My mistress must think I’m stupid. There she was putting the cardboard out for it to be collected for recycling today and there were about 5 or 6 lots to walk down the drive carrying. Did she really think I was going to walk up and down the drive that many times for absolutely no reason? Let’s face it, I can’t help carry the cardboard so it was all a bit of a pointless exercise as far as I was concerned. So I walked down the drive with her the first couple of times, just to make sure she was going to be ok and then I watched from the warmth of the garage as she wandered off into the rain on her own for the other trips. In my experience cardboard has only three uses. It can be chewed, peed on or used to light a fire, at least two of those leave it in no fit state for recycling and the third is questionable!
When it stopped raining for a while I went out to survey the forest in order to build my den. I have gone off the tree-house idea as I can’t work out how I would carry the logs up to build it. I have started to make a thorough investigation of the bases of all the trees by sniffing each of them in turn when we go for a walk. It may take me some time to complete the survey as my mistress seems to object to me stopping at every single tree and I have had to restrict it to about 1 in 6 and then run to catch up. I hope she isn’t like this when we walk anywhere with lampposts. It is essential as a dog to be able to sniff every lamppost in case anyone has left you a message, it’s like the doggy equivalent of email! So far from my investigations I am definitely favouring using an oak tree for the centre, but I haven’t decided whether to build it wigwam style round one tree or whether to embark (if you will forgive the pun) on a more ambitious project. I need to leave a hole, strategically placed, in the roof to allow the acorns to fall down inside my den and save me having to go and pick them up. However, I have not worked out how I can do this without also letting the rain and wind get in. I am in the process or designing ‘an acorn chute’ to act as a funnel to gather up all the acorns from the tree and bring them through one small hole in the roof into a special acorn storage area. Although the design is well in hand I have not worked out how I can make sure the leaves neither come in nor clog the mechanism. I think I might sleep on it for a while and see if I have a bright idea.