I can see inside your head

For a long time now Beattie's normal daily routine, after breakfast and a visit to the garden, is to while away the morning sleeping on the sofa till lunchtime. All sorts of chaos can occur around her yet she slumbers peacefully through it. So yesterday, when I had to do a homecheck on prospective adopters for breed welfare, the plan was to leave her there and take Piglet as sole accompaniment. (When I first started doing this I used to take Clover and Beattie, then I changed to taking Harry and Beattie because he was bigger and potentially more of a shock to the people I was visiting - better that they change their minds before getting a dog than after - and then when Beattie got too frail for this Harry came on his own. This was to be Piglet's first go at home visiting; a more untypical dog would be hard to find, but needs must.)

So how did Beattie know what was going on? Just we were getting ready to leave she woke, descended majestically from the sofa and appeared in the hall, demanding to be taken too. So insistent was she that nobody was going anywhere without her that she stumped up to the front door and leaned her head against it. There's more going on in her head than we realised, and although she's incredibly wobbly she's not ready to give up on Life just yet.

Boys will be boys, bad boy, bad boy

When the neighbours came round the other evening for beer and cheese (when although we laid on tons of food we still managed to have more at the end than when we started, despite all eating and drinking ourselves silly), the conversation turned (as it does) to the subject of urination, and how much one would have to drink to write one's name in the snow. Christopher decided that it wasn't physically possible (he could possibly manage 'Christop' but definitely no more), but we reckoned we had an advantage there. One of our lovely neighbours, who didn't believe anyone would do it, is also very trusting, so when we saw the bank of snow she'd cleared from her drive, we couldn't resist ....



(No, it's really yellow food colouring from a washing-up liquid bottle, but I'm betting her shriek of horror when she sees it will carry for miles!)

Now I'm here

Now you see me ...



...now you don't!