The Wickedest Whippet: Tell me someone, why do I like dogs?

EBJ whippet lazing on my pillow

Tell me someone why I like dogs? Why do I have so many of them? Why do I allow them in the house, on the sofas, nay even in my bed?

They are horrible, they have disgusting personal habits and they greet each other by sniffing each other’s nether regions. They eat stuff that you and I would gag on and they regurgitate their own vomit. And then they lick you…

Today I should be writing about the fact that it’s The Boy's, my eldest’s, birthday but all thoughts of that have flown because of what I found when I came up the stairs to my office.

It was carnage. My bag lay disembowelled on the top landing, paper and pens and loose change scattered. The destruction continued as I walked down the corridor, chewed up bits of detritus here, mixed with what looked like vomitus bits of tissue paper there.

I approached the open door leading to the spare bedroom and there, lying in abandon, splayed out in the sunshine on her back without a care in the world was the Evil Black Job (EBJ).

Strewn about her were the last remnants of an Alpen snack bar wrapper and just as I stepped forward to tear a strip off her I felt the slight give you feel when you tread in something soft. All I can say was I was lucky not to be barefoot.

SHE is now downstairs in disgrace, actually she did it without me asking after I bellowed out loud following my treading in the proverbial. I have never seen a dog move so swiftly.

I don’t know when I will forgive her, the jury is out. She is the most evil dog on the planet, she really is! I wouldn’t mind quite so much if she actually looked the slightest bit sorry. But I suppose I will be whistling in the wind before she looks contrite.

The other dogs are keeping their heads down and there is much skulking under the kitchen table and well they might skulk.

I growl and they skulk some more. My nose twitches as it does when I am starting to see the funny side of things and before long the dogs know I am no longer angry. There is a feeling of palatable relief and the animals visibly relax. I make tea and mentally prepare myself to clear up the mess and before long I sit down here at the computer and start to write… it wasn’t the blog post I thought it would be when I woke this morning but it will do, just like them. That’ll do dog, that’ll do.

Reasons why I love them ...

The sleep with abandon..

She's always there for me

What walk would be complete without them...

It's Spring - the first chicks have arrived!

Chicks six hours old

I know it's Spring for today the first chicks of the year arrived. I saw them tumbling out of the barn, chirping and cheeping after their Mum. She is a new Mum so a bit all over the place and not really concentrating on the job at hand. She left a nest of about ten eggs with just four chicks but with a helping hand she should still have four chicks a few weeks from now.
I scooped her up and plonked her in the Nursery, a relatively painless task. I know it will get more complicated as the season progresses but for today I basked in the sunshine (when it shone) and felt rather chuffed. Today I know it is Spring as I have four little chicks to prove it...
The problem I now have is to make sure I get hold or account for every chick for once one lot start hatching you know there are going to be a whole load more. But where do you start. My Chickens are seriously free range and the places they decide to lay their eggs beggars belief! I dread to think what the HSE would think!

Fandango

And for the chicken fancier out there a Salmon Faverolle cockerel (bantam) called Fandango and a rather coy Friesian...

A coy Friesan!

The bliss of not thinking…

I love not thinking, not having any thoughts at all is bliss or else just letting your mind wander wherever it may choose but without the anxiety of knowing you actually have to think of things to do.

Every Tuesday morning I don’t think. For one blissful hour all my thinking is done for me. All I have to do is put one foot in front of the other and try not to fall over.

I have a personal trainer. He’s a 6 foot Scot built like a brick shit house and is a former ex-Army PT instructor and without him, well, without him life would be intolerable. For as well as forcing me to run and exercise he also takes away the huge burden I carry around with me: my brain.

I am often told that I think too much and that I should just stop: easier said than done but with SFS (Six foot Scot) there is no point thinking. As he often says: “I’ll do the thinking. You just do as you’re told.” And “Don’t get clever it doesn’t suit you” and words of wisdom along a similar vein and it is heaven.

For one hour I do as I am told and run and exercise my guts out and all the while I know someone else is in charge. I am free of all responsibility. While I must do exactly as I am told and look smart about it, I am strangely liberated during that one hour.

It is better therapy than you would believe and worth every penny spent, though to be honest; in the four years I have been training the price has yet to go up. I started out with a crook back, for SFS as well as being a PT is also a Sports Massage Therapist and while I was there trying not to get embarrassed about my flobby body lying inert on a table, we talked of the Army and that sort of thing and I plucked up the courage to ask if he would help me learn to run so that I could play with my children without having half a heart attack after five minutes.

He took me on, taught me to walk then run exercised me and even trained me for the London Marathon but more importantly every Tuesday he relieves me of the burden of my mind.

