Testicles, shoplifting and total shame

Well here I am, back at last... bigger, barkier and blogging!

Having spent the afternoon eating a duvet which I found next to my bed (and therefore presumed was a gift) and chasing a bluebottle around the house, I have finally settled down to catch up on March and April. 

At seven months old, inexplicably my two latest pastimes are chasing flying insects and growling at my own testicles. Don’t ask me why.

........Anyhow what a two months it has been!

First of all, I was rushed to dog hospital in the middle of the night.  And all because of my nemesis.  Snails.

It happened after B&W took it upon themselves to administer a flea and worm treatment which grumpy vet insisted was CRITICAL to protect me from lungworm, given my history of dining on snails.... (they are carriers, evidently, the tasty little blighters).

To put it simply, it made me go nuts.  I had a severe neurological reaction and a ‘psychotic episode’.  One minute I was nodding off on the dogbed watching a 1996 episode of Antiques Roadshow on the History Channel, the next I was tripping like Keith Richards in a cocaine snowdome. 

Apparently it was all down to moxidectin, which can make us collies go bonkers. Humans please take note.  The only good side was B and W’s follow-up trip to Costco to stock up catering-size packs of pig ears, to try to assuage their guilt. I have probably eaten the ears from a whole herd of piggies.

Anyhow, I had just been discharged from hospital when Weird managed to lose two jobs in one week ,  which she blamed on Government cuts– a process which she referred to as being ‘Cameroned’.  Despite the obvious risk to the dog food budget, how did the two responsible adults deal with this news?  Writing a CV? Scanning the situations vacant? No. They put me and the tent in the back of the Landrover , drove to the farthest bit of Cornwall, and morphed into middle-aged surf dudes.

As this was our first holiday en famille, I like to think that my presence brightened the whole experience.  I managed to add some ventilation to the tent and on one occasion ate their lunch while they weren’t looking, but my moment of glory came in the middle of Brixham High Street on an excursion into Devon. 

With me trailing behind on the extending lead, they became momentarily engrossed in a shop window.  This gave me the opportunity to quickly pop into the doorway of the fashion boutique next door and shoplift a rather attractive black feather boa. The effect was enhanced as, in order to carry it, I had to lift my head up in the style of Quentin Crisp. I got about 50 yards down the road before they noticed the hysterical tourists and turned around to see what they were laughing at.  Weird had to go to back the shop and in the process coined what has become something of a tight-lipped, whispered catchphrase... “The SHAME, Mr Bounce. The SHAME!”

This, however, was nothing compared to Glastonbury on the way home. The campsite, rather than the hippy, fire pit and folk guitar kind of environment they had anticipated, was populated by an army of beige-clothed caravaners with an average age of about 80. The rules included children (even visitors) being banned from the site, the gates being locked at 10pm and insistence on absolute silence after 11pm. 

That evening, the three of us were snoring on the inflatable bed (me in the middle, where I had taken to sleeping with my head on the pillow), when a farm dog started barking in the distance. 

This was to be a seminal moment. It was the exact point in time that I found out I could BARK!

Until then I had only managed whining and testicle-related growling.  Now I discovered I could not just bark. I could bark like a hellhound.  I found I had the biggest, loudest, scariest bark of any dog in the South West of England.

B and W almost died of shock of course, which made it fairly easy for me to escape and circle the campsite, with them chasing me in their pyjamas.  Eventually I was cornered, rather unceremoniously hurled into the back of the car and locked in.

But the best was yet to come.  The farm dog stopped barking at 12.30am, and B appeared at the side of the car.  The ‘sad puppy’ face did the trick as usual, and, despite protestations from W that this was a bad idea, 10 minutes later we were all back in bed.

At 1am, Rover kicked off again. I roared like a velociraptor. Beard picked me up, fought me to the tent door and had just managed to unzip it before his trousers fell down.  This was my chance.  Sadly for him, as I disappeared into the darkness, he stumbled into the Landrover and set off the alarm. Meanwhile I ran to each caravan door in turn, alerting each one with a good “AAAARrrrrrrrrAAAAArrrrrrrr!”

If Glastonbury was not prepared for noise after 11pm, it was definitely not prepared for a 6 foot 8 Scouser in underpants crashing through the campsite shrubbery in the  early hours of the morning, against the backdrop of an ear-splitting car alarm and the hound of the Baskervilles, shouting: “Come here, you  d*ckhead!”.

We left at dawn without asking for a refund.  Beard put Motorhead on the car stereo as we drove through the campsite and I threw in a few barks.  W didn’t speak to either of us until Knutsford Services.

Post-duvet eating snooze

Locked in the Landy