Some people don’t own a dog because they say it restricts
their social life. In a way they may be right! When we go on holiday, we book
Bella into the local boarding kennels, and when we go away for a day, i.e. over
her wee-walk hours, we have to ask a very kind neighbour to take her out. (Look
back over other blogs to see why we can’t leave her out in the garden – which
of course would be the best choice when going away for a day!)
Sometimes however she can come along for the ride. Bella
travels very well i.e. she doesn’t get excited in the car, doesn’t clamber over
the seats, doesn’t whine and doesn’t want the window open when it’s snowing
outside! Ok so it wasn’t snowing in Surrey yesterday! UK law requires dogs to
be restrained in cars – I suppose it makes sense for those dogs who do get out
of control, are misbehaved, disobedient etc. - so Bella is harnessed in - a
clip which attaches very simply to one of the fastened seatbelts and gives the
dog the freedom to move a little but the same restraint on a sudden jolt.
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| (Ok, so not Bella, and not the sort of thing she'd do!) |
So yesterday as we drove past the turn-off to the boarding
kennels, Bella was still sitting on the back seat, suddenly wondering where we
were going! It took about an hour on the motorway before she eventually gave in
and lay down comfortably!
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| ('Bridge over River Thames' ('Dartford Crossing'/'Queen Elizabeth Bridge' - on a sunny day!) |
Two and a half hours later we arrived Down South and walking from the
car to Auntie Elaine’s house was really exciting! So many new smells! So much
to see! So much not to miss!! New cats?!
I’m sure the kitchen under-floor heating helped her relax
more quickly than normal, and after smelling around slept quite happily under
our feet, waking up only to take her favourite treats from Auntie Elaine’s hand
– a show of trust. (Thanks for your patience Elaine!) She slept through discussions about how awkward she could be and
how good she was being and fortunately slept through Graham’s comments that he
thought she was ‘odd’ – however you want to take that!
A neighbour popped in with her alien looking black pug
snuffling and grunting, and happily Bella behaved and greeted the little black
thing reasonably politely, while the little black thing subserviently sniffed
Bella’s backside – quite the polite thing to do in doggy etiquette! Unfortunately – or maybe fortunately –
Elaine’s tiny lounge is not big enough even for a little black pug to go wild
in, but at least it could dash under the low coffee table, while Bella had to
leopard crawl and couldn’t get out the other side, so simply lay down and just
watched! We decided not to take her
with us when Elaine and I walked down to the little art gallery since two
excitable little fluffy, jumpy, attention seeking dogs lived there so the men
baby-sat and Bella got the gallery gossip from the smells left on me!
After lunch – with Bella sleeping under the table and
creeping unnoticed towards Graham!! – we walked up the road to check out the
bonfire preparations. Once again, far too much smelly gossip to catch up with
in such a short time! Bella pulled ahead, stopped behind, criss-crossed and
generally didn’t listen to a word I said, but I think I stayed calm and by the
time we’d reached the ankle-deep straw pathway to the bonfire field (straw?
Fireworks? Wonder if that was a good idea!!) she was quite happy to stand and
look around, like us. Although she might have wondered what Tower Bridge was
doing in the middle of a field, no water underneath, and a huge pile of trees
packed behind it. “London bridge is burning down….” ! (Watch it! Link to Puttenham bonfire 2012!!)
Her excitement grew along another muddy, gossip-soaked path
and in the next field she got to greet an almost-out-of-control black lab.
After the nose hug, it was obvious they both wanted it to go a little further
so we humans curtailed the meeting and continued past the hops and back to the
house.
Rather than dirty a towel cleaning her paws so Elaine’s
light coloured carpets wouldn’t end up patterned carpets, we decided to make
our way home. This time it didn’t take her long to lie down in the car and 2½
hours later she was so very glad to be back in her own custom-chewed bed,
almost to the point of not wanting to go out for the bedtime wee!
