is her size or mine she is worried about….  Nevertheless I will keep trying, as she says - I can be very trying!

March

I have been travelling in France and they tried to tell me this was my new travelling kennel - No thank YOU.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

Belated happy Christmas to all my followers, I hope you had a woofing good time.  I certainly did, with titbits of turkey and lashings of love.  After sniffing all the presents under the tree to ensure none of them had bones inside I retired to my bed to listen out for distant sleigh bells and then checked the garden for reindeer droppings – didn’t find any. 

The miniatures put in an appearance, all five of them and showed me how to open presents with the utmost alacrity and speed, almost as quickly as I excavate the garden when searching for my buried bones.  The end result was very similar – great joy! 

The Boss and I are now deep into the shooting season and I have proudly retrieved many pheasants and partridge for him.  It is the time of year I love the most from when he appears at breakfast time dressed in his shooting greens and I wear my green lead with pride knowing I am doing the job I was born for.  The freezer is getting stocked for the year and every Sunday I have tasty game titbits to add to my biscuits as well as long snoozes dreaming of running blissfully across the fields. 

I wish you all a very happy healthy new year filled with some exciting new smells for sniffing although the Mrs tells that sniffing and cold moist noses do not have the same health connotations for you as they do for me.  I wondered why one of the miniatures kept trying to wipe mine with tissues…..