Work-Life balance: Do you know what? I am jealous of his Blackberry…

In the course of my day job I get to hear a lot of things about the economy and how we all make a living or not as the case maybe but this piece of research from an office broking firm really brought home to me just how hard everyone is working just to keep still financially and I suspect companies are taking full advantage of our fears.

The report says that Britain’s office workers are spending more hours than ever at work with one in ten having SLEPT overnight at their desks during the past year.

That is seriously worrying and it only gets worse. According to officebroker.com nearly two thirds of office workers start work before their official working hours and regularly work through lunch, with 56% admitting to frequently leaving the office later than agreed.

In addition to the 10% of workers who admitted to having slept in the office, more than a third of workers admitted to having left the office after 8pm with a further 10% stating they called it a day between midnight and 3am during the last year.

And for many workers leaving the office didn’t signal the end of the working day with 45% of those polled stating they regularly took work home to complete in the evenings which they haven’t found time to look at during ‘normal’ working hours.

The survey also revealed that staff were not being fairly rewarded for taking on extra duties, with 58% stating that their pay had stayed the same or decreased in the last year.

Many firms are relying on their staff to do unpaid overtime, with 14% of those polled admitting to working more than 50 hours per week with one in eight workers spending between six to ten additional hours a week in the office when compared to two years ago.

I know my man is working harder than ever he is SO exhausted that the things he used to be able to do he cannot, such as our vegetable patch. The one thing I have been going on and on about for the last decade because it was too big, too time consuming and just, well, let’s say he grew things because he could, rather than things his family actually liked to eat and well, you get the picture. At one stage our veggie patch was a fifth of an acre!

Problem was he loved his veggie patch and in the face of that I well I did the weeding. In fact he used to do a lot of things such as playing golf, going out, heck we had a weekend as a family and now? Now, he’s too tired and the weekend seems to be a napping space so he can be raring to go for the week ahead at work.

Somehow in all of this I have to find time for family, for all of us, so that my children don’t forget what their father looks like. For the first time my boys and I will be holidaying on our own in Wales. It will be great fun but although Dear Charlie has promised he will come down for two long weekends I have no doubt that either these will be cancelled or else he’ll bring his work with him just like he did at half term and land up on his bloody Blackberry all hours of the day and night.

Somehow I don’t think this is particularly healthy and I worry, worry like mad that the toll could be too great. I mean my man is nearly 50, he works too long and doesn’t have enough time to recover and work like some persistent harpy just won’t leave him alone!

There’s nothing like a hot dog in your bed….

With the temperature falling outside ( when it should be getting warmer) there’s nothing quite like curling up in bed with a good book and a warm whippet. Much better than a hot water bottle because hot water bottles go cold. The only drawback is that whippets have a tendency to move and sometimes they move in such a way that their feet land up on your back as they try to manoeuvre you out of the bed. For a whippet, when hot, will stretch and it is surprising quite how much room they think they need. It doesn’t matter how big your bed is you will find that you will have only a six inch strip on the side, if you are lucky.

However, when it is cold they curl up delightfully and fit just right.

I blame my mother.

When I was a child we had whippets and Rob was always allowed to sleep upstairs. He had his own basket in my parent’s room. My mother swears blind that if it were not for Rob my sister and I would have had for more siblings. It took me a while to work this out but suffice to say Rob didn’t stay in his basket all night.

Some nights I would be allowed to have Rob in my bedroom and we would make baskets out of my bedding to curl up in, sometimes Rob would stay mostly he would land up with my parents.

It was the 70s, it was cold and oil was costly. Dad was away a lot doing Dad things with the Army, probably in Northern Ireland. And Mum was at home with two little girls and a whippet. I suspect Rob was encouraged to get into bed with Mum, though of course he’s never be one to ask twice, what whippet would pass up such an opportunity? The dog was something to cuddle as she couldn’t cuddle her daughters at night as they would wonder why and get scared. Rob helped.

My whippets help me, though sometimes I do question the EBJ’s usefulness as yet another thing goes missing. So this morning I have been in bed cuddling my elder whippet reading my book and well it was bliss…

I know it shouldn't matter but it does.....

