Thursday 6th December 2012 – Dear Puppies

I spoke too soon about the wind. Shadow is not completely cured! To be fair she is not quite so bad and she’s still improving health wise with her appetite starting to return, although still only if my Mistress can tempt her with something expensive. Ari is sulking as he is going swimming today for the first time in three weeks. He was rather hoping that my Mistress had forgotten about that. I pointed out to him that she rarely forgets about anything. Although that would have had more weight if she hadn’t come in yesterday and announced ‘I’ve just realised it’s nearly Christmas. I’d forgotten about that.’ With less than three weeks to go it’s a good job she has remembered, that’s all I can say! She’s going to ask my Master if he can go to buy the tree this weekend so that we can get really festive.

The puppies are like little raptors when they are taking milk from Shadow. I’m starting to feel quite sorry for her. They are very effective at suction now and poor Shadow doesn’t stand a chance.

I wrote a little letter to the puppies yesterday. This is what it said.

Dear Puppies,

If you look out through the window of your room you will see gently falling white stuff. That is snow. In the land of our fathers (it dawned on me yesterday that to a dog in this household all our fathers are Swiss) you get a lot more snow than you get here. You need to make the most of what we get as it often goes again quite quickly. One day you may be lucky enough to go to Switzerland. I’ve been and so have both your mother and Megan, in fact Megan was born there. They have lots of snow that stays right through the winter. Sometimes we get it for a few weeks so you may get chance to play in it before you go off to your new homes.  When I was a puppy my Mistress used to tease me by throwing a snowball for me to chase. I’d look for it for ages, not realising it had disappeared back into the rest of the snow. Be smart little puppies and don’t bother chasing snowballs. The only ephemeral things worth chasing are your dreams. Don’t lose sight of them. If you want to be a ballet dancer or a belly dancer don’t let anyone say to you ‘You’re a dog, you can’t do things like that.’ There is nothing more limiting than your own minds. If you believe you can do something then you probably can. In just a couple of days you will move into your big pen and your days of helplessness will be at an end and the beginning of your whole life lies ahead. Grow up to be excellent examples of our breed and all that is best of our character.

With love from

Uncle Alfie

Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@alfiedog.me.uk

Alfie’s Diary – the Book is available at Amazon UK –https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00583ZGSA

You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com