There are Christmas crackers and then there are Christmas crackers! If you haven’t ever encountered a set that come with eight whistles each at a different pitch, with one of the group conducting everyone to play a tune then you are more fortunate than I am. Dog whistles are used to give instructions and obeying a whistle is something that seems to almost come naturally. In fact the other day when my mistress was watching ‘one man and his dog’ I was almost ready to help herd the sheep on the screen. Meanwhile, back at the Christmas crackers, I got so confused as to whether I should sit down, lie down or stay that in the end there was nothing else for it but to go to bed and leave them to it. To help you realise how desperate a measure that was, they were eating at the same time so I missed out on a whole meal of scraps.
I have been looking back at my last year’s new year resolutions. My first one was to find a girlfriend. I have failed in that department, although my mistress has promised to get me a little girl puppy next year. I was going to try to get my Woodland Stories published but I am still working on that one too. If I remember rightly, my mistress had one or two objectives for me, but I strongly suspect I have failed on every count as far as they are concerned. I have reached the conclusion that if I don’t actually set any for the coming year, then I can’t possibly fail. I know that isn’t going to push me to improve myself either but you may be forgetting that I am a dog, and improvement is not compulsory. Besides, how do you improve on perfection?