Darlings, I keep remembering things that I should have told you about Huck and Simon. Those were the dogs that made me the worryingly canine woman I am. I still tend to call a grandchild over with "here boy ... please" because of their influence. I am, honestly, mostly dog. Though it was Chester, my beloved and much-missed dog I raised from puppyhood that taught me fluent dog - look, if I raise a lip or make a sound deep in my throat when I'm with you, I'm talking dog. Ask your hound to interpret, he'll know.
Okay, having made my weirdness quite clear to the point of embarrassed silence, back to Huck. If he wanted you to do something, he didn't fuss or bark or simply gaze at you and hope. He took you there. He would take your wrist in his gentle mouth and lead you. I've never known another dog do that, not even Simon. He thought it out for himself.
Gentle mouth - Simon once caught a duck basking herself contentedly on the lawn. We saw and ran, he ran for as long as he could and then let her go. She legged it, panic-stricken, down the lawn, paused in the rose bed and continued towards the Broad. When we looked in the rose bed, she'd laid an egg.
Egg - once Simon stole an egg from the kitchen. Of course, its retrieval turned into a game. We chased him about the lawn for a good half hour unable to catch him until, starting to get bored, he relented. We took the egg from his mouth. It was undamaged, not a crack.
Here is the house I lived in then. Sorry for the grubby picture. I must tell you a bit more about it, in dog terms, tomorrow.
Okay, having made my weirdness quite clear to the point of embarrassed silence, back to Huck. If he wanted you to do something, he didn't fuss or bark or simply gaze at you and hope. He took you there. He would take your wrist in his gentle mouth and lead you. I've never known another dog do that, not even Simon. He thought it out for himself.
Gentle mouth - Simon once caught a duck basking herself contentedly on the lawn. We saw and ran, he ran for as long as he could and then let her go. She legged it, panic-stricken, down the lawn, paused in the rose bed and continued towards the Broad. When we looked in the rose bed, she'd laid an egg.
Egg - once Simon stole an egg from the kitchen. Of course, its retrieval turned into a game. We chased him about the lawn for a good half hour unable to catch him until, starting to get bored, he relented. We took the egg from his mouth. It was undamaged, not a crack.
11 comments:
This is how I imagine it was from the other side?
Sorry to diverge from your lovely dogs, but the eggs have got me thinking. I am sure they were much, much, more comparatively expensive in the "olden" days. If you were chasing Simon for an hour, to retrieve an egg, that does sort of back me up.
Your childhood home is the kind I dreamed about living in. No wonder we get along so well. My first dog (from my birth to age 7) was a wolf hybrid. Like to tell people I was raised by a wolf. Simon scared a duck so bad it laid an egg? Now there is a talented canine!
What a lovely home you had. The dog stories are really quite wonderful.
Great house. Love the copper covered turret. What larks you must have had as children.
I'm laughing at "having made my weirdness quite clear" - what a top woman you are.
You do seem to have had an idyllic childhood. That looks like a splendid house but then the one you live in now is pretty special too.
Oh Rog, how could you think that? It was the most marvellously sunny, happy house ... well, apart from the room that I was never allowed to look in of course...
The price of food has come way down in comparative terms, Paff, I'm sure. But if there was one thing that Simon wouldn't allow it was to be ignored. He wanted to be chased!
Raised by a wolf! Wow, I'm jealous!
I never expected the dog stories to be so popular, but I'm very gratified that they are and I'm really enjoying the memories.
Pat, I wish I had photos of the garden, we had quarter of an acre of rock garden with eight ponds and channels between - I took it all for granted at the time, and I've hardly reminisced since to my children. I suppose I'll tell my grandchildren all about it in my anecdotage.
Liz, I'm the woman who once admitted in this very blog that I sniff dogs' feet for pleasure. But it's only in recent years that I realised that's not what other people do.
A lot of fellow dog owners confess to smelling their dogs' feet. They said they smell of Fritos. I'd never done this but had to confirm. Yes indeed, American domestic dogs' feet do smell like corn chips...
Fabulous stories.
My most amazing dog story is about our first dog Frisky and her daughter Jet, both black and white spaniels. They would always dig up and eat carrots from my Moms' garden. So one year she started planting a row of carrots just for them and they never again dug up any others.
Surely Fritos smell like dogs' feet?
You just have to look at it from a dogs' point of view, don't you LZM?
Bruno, my fiddle teacher's wolfhound/lurcher used to meet the pupils at the gate and lead them by the wrist into the music room.
My children just about coped with a dog as tall as themselves taking them by the hand but some of the pupils were quite scared.
I love the duck story, it sounds like a cartoon! If you see what I mean.
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