Coffee on the Table

As eleven o-clock arrives I start to get excited, as it means coffee time for The Owner and that also means it is Bonio time for me. K9's are not known for such but I feel a "Woop Woop!" ought to be required at this point. The suspense was starting to get to me a little if I am honest as half past eleven was fast approaching and I had not seen him move. He was still up there, at the desk above me, banging on the keyboard and grumbling... a lot. It was then I had a terrible thought! What if I had gone to sleep and missed it? What if he has already had his coffee? I was frantic! Suddenly he threw the mouse pen back in its stand and gets up, picks up his "very special blue mug" which doesn't have Piglet, Pooh or Tigger on it, (so it is obviously still in one piece) and makes his way across to the coffee making stuff. I sit and watch as the palpable excitement in the air builds to a crescendo as he gets his cafetiere and the spoon and the coffee and spoons the coffee in. One......two.....and three coz I'm worth it! He then laughs at his joke, as he does every morning, the same joke - same laughter. Then he fills the cafetiere with hot water and puts the plunger in the top. As I watched intently, dreaming of Bonios, I couldn't help but wonder if he shouldn't have taken the spoon out of the cafetiere before putting the plunger in. He was on the phone by this time so his concentration levels, poor at best, were now at an all time low. As he chatted and laughed he absent mindedly pushed the plunger down. I thought to myself "He shouldn't have done that". And I was right! As the plunger went down the spoon opened the side of the filter in the plunger and allowed a stream of coffee and grouts to pass up the side and out of the spout and all across his desk. The harder he pushed, the farther the coffee shot across the desk unnoticed. After a few more minutes chatter on the phone he leant on the desk with his elbow and noticed the dark lake now residing on his desk and said a few choice words. Words that I pretend not to understand when he says them to me as I have breeding obviously. I rather got the impression that the lady hoomun client on the other end of the phone new exactly what they meant and was none too impressed to have heard them. I also get the impression that he hasn't got that contract after all. This may be an afternoon for keeping below the radar I think. I didn't get a Bonio either!!!

The Crackly Fire

The Owner is now running a tab for me on to which he adds the cost of all my misdemeanour's and then subtracts anything I earn and bring into the house. I am not hopeful of too much being subtracted from my tab to be honest but today I fear I may have added the cost of the "Finest of Chablis". May I just explain that when I was given my P45 as a gun dog (with breeding) from Lord Baths estate it was because I didn't like the bangs the guns made, they said I was "gun-shy". Unlike The Owner, of course, who is not shy of even the merest drop of gin. Well we have had the fire lit tonight, in our new cottage, using some odds and ends of logs he has been hacking up with Owner's Mate's chainsaw. Odds and ends tend to crack and spit a lot I have noticed, but he lit the fire and settled down with a bottle and a glass on the floor beside my comfy cushion so I curled up there too. Hopeful of a half hours fuss, or a Bonio, or better still..... both! Things were going well as we shared a moment of bonding. You know, Owner and K9 thinking as one. Well, the fire did a very good crackle at this point and I leapt forward without thinking and jumped on his lap....... which unsettled his glass..... which knocked over his bottle........ which fell on his Winnie the Pooh mug...... which split into two halfs........which spilled his cold tea from this morning all over the carpet...... which mixed with his wine on the carpet and made a right old mess! Now his cheap £3.99 bottle of Asda home brand "Dry White Wine" has immediately become a £15 bottle of chablis and has joined his Winnie the Pooh mug on the tab he is running for me. I suspect that the hire of a carpet cleaner will yet be added to that. Unable to earn in my own right I may have to conspire to get enough on to his tab to offset my own. I will keep you informed as to my progress.