I know it shouldn't matter but it does. I love blogging and I enjoy reading other people's blogs and commenting. I am even getting a handle on twitter. And one of  the most gratifying things for me is to know where I am in the Tots 100.  It is a great Ranking service and in general fun. But it all that seems to have gone horribly wrong for me. I am obviously not doing very well and I don't know why.
It seems terribly foolish to care but you see I was once a contender I mean I was in the Top 100 and I felt so good. It was an affirmation that , well and this is pathetic, that I was liked, that my writing was worth something.  I wasn't in the Top 50 but I plugged away and although I did drop a bit  last year, overall in 2010 I stayed in the Top 100. Now I rank 436, it's a big come down and yet I have more people than ever ( for me) visiting my blog and commenting. I post regularly and well feel pretty good about it. In January I ranked 67, so to drop so much in such a short time when I am doing all I can is well a bit sad.
I know many people reading this will think how sad that I care as if I have nothing better in my life. Well I do have lots of things I enjoy, I just enjoy this too.
I feel that I shouldn't care and that I am being pathettic, but it just bugs me. I won't stop blogging even if I drop off the bottom and virtually disappear but I would love to work out what on earth I am doing wrong . For I feel there must be a reason....
Maybe it's because there are a whole load of brilliant blogs out there and I need to get reading them!

The Fairy Godfather has been….and he’s ready to grant wishes!

There’s no point calling him a Fairy Godmother ‘cos he’s a him and a very nice him indeed. Stumbling about on Twitter I noticed I’d got a tweet from a chap I did not know who said he wanted to give me a gift – which is lovely.

However, being a newbie to tweeting and very cautious of the whole thing I was a tad surprised and then wondered if I was being wound up, then panicked that I was being stalked then stooped to googling the chap’s name to allay my fears.

Found out that the chap works at Appliances Online. And he’s not a stalker just a very clever marketing man who also is very good at Twitter and other social media ( I had a tech query and he explained it all very simply and quickly for me).

Anyway, back to the story, I being very curious now tweeted that that was fine I am happy taking gifts from strangers – just as long as my husband doesn’t find out!

The Fairy Godfather quickly noted that I have a penchant for chocolates and thoroughly enjoy wine (please I am a mother of boys! I am sure that explains everything for those of us who need an excuse) so he kindly sent me some beautiful Belgian Truffles and a sumptuous bottle of wine.

In thanking him all I was asked to do was to put a link to Appliances Online on my post and then tell everyone all about the Fairy Godfather visitation and suggest that if you too would like a visit leave a comment on my blog and you might be contacted by someone from Appliances Online and get a special something to lift your day.

I have of course left the box of chocs and bottle of wine in their beautiful  gift box lying about on the kitchen table to see if my husband noticed and got curious as to who is sending gifts to his wife... it’s been there two days with no comment and I don’t have the will power to leave it much longer!!!!.

 I leave you with how the campaign works in the Fairy Godfather’s own words as I go downstairs to relish a Belgian ruffle before picking the boys up from school….

“We’ve be doing blogger outreach lately. Basically, if you can mention us in your blog (with a link) then anyone who comments also has a chance of getting their hands on a thoughtful (hopefully) gift. This post explains what we’ve been doing really well. Unfortunately I’m not allowed to give away any more washing machines or buy people widescreen tellies but I read in your bio you love wine and chocolate so I thought that you’d not mind both.”

PS: From a marketing point of view I think this is a brilliant campaign because it brings such joy and when I next look for a kitchen appliance I know exactly where I will be going first!

PPS: DON’T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT!!!!!

The problem with dogs...is they just don't live long enough!

Tattie asleep on my down jacket

The problem with dogs is that they don't live long enough. Today  J had to put down his dog Socks. There was nothing else he could do. Even though you know it is the right thing, it is a hateful thing putting an animal to sleep. Putting a friend to death. For as much as we try to tell ourselves it is for the best there is a bit of us which cries: "Murderer!"
We know we shouldn't anthropomorphise animals but a lot of us cannot help it. There is an imperative to love and if we cannot love another human then a pet will do just as well and sometimes even better. For the love an animal gives is utterly unconditional. They don't care what we look like, how we sound whether we have bad breath or not, they just love us as we are and for whatever reason however awful we may be it is sometimes the love of an animal that is the only thing that makes us remotely human.
So when one of these earth bound angels dies, and they die far too soon, the breaking of the bond can totally paralyse us. We are unable to cope and the grief is as bitter and sweet as if it were  our parents or even our children. We would like to think that no one should grieve over a mere animal but for those who keep animals, who love their pets the grief is all consuming and never really lets up as grief has a tendency never to go away. It can fade with time, as all grief does, but a scent, a movement, a touch can bring it back as strongly as if it had just happened even though decades have passed.
There is something magical about it; something unexplained. And why the question one always asks do they put up with us? Why do they love us so unconditionally?
Tonight all I could say is: "All dogs go to heaven", and then reminded J that there would be an awful lot of them to welcome us when it was our time and would they knock us flat as we entered? And was it one huge joke and would St Peter laugh at us as all these dogs and cats come bounding up?