Dogless
Catching up on a bit of emailing this morning, I found myself lamenting to both R and B that it was unnaturally quiet here without a dog. The trouble is, once you’ve been used to that lovelorn pair of eyes following your every move, and a furry friend hopping up in the vain hope of a walk every time you so much as move a muscle, an empty house is hard to deal with.
Oh I know that there are certain advantages of being dogless: more room on the sofa for one, and being able to leave food out without it disappearing…oh and the kids’ toys having all their limbs, oh and no patches of slobber on the cushions, oh and not having to pick up poo..but APART from all these things, the advantages of having a dog are many and varied. There’s the company: a dog never complains that you’re moaning as it patiently listens to you whinge on about how much you hate changing duvet covers/ironing/cleaning the bath (delete as applicable), and then there’s the walks – I keep meaning to go for a walk, but somehow it all seems, well, pointless, without a lead in your hand and a hoppity skippity companion.
The trouble is, we were all so hopelessly and helplessly in love with B. Gentle B, who crept into our affections slowly and sneakily, who annoyed the pants off me, made me tear my hair out and curse like a trencherman, but who also insisted on sitting on our laps even if there was a spare chair, and leant against your legs so hard when you were washing up that you had to assume a ‘brace’ position so as not to fall over. Every day I remember more silly things, like the way she’d chase bunnies in her sleep, making little ‘whuff’ noises, and whose penchant for tidying up discarded items into her bed was jolly handy, even if she did murder my powder puffs.
Dizzy was lovely, but she wasn’t B. Some of her quirks, like the boundy, licky welcome we got when we came in the door, were in some ways better than B’s (who was generally rather aloof), but some things were B’s and B’s alone (like her startling passion for my friend, C, to whom she sang a rather strangled little love song which had us all in fits of laughter). And does that now mean that we’ll never find another B? And if that’s the case, should we even look? Maybe, as Hubby pointed out, we should just resign ourselves to cat ownership (or consider a tortoise, as helpfully suggested by my mate B). But then as J (who has the task of finding homes for the dogs in her kennels that currently exceed double figures) will tell you, there’ll always be another quiet/mad/gentle/happy soul just crying out for a loving home. And who are we to deny them that? Oh, I just don’t know. How much is a tortoise anyway?
