There are two things worrying me today, firstly the extent that my Mistress is joining into the spirit of Halloween. OK so Andy is on school holidays and maybe he did want to make a pumpkin lantern, but my Mistress has been away for a week and needs to spend some time catching up, so why is she planning to spend the afternoon making a Halloween lantern? She could be playing with us, which would be a far better use of her time. It isn\u2019t even as though she will be home for it, there\u2019s a Parish Meeting that she\u2019s going to \u2013 unless she\u2019s planning to take her lantern with her to liven things up a bit! The second thing is that she has enrolled on a six week study course in genetics with a view to understanding us better. I said a dog psychology course might have been more useful, but apparently she didn\u2019t mean that sort of understanding. She wants to have a better understanding of how some of the genes we carry are passed on and whether they are likely to lead to specific characteristics. For example, Shadow clearly carries the \u2018curled tail\u2019 gene and from observation probably that seems to affect about half her puppies even though her own tail does not curl and nor do her brothers\u2019. My Mistress has worked out the dog in the line that it seems to come from, but in other generations it seems to have been dormant \u2013so why has it come out now? Anyway, she may not find the answer to that specific question but she\u2019s hoping to start making some sense of how we work genetically. It\u2019s a scary prospect. I feel a bit like a Lego animal about to be deconstructed to see how it was put together.<\/p>\n
Alfie\u2019s Diary \u2013 the Book is available at Amazon UK –https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/dp\/B00583ZGSA<\/a><\/p>\n You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"