We are having yet another small adventure.
If I am honest, it is not really us having the adventure, but the dogs, and it is rather a sad one, and so you might find it handy to have a handkerchief into which you might weep as I explain.
Of course you know that Rosie became Desirable just before I went to Cambridge. She came into season, and Roger Poopy has been Desiring her ever since.
Poor Roger. His desire is for ever thwarted, because thanks to an unkind cut of Fate, or in his case, of the vet from Pets At Home, he has been made a eunuch.
The reason for this, as you might recall, was his shocking tendency as a youngster to get into fights. He did not quite strut up to other dogs and growl Oo You Lookin At? but it was pretty close. Hence we decided that steps must be taken, and he was brutally emasculated in a terrible surgical procedure which robbed him for ever of the equipment with which he might have fathered offspring.
It appears that this tragic biological omission does not stop one from feeling agonies of desire, and Roger has been feeling agonies of desire.
He has not just been suffering these dreadful pangs, which presumably we can all recall from our youth, how terrible they were, it is very nice to have grown out of them. He has also been doing his level best to satisfy them. Rosie could hardly go for a poo on our walk this morning because every time she paused and bent her little knees, Roger Poopy was straight in there, bouncing all over her like Harvey Weinstein auditioning a teenager hoping for a leading role.
Rosie has not minded this at all. In fact she has been thrilled. She adores Roger and he usually ignores her with the lofty disdain of a primary school teacher who has just heard a child whisper Bum in front of an Ofstead inspector.
Sher is now the object of his undiluted passion. He is delirious with love for her, and she has reciprocated with the sort of happiness that could only be felt by somebody small and ugly if their favourite pop star unexpectedly dropped round and declared undying love for them.
We have got a bit sick of this. It is tiresome to be living in the middle of a panting, excited canine version of some of the dodgier sections of the mighty internet. They kept it up long into the night, like the Duke of Marlborough when he came back from the wars and couldn’t even wait to get his boots off.
We have been discussing this.
Rosie is also going to have her vital bits removed at some point in the future, probably sooner rather than later, but in the meantime I do not think a dog should be eternally deprived of having puppies. She needs to have at least one time in her life when she has a small squishy creature to adore, and Rosie is a creature of passionate affections.
Hence we called some friends who have a spare, but nevertheless unmutilated boy dog, small and appealing, apart from a savage temper and a tendency to bite, and we asked if we could borrow him for a few days.
They obliged, and he has arrived this morning.
This was when the love story became a tragedy.
Poor, cuckolded Romeo Poopy.
We decided that we should give the newcomer every possible opportunity to become acquainted with Rosie.
The newcomer liked this idea. He is a bit elderly, more of a Jeffrey Epstein than a Leonado di Caprio, but he recognised an opportunity in a fraction of a second, and set about a laborious courtship.
Poor, poor Roger.
He had to be extricated from the scene.
Not only was his gooseberry-presence something of a passion-killer, but he was not at all keen to surrender his entitled position of seigneur-in-residence, and we had to bundle the lovers into the conservatory to get acquainted.
Rosie turned out to be unexpectedly monogamous, and there was a dreadful hour during which Romeo and Rosie, torn apart by the cruelties of fate and separated by the glass conservatory door, whimpered and barked and scrabbled at the door in a futile attempt to be reunited, whilst the newly-imported swain attempted to engage her attention without success.
Eventually we got sick of it, and Mark shoved poor lovesick Romeo Poopy into the back of the car and took him to the farm, where he sat alone in the middle of the field and howled, despairingly, for the rest of the afternoon. Mark bellowed at him to shut up, but he was too lost in tragedy to control himself.
Rosie did not howl. Rosie sat by the back gate and whimpered.
Time is passing, and they are becoming more resigned to their separation. Rosie has stopped growling at her new suitor and has begun to acknowledge his advances with what might be described as a weary resignation, and a longing gaze at whichever door behind which she knows Roger Poopy to be imprisoned.
Fortunately this tragedy does not have to end with melodramatic teenage murder-suicide disasters, and once the Deed Is Done the interloper can be shunted off back home and Roger and Rosie will very probably forget all about it. It is hardly likely that Roger Poopy will associate the appearance of summer poopies with this tragic interlude, and so he can take on the happy role of proud father without ever needing to know that there is considerable evidence to the contrary.
Still, tonight he is the saddest dog I have ever seen.
You might need to wring out your handkerchiefs.
