OD's Dog

Janie. Rescue greyhound owned by 2 of Dad's 2CV mates. Allegedly a nightmare to let off the lead. She needs a quarter mile of obstacle-free open space before you can let her off the lead as she takes off like a rocket and only slows to draw breath and look round to see where her owners are after a quarter mile. If you let her off near a fence she will try to clear it without slowing; likewise trees, bushes, people, dogs etc; basically anything other than flat grass or dirt. Voosh!

I am in the dog 'ouse again.

Text from Mum to Dad at about half eight this morning

"Internet shopping delivery, shower, dog walk. Tired before I start!"

closely followed by

"..and OD's dog found the biggest pile of fox poo in the Rec and rolled in it!"

Dad (frantically thinking "who is OD?") texts back "Who is OD?"

Mum : "Your bloomin' colleague, Old-Dad, who bred this demon!"

Now it's all clear "OD's dog" is me, but Mum has dis-owned me and OD is getting the blame. New Dad has a brilliant laugh about this at work with his chums (and OD), and Mum does her best to fit in a dog-wash between all the other stuff and having to leave for work. Dis-owned I am.

Mum and Dad were fascinated by the stats coming off the site meter on my blog. We have been read in Malaysia, in Turkey, in New Zealand, Chile and in 30-odd other countries. Some people come on for 10 minutes or more and presumably have a good old read. You are all most welcome, and we are all excited to think that a tiny dog can "travel the globe" in this way. Please feel free to comment if you want - let us know how we're being received.

Look after yourself

Deefer

Rough Winds do Shake....

...the Darling Buds of May

Every walk these days seems to take us through the allotment. Dad is worried about a rather tall stand of broad beans (Yerk! Meggie likes to eat them raw, and sits down at the feet of anyone stripping them from their pods, hoping that the fingers will be less than dexterous and the odd bean will ping out of the basin and onto the floor.). He is amazed that they have got this far without being smashed down by wind and rain. They are October plantings, so they're coming ready and "we" have had the first crop off them. Rain on it's own they can take, and wind on it's own, but if they're heavy with rain and get hit by wind, Dad ends up fighting to stand them back up with canes and string, rescuing pods from the mud. We don't mind going that way - it's a nice walk

The 2CV is sick, so we must have a visit from 2CV-Llew (The Doctor). The fuel pump is kaput. Llew has a superb long-haired Jack Russell called Rosie, whose crowning glory is a great quiff of spirally hair on the top of her head.

Dad comes back once more, smelling of Hugo the Dane. We believe he has been consorting with Hugo's family (especially as Dad came home also smelling of Battenberg cake and M+M flavoured American cookies). You'll get fat and spotty, Dad

Mum is buried in her studies, armed with a nice glass of merlot. I am harrassing the cats on the spare bed.

Deefs

In Car Entertainment

We three dogs are generally fairly chilled in the car, either sitting up gazing out of the windows, or sleeping till we hear from the gear changes (and smell the smells) that we're near the forest, or the walk. None of this leppin' about and squeaking for us. So we're amazed to hear from old-Dad that brother Archie is an absolute pest, charging about the car and whimpering and squeaking for most of the journey, and has now started real-Dad (Hector) on it too. Old Dad is getting cross!

"Not so smug!" says new Dad! Before you start holier-than-thou ing, remember just before Devil's Dyke yesterday? Ooops - yes. I am small enough to hop down into the rear passenger footwell in thwe 2CV and then squeeze under the driving seat. Not so clever to emerge under Dad's pedal-feet just as he's coming onto a round-about. I am snatched by the collar and lobbed onto the passenger seat while Dad does the round-about (and told off... :-(( ), then levered over the back seat as soon as we're through. There is talk of harnesses and restraint

Ahhh the cemetary. One of those places where Dad would just LOVE to let us off the leads. Acres of grass and shrubs, nobody about, rabbits everywhere. We proceed through at an amazing pace, all pulling on the leads in all directions, as bunnies run for cover. If we could be let off the lead we'd tire our selves in very short order, but it'd be just our luck that behind that bush would be ol' Jimmy tending Aunt Maudie's grave, and weeping softly till 3 westies exploded through at 90 mph scattering his carefully arranged flowers like the feathers of a pigeon hit by a car. Trauma! Fines for Dad, lead injections for us? Nice idea, but there are other places.

Camber sands is, I'm told, excellent, but I've not been yet. "We" go to the River Rother end, taking the small lane next to the wind surfing school. That way we avoid the happy campers in Camber-proper, and end up on miles of flat beach, backed by sand dunes, backed by buckthorn scrub, crawling with bunnies. Dad jokes that it is the best dog grooming ever. In the sea to get washed, across the beach and hot dunes to get dried and bleached, and then into the low-growing buckthorn to get combed and stripped to perfection

Looking forward to it!

Deefs

2CV London to Brighton

Huge adventure today! Dad's 2CV club's London to Brighton run. "London" and "Brighton" are, in this context, just there for historic reasons. The Kent gang actually start at the Cock Inn in Luddesdown, near Meopham, and everyone finishes at Hove Park. They just call it the "L2B" so evryone knows what they're talking about.

Sooooo, we all get up early and a couple of 2CV's pull up outside our house. We are loaded into our own 2CV along with water, picnic etc, and the three cars head for Luddesdown. There gather 25 (we made it) cars for a photo-call.

