Our walk yesterday didn’t go according to plan. My Mistress decided that it was a nice spring day and we could go for a nice long walk. It might be a springlike day, but the ground still thinks its winter and to describe it as wet would be a significant understatement. Our first problem wasn’t the mud though, it was me. I got to about as far away from home as we were going and looked up at her and said ‘Can I have a carry?’ It works for other members of the family, even when they aren’t really tired, I thought it had to be worth trying for me, given that I was very tired. She looked at me very sympathetically and said ‘Alfie, you weigh thirty kilos, how do you expect me to carry you?’ I shrugged. ‘But I’m tired and I don’t think I can go any further.’ So we had a bit of a discussion and I promised I really wasn’t putting it on. She rang my Master to see if he could come to pick us up. Unfortunately he didn’t hear the phone, which left us pretty much stuck. There was nowhere to sit to have a rest, so we just stood in the middle of a muddy field. Once I recovered enough to carry on, it turned out that that particular bit of field wasn’t muddy, at least not in comparison to the complete bog we still had to walk through. There was one point where my Mistress got a bit frightened as both her boots were firmly stuck in the mud and every time she pulled they seemed to go in further. She was shouting to me to stay away from the worst bit of it and then as she pulled her boot out she nearly fell forwards into the mud. If she hadn’t been a bit worried it would have been quite funny. We walked home slowly and I was fine, until she washed me down before allowing me in the house. I do hate it when I don’t get the chance to lick the mud off.