Things I have learnt in my absence...

1. Do not wage war against the person who feeds you.

2. Do not wage war against the person who controls your access to the internet, and therefore your blog.

3. Some kinds of 'diet' are apparently not temporary.

4. Clippers are very scary things and not worth the chicken titbits that accompany their use (I never thought I'd say food wasn't worth it, but on this occasion I have been felled by these buzzing nightmares).


Officially, Mother and I have declared a Truce. This, apparently, is what you do to end hostilities. I prefer to see it as a tactial maneouvre. I am playing a Very Long Game.

My goal?

As much food as I desire and abolition of all 'diets'.

From the Front Line...

...sssssh! Don't shout, I am reporting this in secret so that the powers that be around here (aka Mum and Dad) don't censor me. Yes, things have got that bad, and all out war has broken out.

Since the mutilation of my undercarriage, the inadequacy of walks in the days that followed and the appalling changes in diet (i.e. not enough food), relations have broken down. Mum has been unmovable on the subject of food supplies and so I have taken it upon myself to supplement my pathetic diet.

Night raids on the kitchen have so far been quite successful, my high points being an entire loaf of bread and a rather fine pack of weetabix. I now go in there whenever I can in order to chance my luck and fill my ravenous stomach. Of course this has led to much stomping around by parents, and an increased likelihood of the door being firmly shut. I am having to get sneaky. I have found a wonderful camo outfit on the net and am weighing up the merits of wearing it for stealth, against the fact that I find wearing 'clothes' demeaning.

Mum and Dad tried to distract me by taking us on a trip to the Cotswolds, but while it might have had its enjoyable moments, it didn't for one instance take away the enormity of the task at hand.

I Must Be Fed More.

Captain Clive, over and out.


Ssssssssssssssh!

Nag Nag Nag

'Don't lick there'...'don't jump up'...'no running around'...blah blah blah....

This is soooooo boring. I'm not allowed to do anything fun. I haven't been out for a walk since Monday. I felt too depressed yesterday to write, it hurt when I sat down and I couldn't get up on the bed unassisted. Embarrassing. I felt so low that Mum took advantage of me and made me wear my fleece because I was shivering. I told her it was only because of the shock of my loss, but no, she insisted I was cold and needed it. Grrrrrrr.

Plus, I'm sure my food rations have been cut AGAIN. Mum says I'm still on a diet to lose weight (what???? I'll be a skeleton if she has her way) has now been upped because 'done' dogs put on weight more easily. Even less food. Great.

My life is hardly worth living.

Oh, and I have decided I have a bone to pick with Dad. He's a bloke, right? He has...bloke's bits. So, here's my question.

How in the name of everything manly did he let her do that to me???????????

Hmm? Dad? Oh, nothing to say eh? Funny that. Realllllly funny.

I have been violated!!!!!

Shock. Horror. The most fell deed imaginable. Betrayed by my own mother!!!!

Please, if you are of a squeamish nature, I beg that you look away now. And no, Bran, there are no photos.

The truth is...I can hardly bare to say it. Here goes...

I have been unmanned! Yes! I, Clive, am two peas short of a pod! Or should that be two pods short? Well, however you like to put it, I am no longer the man I once was. My short and curlies have been shaved as well so I look like an overgrown puppy whose pods haven't even shown up to the party yet.

The Shame.

I really thought, at the grand age of 3 1/2, that I had gotten away with it. That Whippet had been unmanned since before he came to live with us, and to be honest he's such a girl anyway he'll have hardly noticed any difference. But me! How can I strut my manly stuff now?

The worst of it is I've hardly had anything at all to eat since 7pm yesterday evening. Mother seems to think a tiny bit of roast chicken when I arrived home will be sufficient, but she should know better!

I am overcome by feelings of loss. I will retire.

Adieu.

Oh the shame...

In a cruel retaliation for my revealing Mother as the One Who Knackered the Old Ship Clock (yes, it was her all along, sneaky woman...), she has grasped the scissors and I am now many hairs lighter!

She may as well have taken the clippers to me. Just as I had grown a magnificent furry mane, I have been cut down. Shorn. Embarrassingly so. And it's a ropey haircut too because there are still long bits sticking out in places. I can tell people are laughing at me.

I will require vengeance!

I am lost for words!

I am accused of heavy handed interview techniques with the witnesses! I cannot believe it! I, Clive, am a perfect gentleman! Yes, I am capable of sticking up for myself when required, but to say such dreadful things!

The situation is this. Sometime since my round of interviewing last week, one of the witnesses - the Old Ship's Clock - has developed a little 'issue' . I suspect willfulness on the clock's part, or maybe even a conspiracy to turn this case on its head and frame me - the brave detective! - but the fact is that the hour hand on the clock is looking distinctly cockeyed. Perhaps this is some kind of reaction to the original crime? The other clocks aren't suffering in the same way though. It is most mysterious.

There is another facet to this problem. They do say that the person who reported a crime is often actually the perpetrator, and so I suspect Mum may have had more to do with it than she is letting on. But for my own mother to be using me as a fall guy? I wouldn't have thought it possible!

I am going to have to practice a little divide and conquer, and go talk to Dad about this.

By the way, my nose is improving slightly, I think the lovely little bits of cheese that Dad is giving me morning and night are really helping, but since there is no proper explanation of the cause, I am still very wary that I am being targeted in order to stop me detecting.

I wonder if Sherlock Holmes ever had such problems?

