Saturday 18 November 2017

It's a dog's life!

Well its been another busy year here at Pentre Bach.
We've had lots of visitors staying in the cottages and sometimes they've come with humans!
I always have to behave myself though when they're staying and go everywhere on a lead or stay in our garden. It's really tempting when I hear lots of little humans playing games in the field. I want to jump over the gate and go and run around and play with them but I have to stay in the garden and just watch through the gate.
One day when there was nobody staying here and  Big Wilma was hanging out the washing, I sneaked out to the fruit garden and brought back a present of a pheasant for her. I was ever so chuffed with myself and laid it carefully down on the lawn for her. However .............she didn't seem very grateful for the special present that I brought her and all she did was wrap it up in newspaper and put it in the bin! Bloomin' cheek!!!

It's also been a very active year living with Big Mike and Big Wilma. In July BM and Katie and Maggie did a huge long up and down hike up and down three big mountains in Yorkshire. BM did lots of training for it in the months leading up to doing it and of course he needed somebody to go with him cos BW's not so keen on doing the uphill bits, so I was dragged along. Well it was always great to begin with and I ran ahead exploring in all the bushes and sniffing round all the trees but sometimes BM wasn't so good at reading his map and we would end up doing miles and miles more than he intended. I swear my legs are shorter now than they were a year ago. Anyway we did it! Well they did it. I went up and down the first mountain then at the first checkpoint BM passed me over to BW. Apparently there were too many woolly creatures and I had to stay on a lead so it wasn't much fun anyway.

Then BW agreed to do a Half -marathon , which I'm told is running a long way round the streets, and so she went out doing lots of training for that. She tried taking me round the streets of Llwyngwril but wasn't too impressed when I kept wanting to stop and sniff lampposts or go the other way round a telegraph pole to her! Then when she went along the Mawddach Trail I loved that to begin with. But then she went further and further and to be honest , 3 or 4 miles is more than enough for any Spaniel. You see we always end up doing 3 or 4 times further anyway, zig-zagging across paths, running ahead and doubling back all the time. So when she tried to go on longer runs I decided to go on a sit down strike and refuse to go any further. I put my feet down! I didn't mind the rain and mud but enough is enough so in the end she went without me. I prefer my little walks down to the beach and the occasional ramble up into the hills.


I've had some personal up and downs to cope with this year. In the summer I was feeling a bit off colour and wasn't too keen to go out for walks so BM took me to the vets (brings me out in a cold sweat just mentioning that word!) and she decided that I might have swallowed some pebbles. Moi?!! So I had to stay there all night and have an X-ray. Well that was a waste of time because they didn't find anything but I was put on a special diet of boiled chicken for a week or two , which I must admit I could get quite used to. Maybe I'll try it on again for some boiled chicken when I get fed up of the dried biscuits.
Then I had this little warty thing on my leg that I could've quite easily nibbled off myself but again I had to go to the vet  so they could take it off and then I had to wear one of those really annoying cone of shame things. You never see human beans wearing them!!! How would they like it? Anyway its all gone now and all healed up although it does itch so I keep having a sneaky nibble when they're not looking.
Well winter is well and truly here and I just love having a cosy log burner to lie beside. It really is a dog's life.