The Hedge Munching Dinosaur

I have this morning encountered a dinosaur! And I would like to point out that although there are those who have been heard to mutter in disparaging tones that The Owner is a bit of a dinosaur, on this occasion it wasn't him. I had heard Tractor Driver Hoomun out in the fields since early this morning doing things. I have never managed to work out what he is meant to be doing or how he gets away with what he actually does do out there. He drives his tractor out into a perfectly good green field and then thrashes around for a while, and by the time he leaves there is not a blade of grass to be seen!! Now I have seen The Owner get in a frightful bait with Small Boy when he has been riding his bike around the lawns at the old cottage and just left a few tyre tracks across the lawn so how Tractor Driver Hoomun has managed not to get Farmer Hoomun in the same frame of mind over his efforts I am somewhat mystified. The good bit about Tractor Driver Hoomun is that when he stops for his lunch he tends to leave crusts laying about and I can avail myself of them later on patrol. Anyway, I digress. I could hear Tractor Driver Hoomun doing things in the fields behind the new cottage so I sat on the lawn making a mental note as to where I thought he was going for reference when on patrol later. I could hear him working his way down the field and then turn across the back of the hedge that runs all the way across behind the cottage. He was making lots of noise out there when suddenly, a dinosaurs head appeared over the top of the hedge and began to eat the hedge!!! Although I have to say he ate it in a lovely straight line across the top from end to end. I also noted that the dinosaur was a very messy eater as he spat most of what he tried to eat all across the lawns. I know this from first hand experience because until I moved out of the way a lot of it was coming in my direction! I think, with that much mess, he will be needing a rubber mat much larger than the one my dish is on indoors. I decided to go indoors, quickly, just in case I get the blame for either the mess on the lawns or the hedge which was now much shorter than before. Now, where is that new box of Bonios?????

Trouser Trumps and Botty Burps

After the days start not going so well with the whole jumping in the bath thing from The Owner, I was hopeful of better things to come. Well, water mopped up and buckets emptied his mood was beginning to thaw a little and a cup of tea was poured and he came and sat on the carpet next to my comfy cushion to drink it. I was in for a pleasant half hour again I thought as I drifted off into slumber. Well you know how when you drift off to sleep, there comes a stage where the muscles all relax and you are just about aware of what is going on around you but can't really be bothered? Well, I was vaguely aware of a slightly strange sensation in the nether regions but ignored it until The Owner jumped up and started yukking and phewing very loudly and appeared to be a different colour than when last I saw him in the light of day. It would appear that in my semi slumber state I had let out a bit of a botty burp.... whilst my botty was, kind of, well, snuggled up against his leg really. He flounced around the kitchen for ages after that spouting nonsense about fresh air being in short supply round here this morning. Although it is fine for him to dispense with the botty burps and move straight on to the full on trouser trumps, followed by "Oooooooooooooh scuuuuuuuse meeeeeee!" As if that makes it any better or any less toxic than my own were. This was lining up to be a very long day, even by my standards.

Washing The Bathroom Floor

The Owner was up early this morning and in surprisingly good humour. However, I think I may have changed that. He made himself his morning tea and fed me and was unfazed by the lack of milk and his need to retrieve a slightly solid pint of milk from the freezer that lurks in the shed and growls at anyone who goes near it. He brought his mug of tea, made with lumps of frozen milk, and sat down on the carpet beside my comfy cushion and ruffled my fur as he watched the telly. Apart from a few derogatory comments sent in my general direction whilst he was watching an item about a very large slug, it was an overall pleasant half an hour. With much sighing and puffing he got up off the floor to take his mug back to the kitchen then turned to the bathroom to run his bath. There was a general comment hurled at me about still being curled up and still asleep, suggesting that it was time I went out on early morning patrol of the perimeter. Whilst he faddled around in the bathroom I ventured outside and down into Dingly Dell. After so much rain of late, imagine my excitement that there was actually water flowing along the bottom of the stream bed, so I went rushing back to find The Owner. I felt he would have been pleased too. Across the lawn I raced, around the big tree that he has his washing line tied to and down on to the concrete path. I jumped the gully and over the door mat at the back door. I was really getting a good head of speed going here as I went through the back door, along the hallway where I sleep and in to the bathroom at a fair rate of knots. This was where it went slightly wrong. Well, OK, so it all went completely wrong at this point. The Owner was bent over stirring his bath a little to get a few bubbles going and I was going a touch too fast to stop in the space available. I was cold and wet and my nose was even more so, The Owners legs and bum were not! This seemed to induce a response far more excessive than was warranted in my opinion as he launched himself into the bath. There was much splashing and bubbles and water were going every where! I thought "he was not going to be very pleased about that!" and do you know what? I was right! I think he must have got soap in his eyes or something. He is now in there grumbling and surrounded by lots of towels, all wet, and several buckets, all full. Well the floor was getting a bit dirty anyway and needed a good wash down. He does seem to be glaring in my direction quite a lot, I think I may keep out of the way for a while.

