What a week! Flamin’ heck was it hot! I mean, it really was hot. Even he was complaining about the heat and that never happens. Mind you, I don’t know what he was complaining about … he should try getting a good night’s sleep wearing a fur coat! I was having to take them out for walks earlier and earlier and then later and later. I have to confess to getting a bit bored during the days sometimes but I found ways to amuse myself. For example, I played several games of ‘Shoe’. ‘Shoe’ is quite a good game actually – what you do is pick up a shoe belonging to someone, you then take the one shoe to another room and hide it somewhere. Next, return to the source of the shoes and take a shoe from a different pair and take that to a different room. Keep this up until there isn’t a single pair of shoes left and then, when the owner of the shoe starts looking for it, make sure you know exactly which pair they are looking for and very kindly bring them one from a completely different pair and try and look helpful! It is great fun to see the look on their faces as they realise that you probably know the whereabouts of all of their missing shoes! It is a good idea to make a quick exit at this point … there are no treats about to be forthcoming! My favourite game of all though, is stones! It’s fab!! Ask to go outside pretending your busting for a wee and then grab a stone. Hide the fact that you have the stone and then go back inside. The next part is the best … drop the stone in the most inconvenient spot possible and then stand and bark as loudly as you can. They hate it!! It’s absolutely brilliant!
The really great thing about walking early in the morning and later in the evening is that there aren’t too many other dogs around so I can do quite a lot of walking off lead, which I like. The other good thing is that we get to do a lot of Hilly Fields walks because it is dry and not too muddy. If we walk down the road towards the village, I usually try and drag them across to Hilly Fields … it usually works! The advantage of doing a Hilly Fields is that nowadays I am off lead all the way from when we get into Hilly Fields, up The Hollow all the way to the style by the Haul Route where I wait (patiently!) for them to arrive and climb over the style where I then walk all the way along the path to the gate into Tylers Close field. When they eventually catch up (they are soooo slow!) and open the gate I get to run around in Tylers Close field! Mind you, I heard some bad news about that … according to him some people that he doesn’t think very highly of are going to let someone else build 150 houses on Tylers Close field – that’ll ruin my Hilly Fields walks! I’m going to have to keep a close eye on it.
The weather was so flamin’ hot that by Tuesday I was having to walk at ridiculous o’clock in the morning and I wasn’t getting another walk until about seven o’clock in the evening. Boy did I have to keep myself occupied during the day. Mind you, it was so hot that I found myself rather drawn to pushing out ????s in front of the fan for most of the day. Whenever we did get to go out for a walk even the messages left for me had dried up! Actually, although I definitely have a preference for fine weather because when it’s wet I get very dirty and wet and, it won’t come as any surprise to my regular fans, all he does is moan about how dirty and wet I am and how he gets covered when I shake it off. Mind you, we all know how much he moans, so it is like water off a Chesapeake Bay Retriever’s coat frankly! Actually, talking of moaning, there has been another downside of the very hot weather. The bags (you know the ones … I tend to produce two baggers quite a bit) have rather hummed in the hot weather. All he has done is moan, moan, moan … particularly when there hasn’t been a bin for quite a while, which is the case on certain walks!
As the week went on, the days got hotter. By the time we got to Thursday, the temperature was off the scale! It was so flamin’ hot I thought I would melt. We had to go to hydrotherapy so that I could visit my personal therapists, Zoe, Emily and Katie on Thursday. Daddy Richard got his car thingy out but didn’t wind the windows down or open the boot so it was pretty hot in there. When he realised he was quite grumpy with Daddy Richard, particularly as his car thingy is black, but after the windows had been opened and left for a while the temperature equalised with the air outside which just meant it was flamin’ hot! There was quite a discovery though … with all the windows down and the air rushing in whilst we were on the motorway, there was quite a breeze! It was luvely and quite cooling. When we got to my wimming session, I dragged him across the road (why is he so flamin’ slow?!) and ran straight into the shop so that I could dive in! I did get a bit hot though, even in the water, with all that therapy, so I didn’t do quite as much as I normally do. Once we were out, Daddy Richard brought the car virtually to the shop front and opened up the windows for our return trip. It was just as good on the way back … a luvely cool breeze from the air rushing into the car thingy. I have noted this for the future … with all the windows open in the car thingy, you can get a cooling breeze. I won’t ever like the car thingy but it does make it a bit better!
