Well it’s all back to normal after my holiday last week. Mum has had a few meeting this week so dad and I had a boy’s day at home. I reminded dad how good I was at sleeping in various locations around the house and of my unending skill in the ability to eat sticks whilst we’re out on walks. He was very impressed!
However I will fill you in on our rather exciting endeavour on my weekend walk with mum. We’d gone to the Blackwater Valley for our walk and I had taken my favourite pink tennis ball. Now I will admit that mum issued many a warning about not dropping the ball in the water because the river flows (not fast but it flows) and the bank is quite steep. But did I heed the warnings (well no). Not long after we’d reached the river bank I let go of the ball and it fell into the river. This caused me much consternation and I most vexed as we both stood and stared at my precious pink ball now bobbing along against the river bank.
Having resolved to sort the issue, mum set about various plans to retrieve the ball (note she’s doing the RETRIEVING!) We were not well equipped for the rescue. There were no sticks about the only vegetation available were nettles, brambles and some non-stingy, non-prickly plant which had about as much substance as a wet lettuce!
So besides a bunch of useless vegetation what did we have?
- A flexi lead
- A poo bag
- A large black RETRIEVER!
- An unwilling human
Equipped with these tools how to get the ball back?
We spent a fair amount of time with mum trying to encourage me (the large RETRIEVER) to go and get the ball. The words ‘you’re a Labrador and I KNOW you can swim’ were uttered many a time. However I couldn’t pluck up the courage to enter the 12 inches of water where the ball resided! And mum couldn’t bring herself to give my bum a quick shove by way of forcing the issue.
The poo bag proved almost as useful as me in the process. It did at least go into the water which is one up on me! However lack of substance (cheap poo bag) led to a swift abandonment of the poo bag strategy.
Basically there were limited options and I soon came to the conclusion that mum would have to get the ball. However, as I was still ‘stressing’ over my favourite ball I had to be secured first so i didn’t inadvertantly push HER in. In the absence of any nearby tree trunks a handy horizontal branch did the trick so with me attached to it via the flexi lead (vertically) I actually became quite useful ballast!
In the end the solution came when mum got on her hands and knees in the mud (muttering the words ‘your dad will not be impressed with me for attempting this’). Having anchored herself to a sitting Labrador she reached into the water to rescue the offending object! Success!!! Mum managed not to fall in, I managed not to have to go in myself and the ball was recovered. Oddly enough, once recovered, it disappeared again pretty swiftly, this time into mum’s bag where it was to stay until we were well away from the water’s edge. 😕
And here it is – my prized, treasured (recently laundered) lovely pink tennis ball.
So that’s the tale of the great ball rescue.
The rest of the weekend was spent boating. It was mum and dad’s wedding anniversary on Sunday so we went out for a meal. Well I only got to go so far, sadly nowhere near the food! We moored at a restaurant in Maidenhead on their pontoons. As soon as we arrived I spotted an alien object on the pontoon. It was a cat but it sat VERY still. Indeed when it came to a staring exercise it was pretty good at out-staring me.
Dad and me got off the boat for a bit of a trot and this cat was STILL staring at me. It was very spooky and I was really not very keen on it. Having resisted passing it for a while I finally gave it a very wide berth and scooted past it (much to the amusement of the watching diners in the restaurant). Even having been approached by a large dog it stood its ground and it didn’t move. The cat was still there on our way back and by this time I was fairly sure it was an abnormal feline! I just wish I knew what dad meant when he kept saying ‘it’s concrete you fool!’. Here it is
So that was the week dear readers. I hope you had a good one. We’re all praying for rain here – just at night though!
Love
Tex
Tex's Blog 