Monday is my working-at-home day, it is also a day I meet up with my friend Sarah for a coffee—today Dora came too. She thoroughly enjoys a walk into the village and a visit to the Barrel House, a particularly dog-friendly hostelry and somewhere Dora has frequented reasonably regularly since she was a puppy. She is a very social dog—perhaps too social! She certainly knows how to work a room, though she has a rather disconcerting habit of randomly sniffing crotches, which, not surprisingly, has it’s drawbacks, especially when the majority of customers at the Barrel House are elderly men! Both my dogs are very sociable and throw themselves into a party with the abandonment of a carefree adolescent—unfortunately they are just as prone to break things… though it is their tails rather than ‘drunk and disorderly’ behaviour that creates havoc. Scout is particularly fond of pushing himself through people’s legs, sometimes head first, sometimes bum first. This is fine as long as you have long legs… however, not everyone has and he has been known to lift people off the ground—at which point I usually pretend that I don’t know him and that he isn’t with me.
Anyway, back to our coffee. They have dog biscuits in a jar at the Barrel House; I lost count of the number of biscuits Dora consumed while we were there. I think she managed to extract one from every person she ‘spoke to’. I did wonder what people made of her and her slightly strange shape—no one mentioned it, perhaps they were just too polite to ask. Fortunately she did not sit, as she loves to, legs akimbo with her ever-expanding stomach and ‘milk bar’ on show for all to see!
People frequently ask me what ‘sort’ she is—this phrase, ‘what sort have you got there?’ makes me laugh, it reminds me of choosing chocolates out of the Quality Street tin at Christmas. And they never quite believe you when you say ‘Large Munsterlander’, particularly if, like me, you follow it up with ‘it’s a German HPR’: they look at you slightly askance, not sure whether you are telling the truth or taking the mickey! When someone does know the breed I treat them like a long-lost friend or relative, which must be equally perplexing. I guess that’s Munsters for you—they’re just a bit different and it tends to rub off on the owners!
Anyway, back to our coffee. They have dog biscuits in a jar at the Barrel House; I lost count of the number of biscuits Dora consumed while we were there. I think she managed to extract one from every person she ‘spoke to’. I did wonder what people made of her and her slightly strange shape—no one mentioned it, perhaps they were just too polite to ask. Fortunately she did not sit, as she loves to, legs akimbo with her ever-expanding stomach and ‘milk bar’ on show for all to see!
People frequently ask me what ‘sort’ she is—this phrase, ‘what sort have you got there?’ makes me laugh, it reminds me of choosing chocolates out of the Quality Street tin at Christmas. And they never quite believe you when you say ‘Large Munsterlander’, particularly if, like me, you follow it up with ‘it’s a German HPR’: they look at you slightly askance, not sure whether you are telling the truth or taking the mickey! When someone does know the breed I treat them like a long-lost friend or relative, which must be equally perplexing. I guess that’s Munsters for you—they’re just a bit different and it tends to rub off on the owners!