Friday finally saw the first rain for over 60 days! We had quite a thunderstorm … there was thunder and lightning and everything! Boy did it rain too! It came down Aunts and Uncles! When I took them out for a walk in the evening after it had stopped raining there were puddles everywhere – I hadn’t seen one of those for quite some time! I took them for a walk up Green Lane for a change! All the plants were hanging down with the rain sitting on them. There were so many new things to sniff, it was a sniffing paradise! Then, in Church Lane there was a huge puddle which I obviously walked through … you have to walk through all puddles, it’s the law! When we finally walked down Bay Pond path there was another sight I haven’t seen before (I don’t think), there was steam coming off the surface of Bay Pond. He did try to photograph it and you can just see some steam in the photo here but he claims it was difficult to photograph (which means he was rubbish at it!).
On Saturday I did get a bit of a treat. We went for a walk on Reigate Hill. It meant a trip in the car thingy but the end result was well worth it. Once we had parked the car, I tried to pull him up to the main path but he insisted on walking slowly. When we eventually got there (and it took forever … at least 20 seconds!) I couldn’t believe my luck when he let me off the lead! I was allowed to walk off lead for virtually the whole way. We walked all the way up to the Fort and then on, past the place where a B52 bomber crashed into the hill, right up to the massive field at the top! It was flamin’ luvely! The temperature had dropped by about 15 degrees on Saturday, so it was really comfortable too. I had a luvely walk. Being that the weather had changed and it was also quite windy, I was being further cooled in the breeze. When we got to the top I sat down to admire the view for a minute or two before having a jolly good run around.
There was, however, a small incident. Well, when I say small, he didn’t half make a song and dance about it. You see, as I was running around I noticed some nice and fresh cow pats. Now, I am a little partial to a bit of cow pat (which he says is disgusting, but what does he know!) although I don’t often get access to it. Anyway, I found a particularly appetising one and had a little nibble. I had hardly had a taste at all when he shouted at me not to eat it. Well, what was I supposed to do? I like cow pat! And I did what he said, I didn’t eat any more … I rolled about in it instead! Oh boy! That did not go down well. Talk about moan! “You stink!”, he said. “Oh that’s disgusting!” Personally, I thought it was rather nice to have a bit of cow pat behind the ears! Honestly, you’d think I’d committed the crime of the century. When we drove home he had all the windows open (which was nice) even though it wasn’t very warm at all. When we got home he refused to let me get on the furniture and started trying to clean it out of my hair. When that didn’t work he insisted that I stayed on the kitchen floor (which could be washed afterwards) until it dried and then tried to brush it out. It kind of worked but he’s threatening me with a bath now, so think he can still smell a bit of aroma!
Yesterday it rained all day! Daddy Richard took me out for a quick round the block first thing but then later we went on a proper walk. We all got soaked! He had a jacket on that isn’t waterproof and he got soaked through to the skin. Now I may have mentioned this in the past, but he isn’t very bright … about as bright as a lunar eclipse on a cloudy night (as happened on Friday night!), if you get my gist. Well, it doesn’t take the brains of a genius (and he is a long way off that!) to work out that if it’s raining and you don’t want to get wet, you need to wear a waterproof jacket. Honestly! Sometimes I really do wonder! This morning when we went out it was raining again. My undercarriage does get very wet and dirty in the rain but I don’t care. Apparently he does and tomorrow is definitely going to be bath day! Now what could go wrong with that? Water, dirt, shampoo, long wet hair, shaking myself dry, towels, hair dryers … nah, can’t think of anything that could go wrong! Anyway, I think I want to go out for a walk now and it isn’t raining, so for now, must paws … ????
