Okay, ’specially for Jennifer, then.  Here’s a Bert photo to entertain you until Monday.

Ah, the greyhound: companion of kings… majestic, affectionate, adorable, a bit lanky, a bit more stupid, a teeny bit bald and motheaten and those ears?  Well, they’re plainly ridiculous.  He did sit still without his lead on for about two minutes though.  Result.

So this is how we woke up this morning.  Hubby’s back soon.  Bert’s going to have to stop thinking he’s human any minute now…..

So there’s not much progress to report on the toothbrushing front.

No, Bert….you see, you’re supposed to… oh never mind.

So cleaning, then.  What a totally pointless activity.  I’ve been considering this fact recently as Hubby is away (miss you, darlin xxx) and in his absence, I have inherited the role of ‘only person who ever bothers cleaning the telly’.  Hubby was always top man for this job as, well, he’s the only person who really gives a shite.  And it’s his telly, and it’s bloody enormous and new-fangled and techno-fabulous (Imagine a huge great black patio door on a stick with lights all round it), and nobody else really dares touch it.  He’s a bit like Bert with his bone.  If you even look like you might be headed towards it, a low rumbling grumble will develop somewhere in the direction of Hubby, and said person will quickly divert and pretend they were just wandering over to look at the sheep out the window.  The trouble is, the bloody thing attracts dust like you wouldn’t believe.  Hubby has a special chamois leather thing, the sole purpose of which is to keep said new-fangled techno whatnot sparkling clean.  I, on the other hand, sprayed a bit of Pledge on it (not the screen, I’m not THAT stupid) and pushed it around a bit.  And now the dust has congealed into long streaks of sludge and looks ten times worse.  Bloody cleanliness.  Bloody telly.

And then, while we were out the other day, Bert decided he’d add to my woes and knock over one of my vases of birthday flowers.  They were in the bay window behind the sofa and looked very pretty.  When we came home they were at an odd angle and Bert was strangely not very happy to see us.  Instead of silly jumps and mad wags and attempts at face licking, he scurried into the kitchen in that well known greyhound manner known as ‘better scarper, I’m in the shit’.  The water from the flowers, being a week or more old, was nicely green and smelly and, mixed delicately with all the dust bunnies behind the sofa, had created an interesting pool of grey-green sludge.  Well, that was the final straw.  Shamed by my second pool of sludge in less than a week, I decided there and then to do some cleaning.  So basically, then, I’m completely knackered.  I’ve hoovered, mopped, dusted, cleaned out the fridge, chipped all the crusty toothpaste off the taps and even moved the office around so that my desk is by the window, giving me a fine view of the cows on the hill that goes down to the lough.  I should point out here that my kitchen was spotless already - I can’t work in a yicky kitchen - and my beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous, shiny oven cost us so much money that I feel duty bound to remove even the teeniest speck of ick in case Hubby decides I don’t need it and takes it back to Harvey Norman.

Here’s my newly cleaned and repositioned desk.  And now it’s not covered in CDs, newspapers, magazines, cookery books, phone bills, electricity bills, receipts, lottery tickets (3!  I might well already be a millionaire) and various pages of my book (how’s that proofreading coming on, J?) you can see it’s made of wood.  Who’d have thought it, eh?

So here’s one for all Bert’s greyhound laydees: a full frontal, no-holds-barred gynae shot.  Woohoo!  Honestly, he’s such a strumpet.

So I don’t know if you ever read Dogs Today magazine. The greyhound world has been fair thrown into turmoil by an article written by their vet following a horrific incident where an elderly couple’s little dog was killed by a pair of greyhounds.  The vet, Emma Milne, treated the dog and was obviously incredibly upset by the incident.  In the article, however, she goes on to question whether we should rehome greyhounds at all.  To make matters worse, in an open letter on her website, she went on to say that she feels greyhound racing should be banned, calling it ‘an industry using animals for human entertainment’ and questioning ‘an industry that sets out to make a breed that is designed to chase and kill’.