My Hair in His Phone

The thunderclap hasn't happened yet, but I think I am in trouble....twice! This afternoon The Owner was talking on his phone, when it stopped working. I don't do phones as they seem to be just trouble as far as I can see, judging by the way The Owner shouts at it or about it. But I could tell trouble was brewing when it stopped working. There was much angst as he tried in vain to get the recalcitrant device to show any signs of life. He gave up in the end and we came home. He then tried plugging it in to the charger unit as he told no one who cared that it may have a flat battery. Still no signs of life. Next step was to pull the cover off and explore its insides and I knew that this was going to end in trouble, so I chose that moment to go up the garden. When I came back The Owner called me, so I came bounding in in the hope of a Bonio. He had that strange expression on his face as he held his phone aloft and extracted much of my hair from within his phone in a very exaggerated fashion. He also pulled out what he told me was a SIM card and put it on the small table along with his battery..... and my hair. I naturally had to investigate a little with a quick sniff of the table. A short while later The Owner is getting a little frantic as he doesn't seem able to locate the SIM card which seemed to be important somehow. I joined in his search a little to try and locate the missing SIM card. It was at this point that he started staring at me and appeared to be laughing. It would appear the errant SIM card had become stuck to my nose and I have absolutely no idea how. Unusually I was not in immediate trouble but I feel sure it will come. Oh yes, and the phone, minus my hair, is now working and trilling every few minutes as normal again. I think I shall give the badger poo a miss tonight. Don't want to antagonise him further.

The Owners Broken Bed

What a day I have had already, and I am now not talking to The Owner. Well until teatime obviously! On Friday he left me on my own ALL DAY until the wee small hours when he came crashing through the back door full of Bon Homme expecting me to be pleased to see him. Well I was sound asleep behind the door at the time and I had just got to the bit in my dream where I am galloping through a field full of badger poo being chased by a dozen Lady Chocolate Labradors who just want me for my undoubted good looks and very obvious breeding, when the back door made heavy contact with my nose as The Owner returned. I did forgive this little faux pas on the part of The Owner because he then fed me, but last night I could quite happily have given him a quick nip on the fetlocks. He sat during last evening slurping loudly on what he described as "a fine and warming winter red" which looked to me to have come from exactly the same bottle as the one he has been slurping loudly throughout the summer too. But what do I know? I'm a K9... He took himself off to bed as normal last night and then about half past two the inevitable grumblings from up stairs start. Why he doesn't just give in to it and come downstairs and have his wee escapes me. But we have to go in for this half an hour of pointless resistance until his bladder, stretched to bursting point, forces him to jump out of bed and rush down the stairs with the greatest sense of urgency, casting aside anything which happened to be not in his way. As the grumbling reached its customary crescendo upstairs I hear him throw back the duvet and launch himself out of bed. Followed immediately by a bang so loud that I thought he had circumvented the normal rush down the stairs by coming straight through the ceiling! Whilst he was "performing" I took the liberty of wandering upstairs to investigate, only to find that his bed had collapsed and now resembled a heap of firewood with a mattress on top. I was not about to risk any blame coming my way and went downstairs again quickly and hid. So at three in the morning he wanders in from the shed, wearing just his socks, armed with hammers, tubes of glue and electric screwdrivers. There then followed half an hours frantic DIY activity upstairs, with lots of banging and screwing. By half past three he was back downstairs with a triumphant smile on his face but his fingers were stuck together. He felt he was incapable of sleep after so much activity, so I had to stay awake too so he could watch the recording of yesterdays qualifying somewhere the other side of Swindon.... followed at six by the F1 race with the very fast and very noisy cars with nowhere for the K9 to sit, as they race all the way back to where they started from. Then we switch over to watch the very fast and noisy motorbikes from somewhere the other side of Swindon do it as well. I can't sleep at all though, as my comfy cushion is in front of the TV speakers. He, on the other hand, can sleep standing up at a U2 concert (and has) and the final straw came when he dropped off to sleep and dropped his mug of tea on my head and then looked at me with that accusing look in his eye as though I am now responsible for the wet patch on the carpet! So until teatime I shall be turning my back on him!