Oh my!! Whilst the weather here has undergone a slight bit of a change, it’s nothing compared to the churning out at sea. The enormous mounds of seaweed which have landed in Cove One are testament to that. Beached whale amounts have surged in and many have been stranded above the tide line. The photos do not do them justice as it merely resembles seaweed covered rocks … but believe me when I tried to scamper on them I almost became submerged & disappeared.
Meantime, back at the residence, things have quietened down somewhat. Missy & Hallie have both gone home🙁 so I am left to my own devices for a few days. I’m anticipating some doggie rest & recuperation time, with lots of spoiling & grooming, while listening to The Etta James version of ‘Stormy Weather’ on the boombox. 🎼
Life can be so interesting here at times. We’ve had a variety of visitors in the past while so I’ve been too ‘occupied’ to be blogging.
Mmmm… Where to start?
Ok. The Dog World!
Missy & I had the best of beach boisterousness with numerous canines since my previous missive. But I’ll spare ye too much detail so as not to bore y’all. Alright so! -just two episodes.
Daisy, a rescue dog, who we met a few times had a rude awakening when she sniffed at Missy’s stick. Let’s just say it didn’t happen twice. 😂
The following day, for the first time ever, the farmer’s collie dogs formed a welcoming party as we parked the car. The elder was a bit stiff & returned to base as soon as she heard her master calling. Little Meg, however, gamboled along with us as far as Cove 3. My favourite game of doggie tap & go ensued between herself & moi while Missy and the humans (plural) waddled & paddled & did some stick fishing exercises. Even when the humans paused for breakfast we furrowed our grooves in the virgin sand, making quite a mess in the process.
Pausing for breath I absorbed the sights & sounds of the morning, the sunlight dappling the tumbling cliff face, the dark rock, the shimmering seaweed, the dazzling water; the whoosh of a plane high in the sky, the gentle gurgling of the ebb & flow, the crunch of human feet on shells, the thunk of Missy’s stick as it occasionally landed short of its watery target, the babble of human chatter & chuckly laughter, numerous floating toots & avian warbles, followed by the more constant call of one bird in particular …. becoming very persistent actually! Turns out that was the whistling farmer coming looking for Meg. Seemingly she’s only a few months old & hasn’t learned how to correctly interpret the sounds of human summons yet. She was shortly being guided home on a short lead to resume ‘one man & his dog’ type lessons with the senior collie & her farmer.
And what do you think came on the radio in the 🚘 on the way home only ‘The Mexican Whistler’ by Roger Whittaker. How befitting 🎼🎶🐾
We had human visitors (I think their names were Porschia & Austin Martin). The doggie bonus was that extra titbits at mealtime became a reality for the duration of their stay. Lovely people.
In our efforts as tourist guides we brought them to lots of places in the locality and therefore we met many, many dogs. Whoop, whoop!
I recall some of their names and their games. Poldark liked to play piggy-back with me. Jake preferred to chase. Tiny Boo wanted to hide beneath my belly until Missy gave him a barking to. Willy liked to paddle in the shallows beside me. And there were more, but way too many to mention here. All in all we had great fun.
We also met some human children who wanted to pet us. Orla was my favourite out of all of them. So gentle.
Every time we meet someone with somedog my human relates a version of my story. So much so that the novelty of my history …. surrender/rescue/lovely story/ awwww/ such a lucky boy/bless him/bless you/what age did you say?/lovely coat/ still behaving like a puppy!/ … is rapidly wearing off me.
And then, the day after the visitors left I had such a strange experience…the rain arrived. Our brown lawn turned orange and lost that crispy feeling. Now if I want to scratch my back, I go slip-sliding down the garden’s slimey slope in an unsatisfactory & clumsy-looking comedy of errors. My human took one look at my efforts yesterday, chuckled & said …
‘You are just going to have to get used to a new normal, Brufus!’
We’ll see!
‘Slip Slidin’ Away’ by Paul Simon is my song of the day today 🎶🐾
Busy, busy, busy! But next time I get a chance I’ll tell u about all my new doggie friends. Bella. Buddy. Jake. Rosie. & Milly. A lotta paws for thought.
