I am in disgrace and even I think that it’s reasonable that I’m in trouble. I don’t know what came over me. I can offer no reasonable explanation. We got off the boat to go for a walk in Bruges and I saw a small white dog that I didn’t like. I don’t know why I didn’t like it, I just didn’t. Anyway, I became really aggressive and unmanageable. I have never behaved like that in my life and my Mistress has made quite clear she never expects me to do it again. I was so bad that a man shouted from a boat that I should get some training and as much as his comment was not appreciated, he probably had a point. I can only put it down to having been cooped up all day, but even that isn’t a good enough explanation. After that we went for a long walk, but Ari wanted to play and neither of us would settle down so we were taken in opposite directions so that we’d calm down. My Master and Andy took me and my Mistress and Dan took Ari. We got back the the boat after half an hour having gone back the way we came. My Mistress was confident that it was about the same distance the other way for them but they didn’t come back. . . not for ages. It turned out they got hopelessly lost and ended up walking about 5 miles. The canal they were following wasn’t the one they thought it was and they were walking away from the city. They got back in the end, but by then the light was fading fast.
Then yesterday we left Bruges and headed back to the marina. There were lots of bridges to go through Where they had to lift the bridges and it all took ages as we kept having to wait. On the way down to Bruges it was very quick and all the bridges let us through, but then we were following a big barge and they get priority.
So that’s that. The end of boating for another year. No one actually fell in – not completely. No harm done and everyone had a great time; so much so that my Mistress wants to do it all again next year!