Dog Sitting

She’s a border collie with unusual brown markings who is staying with us while her owners are away on holiday.

She is wonderful!

At the bottom of the garden flies rise up in salutation of her as she lingers in her favourite spot. I won’t be visiting that part of the garden for a while.

The lawn is sodden both with the recent heavy tropical downpours and with the mud that we’ve washed off her after every walk.

She’s a mud hound.

She only has to see a mud puddle and she’s there: sitting in it, wallowing in it, and then coming up really close to us in order to shake it all off; leaving our clothes covered in unfashionable brown polka dots.

Then there’s the sticks.

Most dogs we see trot obedient by the side of their owners carrying dainty twigs. Cassie begins with similar sized sticks but likes to look for upgrades along the route. Before we’ve realised it she is running up behind us carrying a log.

A short log wouldn’t pose too much of a problem but for Cassie a ‘stick’ isn’t worth carrying unless it extends for a metre or two on either side of her mouth. With such a stick gripped tightly she cannons along the old abandoned railway line path, swiping our legs from under us. Of course the muddier the stick the greater the reaction she gets from us!

Then there’s the footballs.

I used to throw back the footballs that landed in my garden; happily extracting them from the innards of bushes and the grasp of nettles. That all changed the day I heard the quiet conversation as I went to bring in my clean dry sheets from the washing line.

‘Did you hit it?’ One boy asked.
‘Yeah,’ the other confirmed. And there was another thwack against the sheet I was about to unpeg as another piece of mud covered broken glass was hurled against it.
That was the day I decided that their footballs would no longer be returned; and told them so. From that day forward I left footballs to fester in the depths of the bushes into which they’d been booted. Only occasionally did I relent and throw one back.


Last night, my own teenager came downstairs and uttered an anguished cry.
‘What is that?’
He was staring in horror at something in the living room.
It was a mis-shapened spherical object that lay next to a panting green goose-grass covered creature.

Cassie must have wormed her way into the deepest bushes in order to find her prize. She was festooned as if for a midsummer pagan festival with garlands of beaded goose grass. Now she was waiting patiently for the acclaim her discovery should bring. Next to her the long lost object emitted primeval odours of decay and sank deeper into the carpet.

‘No.’ I yelled. Much to the dog’s consternation, I gingerly picked up the decaying object that seemed to wheeze with ancient lungs as I carried it outside. All the time the dog bounced up and down with delight. With uncanny aim I threw it, when she was not looking, over the fence and back to its former owners where it landed with a satisfying squelch.

She’s asleep right now, freshly washed and warming the feet of the teenager who is reading Harry Potter.

It’s a perfect scene. For that I can even forgive her the muddy paw prints across the carpet.