Well, being a wordy sort of gal, obviously I fired off a letter to the Editor, Beverley Cuddy.  I said firstly that I was sorry that Emma had received hate mail from greyhound lovers.  That’s just base and inexcusable and doesn’t do anybody any favours, however that I had to doubt the wisdom of singling out a breed when, obviously, any breed will chase and kill another animal - I’m afraid that’s not exclusive greyhound territory.  I also said that I’ve fostered ’non-chasing’ greyhounds such as Louis (Lethal Party) who went on to be rehomed with cats and small dogs.  The responsibility for this, and any other incident of one dog killing another, lies solely with the idiotic owners who do not keep their dogs on leashes and firmly under control.

I told Beverley that we, as greyhound lovers, fight an ongoing battle (especially here in Ireland) with people who do not view greyhounds as pets, but more as ‘livestock’ and that whether it was intentional or not, Emma has added to this problem with her ill-advised comments.  Adding in her response that ‘greyhound racing should be banned’ is also ill-informed and inflammatory.  Although I’m no expert, I would worry that without legitimate racing, as with any sport, many people would lose their livelihoods, and the dogs, which genuinely enjoy the racing (nothing better than seeing a perky greyhound with tail going like the clappers after it’s run a race!), would end up being bred and raced ‘underground’ and unregulated with catastrophic results.

I know many greyhound owners and trainers, such as the lovely M and his family, and they’re good people who love their dogs.  Sadly it’s the odd bad penny that gets all the press.  I went on say that greyhounds often get a very rough deal and that I hoped that Dogs Today would continue to give a balanced view of the greyhound as a pet, and even offered to give an insight into greyhound ownership.

Happily, I got a very nice email from Beverley this morning directing me to her blog where she had written in depth about the article.  I’ll let you read it but I’ll just quote the following:

We should have picked the piece up as a knee-jerk reaction to a horrible series of events.
It was like allowing the mother of an abducted child to write an article on paedophiles. Emma was far too close to the story and needed to have had time to cool off - or for us to interject some balance.

I have to say, I’m well impressed.  Sometimes you just expect people to close ranks around their own, but Beverley was brave enough to say ‘no, hang on, this isn’t right’ and I’m sure she’ll appease a lot of people.  In the mean time, Dogs Today, with the article in it, is circulating for the entire month.  And I just wonder what damage it will do to the hard work put in every day by greyhound rehomers like Jen, and every retired greyhound waiting patiently for a loving home.

So having a friend who owns a greyhound rescue can have its perks: first dibs on any greyhounds you fancy being one of them, but occasionally one has to reciprocate, and on this occasion when the call came in saying ‘there’s a stray greyhound in Trim, can you go and get it?’, I was happy to help.

Happy, that is, until I got there and came face to face with a spindly, scrawny, half bald, severely skinny little scrap, covered in scabs and cuts.  ‘Oh’, said #2, obviously expecting something furrier, happier and altogether sweeter smelling, ‘the poor thing’.  The poor thing wagged its tail feebly and jumped into the back of the car, and off we went with our evil smelling passenger gazing out of the back window.

Once home, we took it easy, giving them a chance to get to know each other with a little walk around the garden. Inside, though, things took an alarming turn, when Thing decided that not only did he quite like Bertie, but that he REALLY liked Bertie.  Bert, although he’s friendly and open-minded, really drew the line at Thing’s amorous advances, and after narrowly avoiding a nasty incident involving Bert’s teeth and Thing’s neck, we had to separate them: Bert sulking on the sofa at the unfairness of it all, and Thing howling a very miserable tune in the kitchen.  I grabbed the pink bat phone:

Me: ‘I need help’

Jen: ‘Oh no, do they not get on?’

Me: ‘Er, it’s not that exactly, it’s just that Thing likes Bertie a bit too much’

Jen: ‘Erm…how do you mean?’

Me: ‘Well, he keeps trying to … er… well, y’know’

Jen (catching on but determined to make me spell it out): ‘No.  What?’

Me: ‘He keeps trying to have his wicked way with Bertie, who is distinctly heterosexual and not at all happy’

Jen: ‘But it’s a boy, isn’t it?’

Me: ‘Yes, he’s certainly got the right equipment, he’s just a bit confused about how he should use it’.

Jen (stifling a full blown attack of the giggles): ‘Good God, I appear to have asked you to pick up Ireland’s first gay greyhound’

Me: ‘Funny.   And Bert’s going to need therapy’.

