Thursday 23rd March 2006

The Magpie post delivered another visiting permit from hedgehog this morning. I hadn’t even asked for this one. I am really not sure whether to go.

As we only have a month to complete the plans for the den and submit them for planning approval, I went to see squirrel to work on the outline. We drew most of it out and started to think about the materials I want to build it out of and then took it along to ‘Beaver Builders’ to get an estimate of how much wood we would need. We thought about getting an alternative quote from ‘Mole Construction’ but squirrel said from what she had heard they would be better called ‘Mole Destruction’ so I thought I would give it a miss. As we walked through the forest I thought about playing hide and seek with James last week and wished he were here to play now. It was such fun. My mistress counted whilst I stayed with her and James went to hide behind one of the trees. Then when she got to 20 the mistress let go of my collar and told me to go and find James. Well in fairness it wasn’t that hard as I had only pretended to close my eyes, but I would run and just stand there for a while, pretending I didn’t know where he was. Then he would move or call ‘Alfie’ and I would go bounding up to him. Then we would move on a little way and play again. It was such good fun. I did try doing it by smell but unfortunately my mistress in her lack of understanding of boys had made James wash, so he wasn’t so easy to find. I was looking quite wistful when squirrel asked what I was thinking about and brought me back to earth with a bump. When I told her, she suggested that the two of us could play but she cheated by hiding up a tree and I got fed up.

After all my concern about puppy training I didn’t get to go last night anyway. I was almost sorry. It is one of those things that you pretend you don’t want to do because it doesn’t seem cool to want to go to ‘obedience training’ but privately you think it is really fun to see all the other dogs and bounce on them in a way you can only get away with while you are a puppy. The problem with pretending you didn’t want to do something is that you can’t then mope about with disappointment when you don’t get to do it. I spent all evening having to pretend I was happy. I suppose it wasn’t that hard as I did have my master and mistress all to myself for the evening.