Steer-able nose

Thought you might like this gorgeous picture taken by First-Dad of my brother Archie (front), Real-Dad Hector (left) and Real-Mum Mollie (right). These guys love a game of footie. The boys especially do a fine line in running themselves ragged (hence the lolling, hot tongues) dribbling the ball about. Mollie not so much, but she sometimes either runs at the boys shouting, or even runs to the ball, trapping it professionally under a forepaw and stopping the game till either First Dad boots it away, or the boys just start up again. Nice photo, I think you'll agree.

(New) Dad was taking the mick at the weekend, about my highly manouvre-able nose. He swears he has never seen a dog so able to twitch the black "button" bit of the nose, so far from side to side. By tightening muscles down eitgher side of my snout, he says, I can pull the nose so far round the cartilage septum up the middle must nearly break (or has already!). It looks like I am aiming the nose left or right to smell round corners without moving my head.

And why not?
Just part of my cunning plan
Deefer-of-the-Aim-able-Nose

Fairlight Photo's

Here are a couple of shots of Fairlight Hills. We are Meggie (rolling), Haggis (sitting) and myself (standing). Look at that view! You have Hastings behind you as this pic is taken, and in front you can see across Fairlight village, Pett village, Pett Levels and eventually Rye and the Rother, then out onto the shingle foreland of Dungeness (in the haze somewhere!)

The second pic is just of the three of us posed on a bench among the gorse bushes. Me (left), Meggie centre and H right gazing out to sea in his "A long time aso in a Galaxy far far away..." pose

Sorry - website is still not working right and again I can't enter a title anywhere. Not sure if this is something I have done, or whether the site has a hiccup.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend

Deefs

Fairlight and the Pud Lady

What a busy day!

(OK something wrong with the site tonight - I can't add a title, so I have no idea what this is going to do)

The first sensibly sunny day for about 2 months. The sparrows are shouting from the Albertine like it is spring time and they are announcing nest sites they've found and trying to attract mates.

We are off down to Hastings to visit the Pud-Lady, and on the way we get a nice walk at Fairlight Hills, a sandstone cliff area just East of Hastings, where Dad used to spend a lot of time as a kid. All gorse bushes and rabbit holes - good Westie territory.

Back from Hastings we are at the Allotments barbecue, which is good Westie territory too due to the amount of people willing to sneak us the odd bit of sausage or burger. Diamond brings Asbo, and some exciting events ensue, but Dad has just been asked by Diamond not to "rat Ragworth up" so I guess that means I'm not allowed to tell you about them. Suffice to say, "Asbo" got another ASBO. What can I tell the readers, Diamond?

Photo's to follow tomorrow, but for now I'm all in.

Deefs

Penny

Our thoughts today are with Dad's friend Shirley, whose 12 year old Westie, Penny, passed away last night from kidney failure. Penny was a very sweet dog and Shirley loved her dearly. She'll be sorely missed. She had a lovely life and died very elegantly, with no suffering.

We are all just back from an excellent walk all round the boat yard. It had finally stopped raining (but looks like starting again now) - we are all wondering when Summer will come. Out in the fields, Meg never fails to amuse with her hand-stand peeing technique. Not for Megs the bitch-squat. She quite often takes all the weight on her front legs and lifts her back end clear of the ground, like a 2-legged cock-the-leg. At the edge of a path, if she fancies weeing in the long grass, for better scent retention, she can even lift her back end, then swing it round to the side, over the longer grass with a cantilever action, wee from height onto the grass, then swing her bum back round before lowering her back legs back to the ground.

I need to brush up these gymnast skills. I just squat.

Deefs

I Blame the Parents

News comes our way of Old-Dad sitting on the sofa watching Doctor Who, and being handed a real-beef burger in a bun, cooked by First-Mum. OD takes the burger on its plate, using his left hand to steady the burger while he opens the lid of the bun, reaching out with his right hand for the sauce bottle on the coffee table. To do this he momentarily takes his eye off the burger, and when he looks back, having grabbed the bottle, the meat is gone. It is running at 50 mph down the lounge, in the teeth of Real-Dad Hector

OD leaps up and roars, charging down the lounge in pursuit of the escaping meal, but FM lep's up even faster and stands, arms out, barring OD's way. "Don't you touch him!" she yells - "I'll make you another one!". So Real Dad lives to fight another day, and I can blame the parents for my propensity for nicking toothbrush heads

My pic is of Meggie (right) and I looking out of the back door at an impressive thunderstorm, raging in the skies over the M2. Haggis is out there shouting at the thunder (How dare it!), but we girls are keeping dry.

Deefs

YOUR dog....

"Your Dog", says Mum's email to Dad half way through the working day (in "bold, too, so I know I'm in trouble!), "has eaten another of my electric toothbrush heads....". Mum doesn't know how I got this one as she thought it was in a drawer. At Dad's work they suggest that maybe Haggis is not as dim as everyone says, and has sneakily opened the drawer, so that I'd get the brush-head out and get into trouble. But Haggis, like Kalamazoo in the song, "was cool and he never said a mumblin' word.

Some things will remain in the realm of "for dogs to know and humans to only wonder at". One thing though - why do I become Dad's dog whenever I'm naughty? Dad mind you, does not seem unduly worried - he drops in on the butchers for steaks for the humans, and comes away with some gorgeously meaty raw pork ribs for us! He's not entirely convinced that the brush was in a drawer at all......

Deefs

Scary bridge

Nice long walk this morning - what we call the "Blackcurrant fields" loop - all round south of the town's football and cricket grounds. There used to be blackcurrant fields here but they're all grubbed up and currently a clean field of wheat is there, green and immaculately weedless (so... probably not organic then?)

Only one problem with this route - we have to cross a 20 yard railway foot bridge which, for some reason, freaks me out. I am OK on the steps up to it (even though they are open concrete slab type) but once on the span I hang back to the full extent of the extendy lead (while Meg and the H trot across not a care in the world), then when it can no longer be avoided, I scoot across, legs bent, ears down, tail down, belly as close to the floor as a pup can get it while still walking. I whoosh across like this, racing to the full forward extent of the lead - the sooner I'm off that span and onto the steps down, the better.

Dad has no idea why I'm like this, as I've never had any kind of traumatic experience on it. Must just be the non-solid nature of it and the fact that I can see I'm up high because the flat metal strip mesh goes right to the walking-surface.

On the way back from the field we cross what everyone thinks is the longest railway footbridge in the UK. At about a quarter of a mile, it goes across both branches of the lines at Faversham junction - the line for Canterbury and the line for Whitsable. But that one doesn't faze me at all - probably because it's got sheet steel "walls" and I can't see out. I can race about on that one full of my normal confidence

There's no accounting for dogs
Deefer