Further Aspects of Puppy

 

I’ve actually got some work done today.*  Cheers and shouting.

Today’s firsts include going up to Third House for a race around the garden.  And finding that that whole end of the street is blocked by the builders opposite Third House knocking two cottages into one.**  As has become usual.  The builders are, fortunately, mostly very nice, and someone came trotting along to move the largest and most driveway-blocking van.  He came round to apologise which wasn’t necessary but I appreciate the effort to stay on the locals’ good side, and I’d just let the hellhounds out of the back of Wolfgang, and was carrying Pavlova.  He said he had lurchers at home—‘the hairy kind’—and I said that my guys were part deerhound but none of the litter was broken-coated.  He turned to Pavlova and said, oh, bull terriers, I love that profile.  Mini bull terrier, I said hastily** as he petted her and I ticked another big bloke in my Pavlova’s Encounters mental list*** but it wasn’t till later that it occurred to me that with two lurchers and a bull terrier I have the perfect hard-man dog profile.  Oops.  I’ll just have to wear more pink. †

 

gymnastic puppy

 

There Is Something Back There. Yes, there is. The Dirty Laundry Monster.

 

galloping (blurry) puppy

 

Outside the hellhound gate. I’m so little, but they won’t play with meeeeeeeee. –It’s true, I have to lock them in when she’s loose. They’re TERRIFIED, and paste themselves at the back of their crate.

 

Intent. Person with Camera is holding a Dangerous Toy and it is up to the Intrepid Bull Terrier Puppy to Save the Universe.

* * *

* And one doodle.  Sigh.

** Do you remember the whole business about getting the 1,000,000-foot-high Leylandii in the corner of Third House’s driveway taken down?  That since I’m in a ‘conservation’ area I have to get permission to cut a tree down, which in theory sounds fine, but we’re talking bureaucracy here and I got refused.  WHAT?  Is the city council out of its tiny mind?  Meanwhile the two little old people in those last two cottages in the row were pathetically insistent that the tree had to come down, it was their roof it would (probably) fall on, if a wind took it over.  Arrrgh.  The tree surgeon I’d used once before said, leave it to me, I know someone in the Tree Division.  And the tree FINALLY came down.

And the two little old people in those last two cottages died one right after the other about a month later.  I like to think that at least they slept better those last weeks, not worrying about that tree.

Anyway.  Those two cottages.  Someone bought them both and is spending an extraordinary amount of time and builders on renovations.

** You know her ears still aren’t up. . . . I actually like the little flopped-over ear-tips and I wouldn’t mind if they just stayed that way.  It would also mean that I wouldn’t have to worry that she is so fabulously the perfect breed type that it would be my duty to show her.^  Just so long as it doesn’t mean that she’s planning to grow into the Fifty-Foot Woman’s henchdog.^^

^ Diane in MN, stop that laughing.  It wouldn’t be me, it would probably be Southdowner, since she’s the one with major showing experience, but I suspect I’d be sucked into wanting to go along to watch.  Have I mentioned that Pavlova’s dad won best of breed at Crufts last year?  Olivia sent me the YouTube link.+  And Pavlova has his blaze—the broad crooked stripe that slides off one side of the nose.

+ If there’s a clamour I can post it, but it’s the whole Best in Show class and it goes on forever.

^^ Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman and Her Bull Terrier.  Now there’s a monstrous image.

*** Ian Dunbar Get Stuffed.  I read Before and After You Get Your Puppy because Southdowner and Olivia INSISTED and yes, okay, lots of good positive suggestions and a blessed lack of alpha rolls and the attitude that goes with them, but for those of us prone to guilt and the deep conviction that we’re Doing It Wrong, I really resent his insistence that if your puppy hasn’t met 3,912 people by the time she’s three months old including a tall black man on a pogo stick and a short Japanese woman in a heavily embroidered wedding kimono YOU HAVE RUINED YOUR DOG FOR LIFE.  I’m failing, okay?  Pavlova is going to grow up twisted.^

^ Speaking of twisted.  What is the matter with a world where people don’t smile at a puppy?  You don’t have to be a dog person.  I smile at kittens.  Little baby mammals are cute.  I smile at BABIES, the distressingly furless human ones, and they’re usually snotty and drooling.  I was expecting a lot of good engagement in Mauncester yesterday, but no.

† And let us not forget Southdowner’s Hazel’s pink feather boa.  I can totally see Pavlova in a pink diamante collar.^

^ I knew I was glad to have another girl around again.