Well diary she has got to be joking! When she told me we were going out in the car last night I thought ‘Oh no! We must be going to the vet.’ So I ran in the other room and refused to come and have my collar put on. Well I can honestly say after the way the evening turned out I wish we had been going to the vet. When your mistress coaxes you to the car telling you that it is going to be fun and you are going to get to play with lots of other dogs it builds a little puppy’s hopes up. So I went along with the plan.
The puppy class was held in the middle of a field. ‘So what?’ I hear you ask. Well it rained yesterday. Not the little bit of drizzly rain that makes no difference, no, the full-blown soaked to the skin and little brook is now a raging torrent sort of rain. I think you may be starting to get the picture. So there I am in a field, on a February evening, with floodlights in the distant corner, leaving the puppy ring very dark, standing in 3 cms of muddy water! I don’t just mean it was damp, I mean I was up to my ankles in water. And there’s the mistress in white training shoes. I really don’t think she had thought it through very well. Well diary, what was I expected to do? It was bad enough that the bloke spoke all in Flemish and neither my mistress nor I had much idea what was going on. I think she understood about one word in ten and for reasons that will become apparent the ones I did understand I thought it best to ignore! My mistress has taught me to sit, stay, fetch and I will roll over for just about anyone but when you are asked to sit, lie down and roll over in 3 cms of muddy water would you cooperate? I just looked up at her and in fairness she couldn’t bring herself to make me either. Oh I enjoyed meeting the other puppies and I had a lovely run round. I was happy to come when called but whatever they said there was no way I was going to put my delicate little bottom down in that amount of muddy water. Overall my mistress had a really bad evening too, she hates going into situations where she doesn’t know anyone and when she gets there to find there is very little English spoken and then has to spend an evening in a muddy field feeling completely and utterly lost, well you have to feel a little bit sorry for her, and I don’t think her training shoes will ever be the same again.