Prowling the shore

My latest new friend is Hazelnut, a delightful Saluki Greyhound. She is chock-full of vitality, at a massively higher level than any of the dogs we’ve met before. An assortment of semi-coordinated, rangy limbs that somehow carry her to where she wants to go… at high velocity. It was love at first sight. At last! A beauty who would chase & run, accelerate & feint, and who offered me a true sense of my own freedom of spirit. Missy was happy with her stick but all I wanted was the wind in my hair & a good old race with Hazelnut.

During one of our rare pauses, I overheard our humans discussing how we came to live with them & I thought to myself ‘how lucky are we?’ All three of us were ‘rescued’ to live this joyful & exciting life that could so easily have been denied to us. We may thank our lucky paws.

Before Hazelnut arrived at our cove, I had been trying to protect Missy & my human from a marauding, eight- legged, fishy-looking submariner in a shallow channel between the rocks, just at the low-tide mark. Clutching onto a small promontory, it surfaced every now and then and peered around, taking stock; probably planning its attack.

My human seemed to be amused rather than scared as I attempted to reach it from various vantage points on the outcrops. All to no avail!! It was as if it knew I was en-route to a given spot and just weaved out of my way before I reached it. I even tried slowly, paddling out to investigate more fully but it instinctively withdrew to a point just beyond my depth and where I was too nervous to venture.

‘It has the look of an octopus 👀 ‘, she said… ‘but it’s just seaweed’. (Such innocence😂…. I’m pleased she didn’t realise the perilous danger she was in.)

And then Hazelnut arrived to distract me. By the time our fun & games were done the beast had submerged more fully and somehow no longer looked threatening. I realised I had successfully & single-mindedly ‘seen it off’ whoop whoop!

On the way home in the 🚘 we listened to the very suitable song ‘Octopus’s Garden’ by the Beatles. 🎼🐾