Alarmingly, my Mistress has decided that the book that she has completed the first draft of and which she is about to start editing, needs another five characters. How do you suddenly drop five more people into a story? If she’s serious, I think it’s going to be an awful lot of work to do it seamlessly, so that it looks as though they were meant to be there all the time and have a genuine role to play. Firstly, she needs to decide who they are and how they fit with the story and that in itself could keep her occupied for a week or two.
Some dogs come into season every six months and some dogs every four months. Inconveniently, from a pet care perspective, Shadow is every four months. Of course, once she starts having litters of puppies that will make the whole timing of them much easier to achieve when it’s convenient to the rest of us. At the moment, in her naivety, Shadow seems under the impression that she will have some sort of say as to when she has puppies. What planet is she living on? For a start it has long been a concern of the Pet Dogs Democratic Party just how many of our decisions are made by humans, before you even think about the fact that without my Mistress she stands no chance of meeting an appropriate boy dog. Oh, there are boys round here that would be only too happy to oblige, but none of them are the same breed as us and she’ll never be allowed to go down that route. Besides which, I’ve established a vetting process and it isn’t likely that any old dog would pass. I’ve got standards. My questions include things such as ‘how do they expect to provide for their family?’ and ‘will they be around to help with the night time feeds?’ I shall also be looking carefully at their long term career prospects and whilst many round here seem to be working dogs, there aren’t that many who seem to have any chance of promotion, and that’s before you even start looking at the wages they are currently bringing home.