Anything by Buddy Holly might be a good music choice for today🎼🐾
I hear talk of severe drought. It hasn’t rained once since I arrived at my new home (though rumour has it there’s an 80% chance of rain at 4pm today). I had presumed it would simply always be dry & sunny – that it was just the usual climate in this exciting place. But no! Guess what? Humans have actually been praying for rain. Seems to have worked!
One consequence of the water shortage is that a hose-pipe ban has been implemented country-wide. Almost unheard of seemingly. My human is being very cautious with regard to tap-usage. Her water conservation is admirable in the extreme. In reality, some of her methods are very nearly bordering on OTT.
Hose forgotten, the poor old purple window boxes and pink plant pots are unwatered & long dead; literally reduced to a crisp, they are now being utilised as added security ballast at our garden boundaries to protect us from invasion. (Surely it couldn’t be to keep us in?)
The lawn is cooked to a nice shade of toast and the wee drop of water we leave out for the birds seems to rapidly evaporate.
Which brings me to the subject of doggie showers. A deeply personal subject I realise but… they are not on the ‘allowed’ list (in our house at least!). When we return from our beach outings my hairy underbelly is usually clotted with a sand/seaweed combo. Rolling around on prickly, burnt, garden-hay is not an effective way to ‘belly-bathe’ it away, let me announce.
And so…. I often have what I will not so lovingly call ‘an itch’! As I gaze longingly at the redundant hose, I shake, rattle & roll in my attempts to dislodge the beach remnants.
Enter THE GROOMING GLOVE!! Ahhh…magic. One small flaw though…it requires a human hand to operate it …but when I see her approach the shelf where it lies, I become utterly beside myself with excitement. In human terms, you could think of it as comparable to the soothing application of ointment to a horse-fly bite in a difficult to reach spot on your back. Blissfully blissful. Ahhhh…
Musically I choose Adele’s ‘Rumour Has It’ followed by ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’, ….the Bill Haley and his Comets version ….to accompany this blog. They have the perfect rhythm for medium, progressing to rapid, dog-grooming. Try it on your own pooches! If you have a grooming glove! 😺🎶🐾
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. 🎼🐾
Humans are really quaint. This one in particular. Soooo endearing. I’m able to listen to & observe everything from my pole position on the purple rug. I often wonder what goes on in her little head. I love the way she chats aloud to herself and sometimes she even answers her own questions. It can be quite amusing to a dog. Better than a tennis match!
‘Where did I put the…?’
‘Oh, there is is!’
‘What brought me upstairs, I wonder?’
‘How many ounces of breadcrumbs did it say?’
‘I thought that was chicken… yeuch!’
‘I must try and remember that!’
‘Where’s the phone?’
‘Did I not buy tomatoes?’
‘Oh, I am seriously losing it!’
The chat is incessant when we are at home. (She’d get a huge surprise if I responded). I also hear the accompanying sounds of tssk & tut, grunts, gasps and ‘OMGs’!
The body language is hilarious at times too; including light head-banging, skull shaking, clenching of fists, stomping of feet at various levels of annoyance or slamming of kitchen utensils.
All thoroughly enjoyable. But when we are on the beach all her words are saved for me. Full attention & focus is applied and I love it. We truly live in the moment at times like these.
I did some approved rock-climbing earlier today in a doggie variant of the giant’s causeway. Such fun. As herself & Missy picked their way through the low, sandy parts, I became king of a road of my own making.
When I moved forward (in my role as her advance party) I discovered an intricate arrangement of ‘could-be’ fossils. Amazingly, when she caught up with me, she displayed very little interest in my archaeological find.
We had met Boofs on the path down as we arrived – he was on his way home. Hard to have time for him when Missy & I were experiencing stratospheric excitement levels at the sight of the sea. Maybe next time.
When we reached Cove Three, the monstrous seal dog appeared out of nowhere once again & Missy had a renewed, serious, stick- fishing battle on her hands. I just bounced around trying to distract & annoy the pair of them to the best of my ability. I was surprised the human didn’t start talking to herself with all our shenanigans 😂
My song for today is Jody Miller’s ‘Queen of the House’ (arranged to the melody of Roger Miller’s ‘King of the Road’!!). Well worth a listen. 🎼🐾
