My Mistress wasn’t feeling very well yesterday morning, so I decided to help with a few things. It’s fair to say they didn’t go awfully well. Have you ever tried cutting up a pineapple when you’ve only got paws to do it with? There is a reason that dogs put their heads directly into their bowls to eat their food and don’t use a knife and fork and it isn’t just that we are trying to cut down on the washing up! I got on no better trying to finish the washing for her and to be fair it would have helped if I’d washed my paws after dealing with the pineapple. In the end she decided that I’d done quite enough and she could probably manage if I wanted to go and have a nap or chase the birds. At that point I was very relieved to take her up on her offer. It isn’t that I didn’t want to help, but I just wasn’t cut out for some of what needed doing.
I don’t think I’m supposed to be mentioning it, but my Mistress is trying to learn German. She hasn’t got very far yet, but she said if she’s going to be making lots of trips to Switzerland over the next few years then it would be helpful if she could speak some of the language. She has committed herself to studying for half an hour a day and is working her way through some rather good language cds. I’ve been sitting with her while she does it and I now know how to say ‘Would you like to eat?’, which frankly seems quite an important starting point and of course the answer to that is invariable ‘Yes’. It has been a joke with my Mistress for years that her one line of German is ‘I have bought a new jacket.’ That was because she had actually just bought a new jacket, some twenty five years ago when a friend’s cousin, who was German, tried to teach her some of the language. If she is being completely honest she also knows how to ask for a cup of coffee, which is probably rather more important than the jacket.