well, actually...

I think he has been made aware that he is, in fact a dog not my mother's youngest baby, so that's probably a good thing, in the sense that disillusionment is probably when all's said and done at the end of the day, a good thing. No amount of rehabilitation/ surgery/ skilled lying by those around will make him less of a dog and more of a person.

I do note an interesting degree of factionalism. As I mentioned, yesterday it was Kenzie and Charlie on patrol. Last night it was Kenzie and Millie guarding the house (from us) when we came home. This morning it was also Kenzie and Millie at the back door, with Charlie in her crows' nest position at Mia's alpine yert (stop me if I am being ridiculously obtuse with this detail). I am not sure whether these divides are real or whether it's just Kenzie does what he does, Millie doesn't care what he does, and Charlie does, so when she gets pissed off she pisses off; or whether perhaps Kenzie is up to some politicking.

Whatever, as you can see, it fascinates me like so many things with no possible solution.

bizarre resolution (dogs)

I am so used to dogs being unmanageable in a barely bearable way, that I am astonished to report that it has all more or less resolved nicely. Kenzie has become Charlie's lieutenant in patrolling the grounds. Millie has become some kind of Queen Victoria figure, only occasionally (and I reckon tokenistically) expressing dominance over Charlie who will in turn express it over Kenzie (in a 'naughty dolly' way). Yesterday morning the sight of Charlie and Millie's silly sleepy heads watching from their beds as Kenzie did a morning dance was nothing short of hilarious. They looked like the archetypal exhausted parents.

self-justification and dog update

Reviewing the posts below, I appreciate there seems to be a slight obsession with coffee and urine comparisons, I would like to think this is less of a matter of obsession with urine and more of a matter of worrying at the base meaning of the strange term 'weak as piss'. That's my excuse anyway and I plan to stick with it.

Meanwhile, dog status: Millie still has her bucket, though her leg is, very slowly despite her most ardent efforts to chew that thing off and thus eliminate a slight nuisance, healing (do I win some sort of award for this sentence's awkwardness, considering especially it's not even finished yet?). She is also starting to smell pretty rank.


Charlie is utterly liberated by this whole thing. She has become more independent, friendlier and buoyant. Here she is with her new look, 'jaunty colt'.

This? Oh, it's just my new bark amplifier. Now I can network and friend anyone within a km radius of the known universe, at any time. It also looks stylish.

It's fucken the streamlined version, alright.

667th post

I don't have anything to add to the great sum of human reasoning I just didn't want to leave my number of postings at 666, the number of obese. I am starting out for work a little late this morning because I've ordered something from the SLV - a book by HH Smith about libraries - I know what you're thinking, HH Smith the architect who designed the Bexley Women's Rest Centre? Well, all things considered (to quote the title of a very po-faced program that the ABC takes from US national public radio over the summer) probably not that HH Smith. But I owe it to the world to make sure, as it might be. There are a lot of Smiths in the English-speaking world, all weird, but the number of H. Smiths must be much less, and H. H. Smiths significantly fewer, so it's worth the gamble ay.

Millie update: she has a cute red (it was coloured that way by dye) bandage on her foot, and I haven't been game to look in her ear yet. She can hobble around but obviously feels a bit hard done by, who wouldn't, especially anyone who doesn't understand medicine or surgery. She cannot see any value in licking the bandaged foot, so keeps licking the other three. Charlie is quietly relieved to have her back ('everything I thought was true was temporarily challenged, but was then confirmed') and so are we.

animal experiments

Well, Millie ended up having not only a fleshy protrusion removed from her ear, but also from her leg (seems the vet was inspired to prune). This means Millie stayed at the vets overnight and Charlie has had not only a day 'alone' but also a night. She is not used to this kind of thing and clearly does not like it.

If you regularly visit us at the Crescent you will know that Charlie has some hostility rooted in her wish to control a situation; she is a real life Peter Costello, to cite archaic political history. Millie, on the other hand, (I am not going to say she is a kind of John Howard figure because that is a terrible insult - although come to think of it now the Libs also hate Howard maybe I should reassess) she jovially refuses to surrender power yet never seems to be anything but in control however is not at all domineering or showy about it.

Charlie has really defined herself by her relation to Millie, then, and now she is adrift. God knows what she'll think when Millie shows up today with bandages and crotchetty. Either that Millie is a god or a mortal, I suppose, and retreat or attack accordingly.

I love dogs, but it is a pretty venal society. And beagles are notoriously the most passive dogs! Charlie is an anomaly, though, I have to say.