Every so often my Mistress gets a little carried away with her own capabilities. Fair enough she doesn’t feel well enough to go to the dentist tomorrow and yes there is still snow everywhere, but despite the fact she did once remove stitches from a cat is that any excuse to convince yourself you are capable of removing your own stitches from your mouth. “How are you going to see what you’re doing?” Was my first question and that was before we got into the whole question of sterile environments. At the point she said I was going to hold the mirror for her I was out of there faster than you can say ‘coward’. All right so I know I’ve been playing ‘nurse dog’ while she has been ill and I do a good line in constantly warm hot water bottle (that would be me – if of course you don’t mind your hot water bottle snoring occasionally), but I don’t do the holding of mirrors when there is delicate cutting going on and the possibility of blood. I realise it isn’t so bad if it isn’t my blood, but I still think there are limits to what a dog should be asked to do, faithful friend or not.
Now I know I said our usual birds seem to have absented themselves from the garden, but there now seem to be one or two that I haven’t seen around here before. There are some big ones that look as though they don’t really belong in a household garden and are disproportionately large for the bird table. Now don’t get me wrong, if they want to knock the bird food onto the floor for me to eat that is fine, but the problem comes when I want to go out and eat it and they just stand their ground and look at me as though I am the one that is out of place. Apparently they are crows and they felt a bit peckish in the bad weather, but I don’t see why they should pick our garden to monopolise. You would think three dogs would be enough to put them off.