Tales from my handbag

Dogs. What are they for? What do they want from us? Why the smell? Last night I got up close and personal with a bull terrier called Moo, and I have to say, I quite enjoyed it. Ever since our Blackie licked Nivea Cream off my knee then licked his bits (I think it was that way around), I’ve had a soft spot for dogs. And when I say ‘dogs’, I mean proper dogs - the ones with deep voices, a musty whiff, and the flexibility of Olga Korbut, enabling them to chew their genitals with ease. Oh those heady summer nights of 1976 when the family visited Dorset in a Sprite caravan and Blackie had an irritated ball sack. How our caravan rocked to the rhythm of his chomping as the poor mutt struggled to relieve himself of his terrible affliction. Thinking about it, I reckon he might have had dog VD; well he did put it about a bit. Dogs eh!

I am adding something new to my cv - dog handling. Over the last couple of weeks I have learnt key skills such as how to walk a dog without a. strangling it and b. getting caught up in its extra long, totally impractical lead and falling over. Also, I have learnt how to pick up and bag a medium sized stool without a. feeling the warmth and b. soiling my hand. However, this morning I was faced with a fresh challenge. The first poo came and went without a hitch but then, without warning, a second poo arrived. Here’s the question, if your dog has done his business and you’ve dutifully bagged it, does that render the second poo null and void in terms of the need for it to be picked up? I didn’t have time to contemplate the moral issues; we were being observed by a curtain twitcher so I had to act fast. Luckily, said turd was small enough to be handled by a rain sodden mini Avon catalogue which I found languishing in the gutter. Thank God it wasn’t diarrhoea!

…I was washing my dusters. Christmas makes me go a bit mental on the cleaning front. I’ve been down on my hands and knees washing my skirting boards and have even tackled that oft neglected rear of tap blind spot with a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda and a squirt of lemon. Came up a treat. Carrying on the Biblical theme, I have also taken on the role of Good Samaritan, walking my neighbour’s dog, pulling another neighbour’s curtains twice daily to confuse burglars and even feeding the poor little sparrows with my left-over cheesy pasta bake. I am now quite au fait with dog shit and after a week of rather challenging curtain duties, have pinpointed the exact amount of ‘yank’ required to avoid pulling them off the rail completely. As to the sparrows, well, there aren’t any but I did get two really ugly crows fighting over a floret of broccoli.

I don’t want to boast but I am abundant in my back garden. My tomatoes are heavy on the vine and my butternut squash is filling out nicely. However, all is not as it should be; at night I have a prowler - a squirrel who has been filling his flea-ridden body with MY tomatoes. What gets me is that he/she/they, don’t eat a whole tomato and move on, oh no; they have a furtive nibble here, a quick chomp there and sometimes, just for fun, they might indulge in a bit of skinning - just because they can!  ‘It’s not a bloody buffet’, I shriek, chasing the hairy burglars down my garden path. I thought squirrels ate nuts but it seems during these economically challenging times, animals are expanding their gastro repertoires.  This summer, for example, I had wood lice eating my strawberries - and my pet dog Blackie used to eat Nivea Cream. But that’s another story…