We have got Elspeth’s dog to stay. He is called Rebel, but it could just as easily be Muppet. He is a large black silky gormless affair, with bright eyes and a long nose, and a very great deal of bounce.
Elspeth is currently trying to digest Nepalese cooking and walk up and down hills on the other side of the world. I hope her mind is broadened by this activity. The problem with adventures is that whilst one is actually having them they are very horrible indeed, otherwise they would not be an adventure, just a holiday. It is not until afterwards that the adventure becomes a happy event.
I think that I have become too old for adventures. I like cocktails in the evening, crisp sheets on the bed and the wine waiter with a pristine cloth over his arm. Diarrhoea should not feature anywhere in my vacation activities.
I regret to say that Elspeth’s poor dog has got diarrhoea. He was very anxious to go out this morning, and was unpleasantly squirty when he went. I do not think he has eaten anything unsavoury, certainly not since he arrived yesterday teatime, probably it is in psychic sympathy with his owners on the other side of the globe.
Apart from the diarrhoea, he is having something of a sharp learning curve, quite an adventure of his own. He discovered this morning that if you are a dog in this house, you do not barge through doors in front of everybody, knocking people over in your path. When you are a dog you wait patiently until you have been told that it is all right, at which point you walk through with sedate dignity.
I gave him a brief, but effective explanation, and he went rushing upstairs to Mark, who he mistakenly thought would be sympathetic. In fact Mark gave him a thick ear, and dispatched him back downstairs for some Entering A Room practice.
We had to practise it several times before he understood.
Fortunately, he is very far from being stupid, unlike poor Roger Poopy, whose intellect is stretched to its maximum capacity by the instruction to go and get his ball, and he worked it out very quickly. We went for a long walk over the fell afterwards, mostly because of the squirty difficulty, and I thought that I had better give him plenty of opportunity to be thoroughly empty before we got back.
Anyway, he tried very hard, well, fairly hard, to be good, waiting for me to go over stiles (hence the shocking pun in the title) and through gates first, and hardly trampling the other dogs at all. It is interesting to have a new dog in the pack, he is not at all accustomed to pack manners, and I quickly discovered that if I did not keep a close eye on him he would quickly range off out of the way. If you let a stupid hunting dog do that, he quickly forgets that he is supposed to be with you and bounds off into the undergrowth on joyful quests after deer, or foxes, or badgers.
We had to practice this as well. Our dogs wander within a ten-yard radius of us, more or less, after which they check to see where we are and either wait for us, or detour back again.
I had to bellow quite a lot at Elspeth’s dog before he understood, and shout a reminder every time he forgot, but he is quick on the uptake, and after a while he was beside himself with anxiety about getting it wrong, and kept checking to make sure that I was still visible and not cross.
My throat was sore from growling at him by the time we got back, but he had got the idea and tomorrow will be lots better.
All three dogs are asleep under my desk as I write, which is tiresome because there is no room for my feet, but they are peaceful and contented.
I have just moved my foot and three tails thumped in unison.
It is lovely when they are all asleep.