So anyhoo, Thing’s had a nice bath, a blow-dry (he liked that), antiseptic cream on all his cuts and scrapes, a big dinner and lots of cuddles and is now asleep on the dog bed in front of the fire.  Bert, meanwhile, is watching him warily from his perch on the sofa.  Never mind, Jen’ll be booking him in to have his bits and bobs off and then I’m sure he’ll make someone a lovely pet.  And Bert will be fine, given time.  And a bit of counselling…

Jeez, Bert’s driving us all bonkers.  Don’t get me wrong, we all love him to bits, but his phobias are turning the house into some kind of cotton-wool padded sanatorium, with us all creeping around avoiding anything potentially scary in case we prompt a major attack of gibbering. 

Take balls, for instance (steady).  I mean, there are three men  of various sizes in the house, plus another two next door so football kind of comes with the territory.  But Bert is terrified of footballs - just the sight of one sends him whimpering, back arched and tail between his legs, into his bed where he curls up as small as possible and pretends he’s not there.  And rugby balls are even more scary as their rolling is more unpredictable - they can suddenly veer off and come straight for him.  It’s quite pathetic.  A rare bit of sunshine the other day had to be carefully managed, as he doesn’t really like even being in the back garden when people are kicking a ball about out front.  Poor baby.  We bought him a tiny squeaky football once, but it sent him into such tremors when anyone squeaked it that we had to hide it.  On the day that Gorgeous George came to visit, Bert nearly had a seizure when George found (and loved) the ball, galloping about, throwing it up in the air and fetching it (fetching it!  Can you imagine?  What does George think he is?  A dog?).  This brings me neatly on to dog toys in general.  Any or all of which are enough to send him into some sort of quivering spasm, especially if they… gasp!… roll along the ground.  Then there’s shoes, which, although not particularly frightening, need to be rounded up into little non-threatening piles around the house, just in case they launch a stealthy attack when he’s not looking.

Cutlery is another problem.  Unloading the dishwasher can produce a 45mph exit from the kitchen.  Dare to drop a fork on the floor and the resulting ‘Dancing on Ice’ four-legged skittering would probably earn him a bronze at the next Winter Olympics.

Then there’s frogs: evil, scary, threatening, nasty, frogs.  Oh don’t be fooled, they may look small and innocuous to you, but believe me, Bert knows the truth.  Lower your guard and they’ll go for your throat. 

He also suffers from an intensely strange, greyhoundish fear of approaching small furry animals.  These are not to be confused with retreating or fast-moving small furry animals, which are, of course, meant to be chased and eaten.  Somebody should tell the hares that if they stopped running away and ran straight towards him instead, he’d most likely suffer some sort of fear-induced spontaneous combustion and explode right there on the spot.  I wonder what would happen at the track if the lure was sent towards the dogs, instead of away from it?  They’d probably all keel over.

The little yapper down the road, all 6 and a half inches of him, invokes the kind of wide-eyed abject terror only usually reserved for nail cutting sessions.  Yesterday it even jumped up at his legs.  Bert had to be stopped from actually climbing Hubby’s legs to get away.  And a visit to C yesterday saw Bert shaking like a jelly after Tabby the cat walked in to check him out.  One evil cat-glare was enough to induce at least a 5 on the Richter scale.  What a baby.

So there you have it.  You know I’m always banging on about getting a greyhound, and they really do make lovely pets.  But should you go ahead and make the momentous decision to own one of these beautiful creatures, please try to do it without forks, because they’re dead scary.  Oh, and balls.  Oh, and take a rain check on frogs, too, if you don’t mind.  Ta.

So more congratumalations due today then.  This time to the beautiful, the waggy, the gorgeous, the downright bloody dogtastic Johnny Gatillo, kennelmate (that’s all they’ve got in common, believe me) of our useless but lubly Doofus the Wonderdog, who was voted Irish Sprinter of the Year at Sunday’s National Greyhound Awards.   The boys are huge fans and badger the hell out of the lovely M (lookin’ good in that tux, mate!) every time they visit the kennels until he lets them have a cuddle with their own little furry superstar.  Pork chops all round.