The Wisdom of Elders

It is now howling human season in our town.  It happens every Wednesday and Sunday when it’s warm outside and the sun likes to stay awake longer.

 

Last Wednesday, a human called Mary Wilson was the featured howler.  Many human years ago, when our humans were puppies, she used to howl with a famous group of females called the Supremes.  I don’t really get the human howling thing.  They sound pretty strange, but this one obviously has special powers, like the humans who blow a little pipe to make snakes come out of baskets and wriggle around.  I have a pretty good memory for faces, but this howling human attracted a lot I hadn’t seen before.  Instead of sitting quietly and listening while they drank falling over juice, many were standing up and wriggling like snakes.  It was pretty funny to watch.

 

A lot of the human listeners, like ours, bring their security detail with them.  Since there was a larger number than usual, we got to meet a few new friends.  One, whose company I particularly enjoyed, was a charming elderly lady called CeCe.  She’s a lion chaser like our friend, Truman’s father.

It’s important to learn from our elders, and like my dearly departed older brother, Bowmore, CeCe had lots of stories to tell and nuggets of wisdom to impart.  She hung out with us for a long time, and even Tobermory stopped his constant moving and sat down to listen.  She’s retired from her security duties now, but the humans that she has been taking care of her whole life are now repaying her by taking really good care of her and making sure she enjoys her retirement.  She gets lots of cuddles from the human puppies in her kennel, and since her back legs don’t work as well as they used to, her Daddy helps her out so she can still get out with her family and keep enjoying life.

 

Talisker 

Fluffy Yellow Ball Swatting

Yesterday, Daddy got up really early to watch humans wearing white body covers on the picture box play with yellow fluffy balls in a place called Wimbledon.

 

Humans in this land have put their own interpretations on the long standing canine game of Fetch, two of which they call Football and Baseball.  The yellow fluffy ball game looks very different.  It seems to be based on the feline game of Swat, only instead of using their paws, they swat balls with frying pans made of string.  I assume that this is because humans are not as coordinated as mouse hunters so need a larger surface area.

 

Wimbledon is in the same land that our humans came from.  This year, the game with male human competitors was won by Andy Murray who like Daddy, comes from the North where male humans wear skirts.  This win is unusual because it’s the first time in 77 human years (that’s 6 whole canine life spans) that a human from that land has won, and even more unusual because skirt wearing male humans have long been considered as being particularly ineptat ball swatting.

 

Mummy said that humans in Wimbledon’s land are fanatical about watching the ball swatting that takes place there every year.  You’d think that if they watched it so much, they might be able to pick up a few tips and win a little more often, but I think I’ve worked out what the problem is.  From listening to the stories of Mummy and her friends’ visits to Wimbledon, they were obviously being horribly distracted by strawberries covered in thick cow juice and a brown liquid full of fruit called Pimm’s.
 

Talisker

Hot Waves

In the last couple of days, I keep hearing the humans on the moving picture frame on the wall saying that we are having hot waves, especially where our kennel is.  Once, when I was a puppy, our humans took us to a place called Carmel where we chased fluffy yellow balls on strange ground that moved when we ran on it.  There were waves there, but they cold.  I’ve never seen anything that looks like a wave here, hot or cold.

 

However, I have noticed in the last few days that someone has seriously turned up the heat outside our kennel which is very uncomfortable when you are covered in fur.  Inside, there is a little box on the wall with buttons that our humans press to make cold air blow out of holes in the floor (I like to lie on the one under Mummy’s writing box table).  I’ve never seen it, but there must be a little box with buttons outside that has gone wrong.  I hope it gets mended soon because I’m really bored of staying inside.

Tobermory