I am so excited. Today I am going to see my family. I don’t know how many will be there but I haven’t seen 2 of my sisters and my brother since I was about 8 or 9 weeks old. I might also meet some of my half brothers and sisters and they can tell me some more about what the next stage of growing up will be like. We don’t all live in Belgium or all have English owners so I am not sure whether I am going to have some problems with the language but some things are the same in any language. I have a lovely new collar with bones on it that I have asked my mistress if I can wear and I have been getting my coat looking it’s best specially. Of course that plan was slightly spoilt by my mistress applying tick treatment to me. She had promised I didn’t have to have it until after the visit but I went and got a tick and ended up at the vet having an antibiotic injection and so she had to apply it early. I suppose it isn’t really her fault but it has spoilt some of my hard work. I do hope my family remember me and want to play. I wonder of they will be impressed that I can now cock my leg?
Hedgehog now seems very settled in his pile of leaves. He sat me down yesterday and said that he has been doing some thinking and he wants a name. Well obviously I said ‘You’ve already got one. You are called hedgehog.’ He laughed and said that was exactly his point. He is called hedgehog and he is a hedgehog. I on the other hand am a dog and am not called ‘dog’. I may be a little slow on the uptake but I began to get the point. I am called Alfie because that was what my mistress called me and my master conceded that being a dog that travels extensively round Europe the name Wellington might work less well. I do use Dog as my surname, as I couldn’t choose between my mistress’s and my master’s names, though I suppose once they get married I could change it. I then confused hedgehog by explaining that Alfie is not my real name, my mum called me Einstein probably in the hope that I would become a great scientist but my master and mistress decided that at home I should be called Alfie. At this point hedgehog got quite excited “So at home” he said “I could be called something other than hedgehog”. At which point I agreed but then we were both stuck as to what to actually call him. We decided that we would ask squirrel for advice. But she wasn’t in so we will have to try again later.