Tobermory's First Swimming Lesson

Last Saturday was a particularly hot day and my friends, Austin and Pumbaa kindly invited us over to cool off in their hole in the ground with water.

It’s a rite of passage of every fish retriever to learn to swim, so it was a little nostalgic taking my little brother for his first lesson at the place where I started.  Austin and Pumbaa were kind enough to leave us alone until Tobermory got his water legs.

I’m really proud of that kid.  I had human help from Austin and Pumbaa’s human brother when I learnt to swim, but Daddy just dropped Tobermory in the water and he got it straight away.  I of course had to give him a few pointers on floating frisby retrieval and most importantly some tips on diving technique but he shows all the signs of being a natural.

We finished the day with Pumbaa joining us in the water while Bowmore’s old friend, Austin gave us a few tips on formation swimming.

Talisker

They made it go to rehab and it went ...

Mummy and Daddy have had writing boxes in the past that have experimented with falling over juice and they have learnt that it really isn’t very good for them, but Daddy has always managed to stage an intervention early before the problem got too bad and got them dried out.  This is a term also used for humans who have a problem with falling over juice.

My research has shown that famous, beautiful looking humans seem to be prone to falling over juice problems which is why I was not surprised when Mummy’s new writing box fell victim to this affliction as it is particularly sleek and shiny.  It hit rock bottom last week.

Tobermory and I were relaxing with Daddy in his writing box room when we heard a shriek from Mummy.  Her writing box had consumed her entire glass of falling over juice.  I think she was annoyed because she hadn’t tried any of it herself and we all know that writing boxes just don’t appreciate good falling over juice.

Daddy leapt into action to commence the drying out process but after a couple of days decided that it needed professional help and should be sent to rehab.  It must have been feeling really sick because it showed absolutely no resistance when Mummy put it in a writing box carrier and sent it on its way.

In the meantime, Mummy went to visit the writing box retirement home in our kennel to see if one would help her out for a couple of weeks.  Quite a few of them live there.  They spend their days sleeping and reading old National Geographics’.

One writing box did volunteer for the job and I would like to say that it did it willingly, but man, is that guy causing problems.  It refuses to do anything the way we do it now and goes on strike and refuses to work at all at regular intervals.  I hope Mummy’s writing box comes back from rehab soon because my ears are starting to hurt from listening to the fights she’s having with this old dude.

Talisker

Ear Maintenance

Mummy has a sore ear. I know all about sore ears and the key to avoiding this problem is good ear maintenance.  Regular cleaning is the key and Daddy is particularly good at it.  I lie on the sofa and Mummy holds my nose still while he pours special juice in each ear and then he pulls the flap over and gives it a rub.  After this I sit up and give my head a good shake to bring the sore making stuff up to where Daddy can help little sticks with fluffy tips grab it.

The secret is definitely in the shake and this is where humans are at a disadvantage.  If Mummy lay on the sofa so that Daddy could administer the special juice and then had big flappy ears to shake, it would definately help her ear problem.  Of course, trying to hold onto a little human nose to keep her still could be a bit of an issue.

Talisker

Mr Dandy Lion

Today Mummy took a spikey stick out to our garden and started digging up plants with fluffy tops.  Talisker says she always does that when it’s warm outside and is waging war on a lion called Dandy.

I didn’t know what a lion was so did a little research on the writing box and discovered that it is a really big cat that likes to eat puppies like me, but I couldn’t find any mention of why digging up little plants with fluffy tops would scare one away.  I can only assume that Mr Dandy Lion likes them and Mummy is protecting me by removing them so that he has no reason to come here.

Tobermory

Teeth Scratchers

Daddy’s not very pleased with me and it’s really not my fault.

Mummy was hungry so Daddy took her to a human feeding station that wouldn’t let us come in so we had to wait in the motorized dog carrier.  Talisker wanted a nap so delegated to me the duty of keeping guard on Daddy’s seat.  It was pretty boring and my new teeth started to itch.  I really needed to chew something.  A bone would have been my preference but there wasn’t one at paw’s reach.  Having been given such a responsible task, I felt it would be negligent of me to leave my post so had a look around where I was sitting to see if something else would do the job.

When the motorized dog carrier is moving, Daddy holds onto a round thing in front of his seat that has a load of sticks behind it.  There seemed to be quite a few of them so I didn’t think he’d miss just one.  At first bite it just crunched and really wasn’t very satisfying, but once I got through the black crunchy stuff it was way more interesting.  There were lots of colored strings which once bitten through had lots of gold stiff fuzzy stuff.  Now, this was what I was looking for.  It really helped my itchy teeth.



Here is where I really don’t understand Daddy’s annoyance.  He claims that the stick had a very useful purpose.  There are skinny black tails that wag all over the glass to throw water off when it’s falling out of the sky, and it was that stick’s task to tell the tails when to wag.  They’re the ones outside getting wet so why do they need a stick inside in the dry to tell them it’s time to do their job?

Tobermory

Cat Chasing

Last week, we all went on a trip to a place called Monterey.  I always like to experience the cuisine of new places and was quite delighted when we stopped at a place on the way called Tarpy’s Roadhouse which had quite an excellent dog menu.  I always appreciate the water and bread that the human feeding stations in our town give us, but the opportunity to have freshly prepared hamburger with red potatoes and steamed vegetables was a real treat.

Our humans have bags full of long sticks with flat metal pieces on the end.  I’ve never been able to work out what these sticks are used for, so I’m sure you can understand my fascination when Daddy put one of the bags in the motorized dog carrier before we left.

We spent the night at a kennel on the edge of a big field.  Daddy got up really early and left with the bag of sticks while we went for a sniff with Mummy, after which we went and sat at the edge of the big field to watch the scenery.  It was then that I noticed the really big litter boxes.

A cat lives near our kennel that likes to chase us when we’re out for our neighborhood sniff and I find that one pretty scary so I can only imagine how terrifying a cat would be that needs a litter box that size.  No wonder all the humans walking around the field had bags of sticks.  I can only assume that Daddy and his friends must be pretty efficient at cat chasing as we watched for quite a long time and didn’t manage to catch sight of one.

Talisker

Green Humans

This weekend, lots of humans went green.  This going green thing confuses me.  Last year Mummy says our kennel went green but the only change that I could see was the addition of big shiny windows on the roof that you can’t see out of.

In the interest of our studies of human behavior, Tobermory and I took ours downtown to experience green humans first hand.  We put green scarves on so that we didn’t look out of place.

Daddy told us that the best place to find green humans is a very popular falling over juice kennel called CB Hannegan’s.  We know this place pretty well as we take Daddy there quite often when he’s thirsty after we’ve taken him for a town sniff.  I’ve watched a lot of humans going in and out, but very rarely are they green.  Yesterday was a completely different matter.  I didn’t even recognize the place, and sure enough, Daddy was right.  There were lots of very happy humans wrapped in green body covers, drinking big glasses of black falling over juice with a white fluffy top.  I wanted to go in and check it out further but Daddy said that with so many happy humans, he was worried that my sore tail would get trodden on.

Talisker