I have been nagging and nagging my mistress to take me on the picnic on Sunday with all the other Swiss Mountain dogs in the Belgian club. It would be such fun. She has also said I can enter one of my pictures in the competition to choose what will go on next year’s calendar. I wanted to enter the one of me in the car but she says that isn’t our photo and she thinks it is already being entered. She wants to enter the one of me with snow on my nose but I am not certain that shows my features to best advantage. I did suggest if the ones of me with her in her wedding dress were any good we could use one of those but she didn’t seem to think that was appropriate.
I am surprised how long it is taking her to unpack everything so she said she didn’t think the wedding dress pictures would be ready in time. Then she cut her thumb on a broken butter dish and gave up the unpacking altogether.
On a more cheery note it seems I am becoming more agile. It wasn’t that I wanted to be clumsy before it was just that bits of me did not yet work in quite the way I might have liked them too. I still have a way to go on cornering. That seems to be a problem by my going too fast in the first place and therefore not being able to slow down at exactly the point I wanted to change direction. Where I have made an enormous amount of progress is in being a little more nimble. Now that my back legs are stronger and I can put all my weight on them, I can raise my front legs and gently put them on my mistress’s knee rather than cause a wide range of bruises. I even managed to jump on top of her on the settee without causing quite as much pain as normal which has to be an improvement. Sometimes I just forget she isn’t a dog and is more sensitive, then in my enthusiasm I jump on top of her and cause some superb bruises. I know she bruises easily but there are times that her legs are almost rainbow coloured and it’s mainly my fault. If she didn’t walk into things it would help too. Perhaps now I am getting the hang of it I should start trying to teach her to be more agile and nimble too, maybe she just needs to learn. I suspect at her age teaching her would prove a little difficult so maybe I just have to let her get bruised.