Not to Mention the Dog

I keep having this strange feeling that there’s a dog in the room.  Oh, good.  There is.

I’m looking after him while his owners (assorted members of the clan) are away for a long weekend.  I think of him as a dog in law.  I’ve done this before and he knows me well so it’s no great ordeal, rather the opposite even if he is a touch excitable and tactile in his affection.  At least he’s sleeping through nights now.  The first time he came to live at my expense, I awoke at about four in the morning as I sometimes do and sleepily went for my glass of water before falling back asleep until a reasonable hour.  On this occasion though I was brought to a fuller awakeness by a furry snout and wet nose thrust towards my face, attached to a dog that was not only wagging its tail but its whole body in that way that long-leggéd canines can.  ‘Oh great,’ he seemed to saying, ‘this is way earlier for my walk than my usual owners manage!’  I was obliged to disillusion him but he bore the sorrow well.

Better than he did than when he arrived on that first visit.  After his pack had left, he took to his basket and whenever I looked around I could see just his two eyes poking out from his bed and gazing at me with complete and total reproach.  As it happened, another brother ‘phoned just then so I shared my discomfort with him.  He failed to help by pointing out that not only was the dog obviously thinking ‘I’ll never see them again’, he was also thinking ‘And it’s all your fault.’  Very helpful.  My lodger cheered up soon enough though, round about lunchtime if memory serves.

It’s all been less fraught this time.  A twenty-something neighbour referred to him as a doggy, being apparently unaware that there is an age restriction on that word, otherwise all well so far.  And best of all, we haven’t found a corpse. 

As any reader of the crime reports in the papers will be aware, murder victims are frequently found by dog walkers and this always alarms me mildly whenever I am dog sitting.  He’s here for another day, so fingers crossed, I really don’t have the time right now for the paperwork.

On an entirely different topic, it was brought to my attention last night that for the last four years I have been completely misunderstanding the purpose of those label things that you put on your blog.  I thought they had something to do with search engines, apparently not.  It seems they’re an aid to navigating to my other blog entries.  To quote Jessica Hynes’ character in Twenty Twelve: ‘Who knew?’.

Given I was in the habit of ensuring that I never repeated a label, this will have meant that anyone clicking on one will probably have been directed back to the blog they’d just read.

Sorry about that.