Then we set off in our convoy and bimble gently through Kent and Sussex, following bits of M25, passing Lingfield Racecourse, Turners Hill, Hands Cross and eventually Devil's Dyke over the chalk. By then our route has merged with all the other routes and several hundred 2CVs and other old Citroens descend on Hove Park

It's great - it's a massive park so we can get out of the car and race about, playing ball and meeting all the other 2CV-dogs. The back seat comes out of a 2CV and makes a perfect picnic chair. It was reasonably warm and stayed dry all day, and Dad shared his pork-pie with us.

What a day - home and hosed now, and we've even had Diamond, Den and Asbo round for an evening meal. Tonight NO-ONE will need to sing me a lullaby

Deefer zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hunting the Haggis

Thought you might like these pics from our morning walk - in no particular order, they are

1) a rather smart one of me standing by the moored up barge "Bella of Bow" Dad's Mum was born and raised in Bromley-by-Bow, (although anyone sounding less like a cockney sparrer' you could not witsh to meet!), so we love this one. The "poly-tunnel" in the background, by the way, is not a horticultural thing - it's a makeshift tent the barge-boys build over their decks during winter maintenance

2) Me having a delivate sniff of the nether regions of boat-yard dog Jasper

3) The "Billygoat Gruff" bridge which is our way in to the boat yard. Faversham Creek is in the background, and the marshes out towards Nagden Farm. Meggie is just crossing it. We are all completely un-fazed by the ricketty-ness of this bridge; so dad can't understand why I hate the perfectly solid footbridge over the railway line.

4) Superb all-action shot of me heroically about to bring down a full grown Haggis-beast (prey animal), what I caught out in the open in the grassy plains of.. um... the Rec. Coo His teeth look a bit scary in this one. Hope he doesn't put up too much of a fight. A girl could get damaged!

Have a great weekend

Deefs

The Ancient Mariner

..he stoppeth one of three
By thy old grey beard and glittering eye
Wherefore stop'st thou me?

And all that Jazz. The Ancient Mariner and his good lady wife Barb, are chums of Mum and Dad, and fancied a walk in the Forst before the bluebells finished. So yesterday we got a lovely evening walk in Challock Forest, where the bluebells are just at that stage where they are moving from peak to "over", with one or two bells on each spike starting to wilt, dry and turn pale. We took it gently as opposed to our usual route-march (that suited Meggie down to the ground!) and went a slightly shorter route (which also suited the Lady M!), while H and I charged around

Extra treat was that with 3 humans in the car, the AM sat in the back with us and we could fuss him and he us all the way there and back. Not sure he was 100% appreciative, but heh!

It's the weekend. Mum has just video'd me with her phone. I have a big flower pot in my mouth which I am trying to sneak from the pond area to my hidey-hole, but the pot more than reaches from my mouth to the ground, so the video is an embarrassing mess of clonks and bangs as I keep knocking the pot off kerbs and plants. Very difficult to see round, a large pot.

Dad came home smelling of Hugo the Dane, once more. He has stopped off on way home with Jezz for tea and cookies. They have a plan to try to get some cute pics of tiny me and enormous Hugo, always assuming that he doesn't try to kill me with a first bite! Eeek!

Have a great weekend
Deefs

Happy Birthday Megan! 11 Today!

Ooops - what a negligent Pup I have been, not posting since the weekend, what with T coming over from Ireland and Dad working long hours - things have been a bit chaotic

But today is Meggie's 11th Birthday; 77 in "real money"! Happy Birthday Megs! Will I ever be that old? (Not if you persist in the trouser-biting-on-the-stairs routine! Dad). Her Birthday "cake" will be raw pork-ribs, which is Westie Heaven

I have a report that brother Archie has been found guilty of muppetry. First-Mum, was given a picture of real Mum and Dad (Hector and Mollie) sitting on their sofa, as a present by New Mum and Dad (lorks!) when they collected me as a pup, and she's been using it as a wall paper on her computer ever since. Well allegedly Archie spotted it the other day and started shouting at it, trying to climb the furniture to get at it and would not leave First-Mum any peace to work, so she was forced to change the wall paper. Dogs on TV is bad enough (see our Crufts entries earlier) but pups taking agin' your humble PC is another thing

Wildlife Dept.

1) Grey squirrels are now a regular visitor to our garden, and when we spot them they are regular users of the safe haven which is the Albertine rose all up the back of the house. When we "tree" a squirrel up there, Megan and I are steely-eyed killer dogs, sitting with ears and eyes (eyes fixed and dilated!) focussed on the squirrels' hidey hole, willing him to come down and play with us. We won't hurt you, little squirrel! We whimper and cry occasionally and sometimes do that single "YAP!" thing, which is all about shocking the little treasure into falling out of the Albertine. My pic, by the way, is Meggie looking out of the back door - the Albertine is directly above her head, out of shot.

2) Collared doves are now so intent on requiting, that today in the Rec there were two billing and coo-ing (and um... requiting) that I raced over to get them, but they didn't fly away, so I slowed and slowed (Mum laughing out loud at my indecision), till I was 3 feet away. Then I stopped, willing them to scarper, so I could chase them.... nothing doing. Eventually frustration got the better of me and I sat down and went "REFFF!!" at them. They flew off then!

Love from us all - and more Birthday Greetings for the ol' gal

Deefer