Well the day started as any other day does with me climbing out from under a 7 month old Labrador pup. She has discovered that if she waits until I'm asleep she can get on the bed and sleep the night away next to or on top of me.
I don't know why she waits until I'm asleep, I've never forbidden her to sleep on the bed, lord knows every dog I have had has been allowed the full run of the house. Hey they're family and only human after all.
Anyway I managed to get out of the bed without injuring myself or Pol (the Lab) and staggered down the stairs muttering to her to come downstairs and go outside for 'wees and poos'. She very obediently followed me down and I opened the door to the back garden only to be greeted by a blast of freezing rain hitting me full in the face. Her majesty was all for going back into the kitchen but I managed to jostle her out with my knee and she did her thing.
I made myself the first cup of caffeine of the day and went upstairs to get ready to take her ladyship to the park. She decided that the ideal place to wait for me to get ready was halfway up the stairs and she wasn't going to budge. Taking a leap that can only have been equalled by Clint Eastwood in the Eiger Sanction I jumped over her and managed to get to the north face of the stairs in one piece.
Now in the past I have always had rescue dogs, crossbreeds and the like, and they have never been particularly large so it is quite something when brushing your teeth to realise that your dog is next to you drinking the water as it comes out of the tap. So begins the second water experience of the day (the first being the rain in the face).
Off to the park where my Lab immediately takes on the mantle of the otter and hits every puddle and stream she can find. It's bad enough that we are getting soaked by the rain but she wants more and by gad she gets it. Happily there is a threshold of wetness beyond which she can get no wetter so once reached I relax a bit.
Back at the car I have to towel her to a relatively dry state otherwise she shakes herself and I get covered in water and dog hairs.
It's quite something if you have to bath her though. I'm talking major hysterics. Oh yes it's fine to leap about under the hose when I'm watering the garden, it's great to grab the nozzle and try to drink all the water coming through, but you try to get her into the bath and you've really got a fight on your hands. She develops extra legs ( I swear she does) and always manages to squirm away from me as I try to lift her in. Finally I get her in and washed clean, I towel her dry, I replace her dog collar (she hates to run around the house naked) and I release her so that I too can get cleaned up. What does she do? She only tries to get in the bloody shower with me.
Dogs. Egad. Next time I get a guinea pig instead.
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