Saturday 25th February 2006

I’m having difficulty in getting hold of 4 paw sized roller blades. It doesn’t seem that dogs are very well catered for with sports equipment, at least not for this type of sport anyway.  In fairness there is a lot more for dogs than there is for squirrels! They said I can try agility or flyball but I have to be older before they will let me do those as well. I really do need to get the hang of cornering before I try agility; I suppose the same would be true for the roller blading. I was asking my mistress what went wrong when she went roller blading. She seemed reluctant to tell me but I got it out of her in the end. Apparently she couldn’t work out how to stop! First of all she managed to go one way from her house and only stopped by running into the sign for the road name and falling head long into somebody’s garden. Then she went the other way and stopped by running into a lamppost and hitting it very hard. She has told me that she ended up at hospital but given my fondness for lampposts I am still anxious for news of whether the lamppost was ok, it seems a bit rude to ask her about that. You would like to think this all happened a very long time ago but it was when she was about thirty and I thought humans were supposed to be the sensible ones!

So before I start my roller blading I am going to try and practice both cornering and stopping. I am also going to see if the mistress’s knee pads and wrist pads will fit me, I fear they may be a little on the large side.

I heard somewhere that aloe vera is good for you and that you rub the juice from the leaves into your skin to sooth it. I have been working on the assumption that it must also be good to eat it. My mistress has an aloe vera plant that sits on the window ledge in the kitchen just along from the plant ‘intensive care unit’. I should perhaps say ‘sat’. I had been chewing the leaves as I would on any normal day when the plant pot decided to extract revenge and jumped off the window sill causing the aloe vera plant to hit me before landing inelegantly on the floor surrounded by its soil. There was one of those classic moments when my mistress came in where the plant and I, in unison, pointed to each other and said “It wasn’t me it was him.” Well I am sure my mistress must have believed me over the dumb plant, although the plant certainly seemed to get more attention for his injuries than I did. I’ll have you know that wounded pride can be very painful!