Tuesday 6th June 2006

Back home again and out in the garden, can pheasants mimic peacocks or is there even more wildlife moving into the area? Some of these birds can be quite raucous when they want to be. It makes my occasional howling seem quiet. In my defence I do still only do it as a way to get the local hounds going and then trot in pretending I had no involvement. I can almost get away with it but I think my mistress has spotted that I am the ringleader. The peacocks joined in the howling earlier and faced with that I just had to carry on to prove that dogs can howl better than peacocks. I seem to be developing quite a competitive streak as I get older. Perhaps nurture is as important as nature and I am getting it from my mistress and master. There are times when I don’t know which of the three of us is worse. I’m inclined to think it is one of those two. Now I realise that to a dog this seems ridiculous but maybe in human circles it is normal. As a matter of norm my master does all the ironing and in general my mistress does all the clothes washing. Don’t get me wrong he is by no means one of your ‘new men’ but my mistress offered a deal whereby she would cook dinner every night if he would do the ironing. Well I’ve told you about the weekend he set fire to the oven gloves and burnt fish fingers in two separate incidents in one weekend, so it seemed like a good deal to him. However, every so often the pile of ironing is huge and despite his best endeavours it doesn’t entirely disappear. So there is my mistress saying she won’t do any more washing until the ironing basket is empty and there he is replying that he bets he can go longer without the washing being done than she can. And there you have it, two adults in the middle of a bet about how long they can go without the washing being done. The ground rules of the bet state that they have to change their clothes with the same frequency but it says nothing about just how odd the combination of clothes they wear can be. I ask you, when would you ever find a dog being as ridiculous as that?

Having not seen Harry and Nicole for a couple of days I am looking forward to seeing them at the Youth Cub later, but I really don’t know what I am going to say to Harry about whether I will have any way of going in search of mole’s ring. Perhaps we will have to find another way of doing it.