Oh no, she's going away..

"Bless you, Gail. Gesundheit."

"What??"

Oh, I thought I heard Gail sneezing, but my mistake, it seems she was just practicing saying 'please'. In Polish. And there was silly old me, worried she might be ill. 

The truth is worse. Much worse. 

I am shortly going to be abandoned. 

Home (almost) alone for a fortnight, with only Marie-Therese to feed and water and cuddle me, and keep me company at night, and give me treats. And Yvonne and Aaron to take me for afternoon walkies. And sometimes Margaret too. Who may give me more treats. Oh and maybe some extra walks from Neil at weekends. 

How can Gail be so cruel? 

I'm sure I'd enjoy a holiday Poland. I would be an asset, don't you think? I travel well, I absolutely love exploring new places, people like talking to me. It would be an excellent opportunity to further develop my role as special canine ambassador for Scotland.

And truly, I speak the Polish language at least as well as Gail. 

PS I may have to take a break from blogging for a couple weeks, due to the unavailability of technical support.

Apparently I look cute coming down stairs....

As you know, I am an intellectual sort of a fellow, and as such, consider certain trivial things rather beneath me. But, to keep the peace at home, I have decided, just once in a while, to allow this sort of item to be posted on my blog. (You have to rotate your head 90 degrees to watch it. But don't worry, the clip only lasts 11 seconds......)

Take your dog to work day (unofficial)

Well I've obviously been successful in making clear my dissatisfaction at being left alone at home, and today I got taken in to the University for the whole day. 

I don't understand why I can't go to work with Gail all the time. 

After all, I helped her sort out some samples for analysis.

I thoroughly checked the room where she works at present.

I had imagined it would be full of amazing scientific instruments, particle accelerators and the like, but what I saw was mostly kitchen blenders and clapped out ovens, key tools for the plant scientist apparently. 

Gail tells me that the University of  Aberdeen is over 500 years old and it seems that some of their equipment might have been there from Day One (and some of the PhD students....)

At lunchtime we went for a walk in the Cruickshank botanic gardens, just outside the laboratories. Aren't these flowers just weeds though?

I stopped at the pond for refreshment. 

For some reason I wasn't allowed to investigate the most interesting looking area.... 

But please don't suppose that I'm complaining. I had a lovely day meeting students from all over the world, and I was mostly well-behaved (apart from a little incident in the tea room, where my attempts to join in the discussion were not properly appreciated.....)

I do hope I get to go again soon. 

I don't like trains anymore.....

Well as if being dropped on the road last week wasn't bad enough!

I went down to England with Gail this weekend, to visit her lovely parents. We travelled, as usual by train.

I am never ever ever ever ever going on the train, ever again. Got that? Not ever.

Have you any idea how frightening it is to be stuck on a train for ages and ages when you're just a little chap, and you don't know why the train is taking much longer than it should, and you can't walk up and down the carriage because it's too crowded and people keep stepping on you, and knocking your head with their suitcases? So you start barking to let everyone know you're REALLY fed up, and you can't go for a pee because a train counts as 'indoors', and it's so noisy, and you can tell that everyone else is in a bad mood too, and people are saying nasty things about you because they just don't understand how upset a dog might be feeling....

Do I sound traumatized? Well I still am, a day later, simply thinking about it. Our 6 hour journey to Nottingham took almost double that, both there and back, and PLEASE don't give me all those excuses about floods on the line and signal failures, I don't want to hear them.

I hereby withdraw my application to be special canine ambassador for Scotland, until SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING ABOUT THE TRAINS.

I am so pleased to be back in Aberdeen. And I must say that it was nice to find these beautiful flowers and a card from Yvonne waiting for me on the kitchen table. Well, Gail seems to like them anyway (I confess I would have preferred some liver, or a bone perhaps....)

Oh, and I'm happy to report that my paw is feeling totally fine again now.

So sorry (sort of....)

I want to tell you about an incident that occurred last Sunday, after my walk. And to ask you to judge who was in the wrong. And whether I really should have been made to apologize...

It happened like this.

Gail was out in the street washing the car. I was stood by, as usual diligently performing my quality control function. Then I saw our neighbour Yvonne, across the road, getting out of a strange car. So naturally I rushed over to see what was up. (You have to understand that we live in a very quiet street). Gail shouted at me but I ignored her.

Then, much to my surprise, Yvonne picked me up and started to walk back towards Gail. But she picked me up ALL WRONG. I didn't like that at all so I struggled and she dropped me! From a great height! Right in the middle of the road! I fell hard on my left front paw. It REALLY hurt. I barked, loudly, of course. Yvonne leant over to pat me but I was frightened and so sort of bit her on the hand. But I didn't hurt her nearly as much as she hurt my leg. I was still limping the next day.

Yvonne has a big dog - a flat coated retriever called Jake. She says that she forgot I had such short legs. That's not my fault is it?

Well anyway, the next day Gail made me buy some flowers and go round to Yvonne's house with them to say sorry.

Was that fair?

PS I have been told to add that Yvonne is a very nice lady who sometime takes me for walks when Gail is busy.