May 2024 - Friends, Roaming, Country Walks

Now that I'm three, I'm allowed to have friends stay over. My Labrador pal, Honey, spent a long weekend with us. She's bigger than me, but we share a love of treats, long walks and sniffing out dead deer (she munches on their bones). She doesn't know how to walk on the kitchen's laminate flooring, though, so we had to open the patio door to get her back into the house. 

We played at the local park,

That's me doing Zoomies in the background

posed for piccies in the garden,

 

but we didn't make the living room carpet dirty.

It wasn't us.

Rusty stayed over, too, but he was a grump, so I'll not mention him further. The Humans went to see Take That and took a picture of a mural near the Hydro.

I recognised it.

Boy, that greyhound gets about. 

Another friend who stayed over was Molly.  

Her paws got so dirty
she needed a bath before going home.

She was on antibiotics and didn't want to take her medication. The Humans tried putting in her regular food. She didn't eat it. They gave her chicken. She left it. Eventually, they coated her meat sticks in it and only then did she take it. 

Clever, I thought. She's on those meds for six weeks. This way, she's guaranteed a meat stick every day. I couldn't do it. I cave the moment my food bowl touches the floor. 

I take my tick treatment as a snack. They toss it to me, and I gobble it down. Not Molly. She refused to take hers. She held out for the collar, or 'necklace' as she called it. Why eat medicine when you can get jewellery instead? 

Funny related story: 

The Man has a sore back. He has to do his exercises lying on his back on the floor. I like to give him support by sitting beside him as he stretches (on the safe side, obviously, not the one where he bends his leg over). I encourage him to tickle me by pawing him until he responds. This one day, his fingers found something on my coat. He pulled it loose from my hair and saw a bug stuck to his finger, surrounded by blood. He leapt from the floor, rushed to the kitchen and washed it off. I've never seen him move so fast. 

Fortunately, the tick was dead so no harm was done (except to the tick).

Apparently, I'm attractive to ticks (hey, I'm attractive to everyone!), so the Humans insisted I get a haircut. This time, it was at the new facility at Pawz & Co.

Before:

After:

I celebrated with a roll on the couch (not the eating kind, unfortunately). I prefer the shaggy dog look.

This month, I got to eat out twice - the first time at MacMillans Kitchen, Buchlyvie, whose floor has been redone to be more pet-friendly, 

And again at Bargacree, at Bellahouston Park.

This time, the waitresses didn't give me tickles despite my attempts to draw their attention. Maybe they were too busy trying to remember the humans' drinks order. The Man was meeting his old friend, Colette, but she didn't bring her dog, Skye. Shame. It felt like I'd been stood up. Maybe next time.

We went for a wander afterwards.

A smile before home

We went on a long walk the Humans had never done before: along the old rail track towards Aberfoyle, past the animal sanctuary. The dogs barked at me, so we hurried on to the Cobleland Campsite, then up towards Gartmore via the Butler's walk. It was a Monday, so the Black Bull Inn was closed until 5 p.m. We headed home to the holiday park, very thirsty, and then the heavens opened. 

While the weather this month has been mixed, I've enjoyed the good days. If it's sunny first thing in the morning, I insist on visiting the summer house. It's the best!

Where's that doorman with the keys?

Nice!

Lastly, I leave you with this picture of a cloud. 

Doesn't it look like me?