Black Doggerel

Woodbury Avenue, 11.30pm. It's pouring with rain and ankle-deep in wet oak leaves, and the dogs and I are walking, like we do. A mouse inexplicably shoots out of a pile of leaves in the road and tries to hide under Spike.

Mouse: OH YAY A BIG THING TO HIDE UNDER!

Spike: EEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!! *teleports four feet straight upwards, lands again, registers mouse by his feet*

Spike: HOLY SHIT IT'S ALIVE! PANIC!!! *dives behind my legs*

Mouse: HOLY SHIT IT'S ALIVE! PANIC!!! *dives behind fence*

Squish: *oblivious to collie dramaz* MY POINTER SENSES ARE TINGLING! *points mouse with great, if slightly wary enthusiasm*

Spike and Mouse: Er, you didn't see that, right?

Me: LOL.

Last night I dreamed Spike had run away. He came back, and I held him because I was so glad and relieved; and then I realised that his ribs were all caved in and broken, and he was bleeding from his nose and mouth. That he'd dragged himself back to me to die in my arms.

I was lucky; for some reason it was one of those dreams where you KNOW it's a dream while you're dreaming it. I managed to wake myself up without that awful moment when you truly aren't certain whether it really happened. I still had to call him over for a cuddle but my heart had known all along that my brain was just fucking with it. Possibly the idea of Velcro Shark Dog actually running away was too unlikely to swallow; either way, I am damn grateful.

Then I load up my friendslist and find someone else with essentially the same dream about her dog. What the fuck, is it the phase of the moon or something? Incubi?

*hugs*

Squish's recall has become so much more reliable that I am allowing him some park romp time off his longleash, although I keep it on him till he's done with his independent pottering and sniffing and shown me clearly that he's in the Retrieve Zone. For a long time now, the longleash has been not really necessary for him; it's just that I only have one brain, two hands and two feet and I also have Spike. But Squish isn't built for ten-yard retrieves, he's a long-legged distance running dog and I've felt for a long time that it's not fair to keep denying him the chance to really open up. And he's been so damn good, and the joy just shines off him when I let him loose. I don't leave him loose very long because I'm still outnumbered and overdogged, but I can see it doing him good physically and emotionally. I am pleased.

Just FYI: A 60lb pointer hitting the end of a 10 metre longleash at the highest speed he can reach in that distance = MORE than enough to yank a 200lb+ woman off her feet and drag her several feet along the ground in a classically slapstick manner. The only thing missing from the comedy cliche was the cowpats.

I love my thricedamned fucking dogs.

Some dog people on my f-list started a meme: Dog Breeds I Would Like to Own Before I Die.

I looked at Spike and realised, I got nothing. You're it, babe. You spoiled me for all those others, however fine.
I'd like to live long enough to have a few different Border Collies: a blue merle, a bitch. And if I happen to live long enough to be too old and wobbly to cope with a Border Collie I would maybe have a sheltie or one of the smaller corgi breeds, or a Papillon. But I'm not sure I really want to live as long as all that.

Edited to add: What I really wish is that I'd happened to collide with Border Collies much earlier. I think my life might have turned in a radically different direction if I'd had something like that to live up to. And I think I would have preferred it.

( I CAN HAS SNOW )

these are rather crappy pics. It was 7am-ish, me having been up all night due to random inability to sleep, and when we got out there Spike was as excited about the snow as I was, wouldn't keep still and kept body-slamming me. So there's some collie-based camera shake going on. But the camera still seems to work OK even though he made me drop it.

SNOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!

most of what had fallen in the early hours melted during daylight. But it's started falling again, so hopefully I can do better later.

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Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall fences in a single bound. The dog that all sheep talk about but never want to meet. The fur that legends are made of. Makes coyotes cringe, sheep trip the light fantastic and eagles soar somewhere else.

...the Border Collie. Quote from Baxter Black's Border Collie Soliloquy.

Dear Squish,

You know, the singing dog routine rather loses its cute value when I've had to delete a quarter of my playlist because of your excessive musical reactivity. No Ramones, no Nick Lowe, no Led Zep, lose anything with saxophones or a "woo-woo" chorus, lose all my Big Finish Seventh Doctor audio dramas (fortunately it's only the Sylvester McCoy version of the Who theme that sets him off). Also, Spike has picked up the habit and now sometimes starts howling even before Squish notices one of his tunes is playing. It's actually impossible to remove everything that makes him howl, because every week he latches onto one or two new sounds, often things he's been hearing for years without so much as a squeak.

You missed your vocation, my Squishhead. You should have been a hearing dog for the deaf; you would have shone at that, and a deaf person would have been immune to your special powers of sonic annoyance, your earbleeding whine, glass-shattering sudden yaps and that very special sound you make when you see a fox - I've never actually heard a pig being skinned alive, you understand, but thanks to Squish I don't need to try too hard to imagine what it must sound like.

You annoy the crap out of me, you little spotted groove machine. I love you.

AAAAARGH I am still desperately trying to keep up with the comments from the last few entries when the alarm goes off again. And I need to pee and my dogs need walking. Amuse yourselves for the next half hour pls!