Walking The Dog

The house stinks. Our clothes WILL smell tomorrow. Come too close and you will discover that our hair smells too. Evaporating vinegar pervades every corner of the house - every open drawer, both dog beds, the exposed strings of the piano, the clean stack of washing, our books, even my mug of coffee. Our eyes water on entering the kitchen, we sneeze, we breathe in and taste the vinegar in the air. This is balsamic apple cider vinegar (no common malt vinegar in this house, as not strictly gluten free). And it's organic! It is mixed with apples, red onions and brambles, with cinnamon, salt, ginger and mace added for flavour. It bubbles angrily, a deep dark red of simmering, fruity fury. Bertie Baggins and Four-legged-friend however sleep through anything  Especially when their bellies are stuffed full of apple-peelings and brambles. Bubbles and strong smells simply seep into the backgrounds of their dreams. Rather depressingly, only an eighth of the apples-that-wer...

Inspiration is a fickle beast. What inspires me - lighting the fuse that sets off fireworks in my brain; rippling a song through my heart and setting my toes off on the tip-tapping rhythm of a dance - may send you sploshing into a stagnant puddle of despair and crippling boredom. I think what inspires us depends on who we are. Who we  really  are. It encompasses self, place and time. And is probably touched by our economic, political and religious beliefs. It is significantly influenced by media pressure - that pressure to be complicit in the admiration for a subject of populist awe - although whether such collective inspiration is inspiration at all or merely a need to fit in and not be perceived of as that weird person who thinks differently from the rest of us, is debatable. We should be free to take inspiration where we find it and respect that others may be inspired by things that we either dislike or do not understand. Before my wittering gets completely out of han...

What makes a good day? - One isolated good event, or a sequence of good happenings? - A sprinkle of joy and any pesky spirit of sadness banished to beneath a well-worn corner of a floor rug, where he has to stay until the balance of emotions tilts back down into his deep and dark direction. 'Til then the horizon looks bright. This good day added up as follows number of people who cried =  3 (only three! Three is good. I am often the keeper of the tear- switch and when people see me they reach across and switch it on. On a day when only three cry I finish early and leave work happy. Going home early is always, most definitely good ) number of bars of chocolate consumed =  0 (proving to myself that I can do it. Number of hours since I last ate chocolate - 26 and 53 minutes .... approximately! It's not that I'm counting, of course. I'm just keeping a record. Sort of metaphorically patting myself on the back; well done me. I didn't know that I had that mu...

Wow! An official day for dogs. And I almost didn't notice. Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins didn't notice either - no bones; no extra walk; no gift of flip flops to chew (that was yesterday's entertainment). Just another day, much like all the other days. A day in a dog's life - sleep, eat, chase something - your tail, a rabbit, each other, a shadow, a butterfly (not exactly manly, but with a satisfyingly crunchy reward at the end), a wasp (okay ... you only chase one of those once. Ever.) - walk around a bit and sleep again, dreaming of more to eat. And that needs a whole dedicated day for the nation to celebrate? Hmm ... definitely. A dog is not called 'man's best friend' for nothing. Where else do you see eyes so trusting? What else do you fall over because it's lying at your feet? Who else nudges your knee and leans against you thereby telling you that it's okay, things will work out? Yes ... they deposit piles of poo all over the...

"Tut, Tut, looks like rain." Tut, Tut probably isn't the first thing that springs to mind when viewing this picture. And faced with bleak weather and a sad-looking symbol of national pride it is unlikely that many would consider a small bear  a personage of sufficient gravitas to quote. However, Walking the Dog was in Scotland ( was rather than is, because was there last week without internet). And Walking the Dog likes Pooh. That sort of Pooh - the sort with an 'h' at the end. A. A. Milne had a lot to say about the weather. He gave Eeyore my favourite weather-related observation , "The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually." And last Thursday, it did stop. Long enough for Littlest and I to walk to our pooh-sticks bridge. Long enough for us to get half way there, along the grassy path. Long enough for us to chat to the cows (we had to shout as they stubbornly stayed at the distant end of the fie...

Hello, Bertie Baggins here. Yes, the small, yellow one, nephew and self-appointed tormentor-in-chief of Four-legged-friend. It's been a bit quiet on this blog recently due to Herbie's general rushed-off-her-feetedness so I thought I'd stand in and take a turn - share with you some of my observations on a dog's life and tell you a bit of what I have been doing. And shouldn't have been doing. Before I start, I think I should share with you the history of my name. After all, you are reading this, so it is only fair that you have a clear understanding of exactly who I am: Bertie stems from Gilbert. In keeping with my uncle, the afore-mentioned Four-legged-friend, otherwise known as M ... oops! He likes to keep his name out of this blog. Perhaps in case something embarrassing is written about him. Me ... I don't care. What could I possibly do that I would be embarrassed about? I'm a dog! Anyway, Four-legged-friend and me are named after Scottish Saints...

Bertie Baggins is a naughty boy. Bertie Baggins is cunning. Bertie Baggins has stealth. Bertie Baggins is a naughty, cunning, stealthy apple thief. Who plucks them out of the tree, twisting and breaking its branches. Not for him the patient wait for them to ripen and tumble at his feet. I want my apples for crumble.  Not licked. Not pre-chewed. And definitely not distributed across the garden in pre-digested heaps. Thus fences have been built, repaired and built again. My first attempt at an apple-tree fence - temporary, so that he who bothers about the neatness of the parched grass can remove it, thereby enabling the trimming of any vegetation still clinging to a life-without-water - failed. Bertie Baggins nonchalantly stepped through it. Equally nonchalantly ripped an apple off the tree. And nonchalantly lay down to eat it. Knowing that he had just enough time to savour its bitter, crunchy, un-ripe flesh before I noticed, sprinted out of the kitchen and grabbed him by...