Curioser and curioser

Okay, so I have been compiling evidence and this has turned into an extremely complex case. As I feared, That Whippet is way out of his depth (let's just say 'good cop, bad cop' is completely beyond his understanding). Despite his inadequacies, we have interviewed several key witnesses (though to be honest I did most of the talking!):

• Mum
• Dad
• Dylan (side-kick's are notorious for turning out to be the baddies!)
  
• the bedside alarm clock
• the living room clock
• Dad's watch
• the oven clock
• the bar clock
• the old ship clock

However, due to the wileyness of the criminal we are pursuing, it would seem that:

• no-one saw anything
• no-one heard anything
• no-one smelt anything (obviously, this relates more to canines than humans who are useless at smells)

On the basis of things I have seen with my own eyes through my magnifying glass (sorry, apparently us detectives aren't allowed to share the secrets of how this amazing instrument works), I have compiled the following list of suspects:

• the bedside alarm clock
• the living room clock
• Dad's watch
• the oven clock
• the bar clock
• the old ship clock
• Dylan (well, as I'm sure I've said before, there's something shifty about him)
  

I am still pondering my next step, but am having to have a break as I have a mysterious injury to my nose which requires concentration to heal. Hopefully it is unconnected to the case, but since I can't rule out that I am getting close to the truth I have to acknowledge it might be an attempt to put me off detecting.

Never!

A crime! An international crime!

When I woke this morning, I felt it straight away. Something was missing and I couldn't find it anywhere! I asked Dad and he didn't know, I asked That Whippet and he just looked at me with a stupid expression on his face (don't know what else I expected really). Then I asked Mum and she said we had lost an hour!

I am horrified! A whole hour has been stolen and no-one - yes! no-one - seems to care! Mum said it was normal and happened every year. It even has a name - "British Summer Time". I just can't understand her slapdash attitude to this obnoxious crime.

So, I have decided to Do Something About It. I have put together a detecting pack and am ready to get detecting! My pack consists of:

• Some paper to jot down notes (I chose to reuse paper as I believe in recycling - this time I am reusing one of Mum's nonsensical dog training manuals. I am perfect and need no more training).
• A crayon to use with my paper (Dad, being an artist, always has pens and stuff lying around, he says they're expensive and I'm not to use them, but I always say quality deserves quality).
• A clock (interrogation of witnesses is always crucial to tracking down criminals).
• That Whippet (every detective needs a stupid side-kick, though I must admit to be scraping the barrel with this one).
• A Magnifying Glass (I have ordered one of these and a copy of Sherlock Holmes from the internet with Mum's paypal account so that I might understand the finer points of this complex instrument of detection).

So I am ready (almost, my internet order should arrive tomorrow as I chose the courier 'before 12 noon' service) and willing to sniff out this hideous master criminal!

Be on your guard! Your hour could be next!

I may condescend to stay here a while longer...

So I have now extensively pondered on Mum and Dad's (quite frankly outrageous) list of things I need to ponder upon. Actually I finished pondering on them last week but I like to keep them waiting sometimes to keep them on their toes. I have some statements to make.

1. If another Blue Roan who looked very like me and behaved very like me took my place, I think Mum and Dad would find it very hard to spot the difference as they are a bit slow about these things. I have them on a technicality there, definitely, so their first point is null and void.

2. I believe that one cannot have too high an opinion of oneself. If I don't think I'm great, why should anyone else? And since loads of other people think I'm great, I must be onto a winner with this theory. Therefore, Mum and Dad are wrong on this point too (bit of a pattern emerging here).

3. I must concede that a small amount of fun does, on occasion, take place. Sometimes. Maybe.

4. I decided to answer this point with practical action and have been proving just how much I can still dislike That Whippet everyday since last Wednesday. Mum is convinced I am in the grip of a 'cyclical hormone rush' (whatever that is - I think she made it up to cover up the fact she doesn't know what I was up to). Both parents having failed to recognise that I was proving a point with decisive action just proves my earlier theorisation of Mum and Dad being slow (see point 1). I'm right again.

So that's at least 3 and 3/4 of the points they raised going in my favour. If not more. Actually I think it is definitely more like 3 and 7/8 of the points going in my favour.

Despite me having this real and moral victory, I must declare I have decide against the Dog Swap. I am unfortunately a slave to my creature comforts and, whatever their other faults, Mum and Dad are not all that bad at providing for me. I only have to prompt them from time to time (see the thing about them being slow again...).

So, for now, I shall suspend plans to leave and work on refining the offer that I receive at home.

But that's just a suspension, hear that parents? Better get ready for some major belly rubbing sessions, just to convince me I am right to stick around!

I seem to have caused offence

It seems I have (methaphorically of course) bitten the hand that feeds me. Mother is Very Upset. In fact, she has given me a list of things she would like me to Think Upon.

• Mum and Dad would definitely notice if I left and another dog took my place and are quite offended that I would think otherwise.

• Mum and Dad are concerned that I have too high an opinion of myself in assuming that someone else would happily swap their dog for me without a second thought.

• Mum and Dad are sad that I think the fun is lost from life, they think we have lots of fun together (they go on to list lots of so-called 'fun' incidents...blah blah blah).

• Mum and Dad think I am prone to exageration, since the majority of the time (in their opinion!) me and That Whippet get along just fine (again, more listing of examples....yaddah yaddah yaddah).

You know what I say?




Talk to the paw!

Wanted: Dog Swap.

2009. Day 64.

That Whippet is still here. After the chaos that was Christmas and New Year (blimey, people really like going to the pub round them don't they????) I was looking forward to an early rehoming of the hairy one and then a nice quiet reversion to me being the Only One in the parents eyes.

Apparently not. We are now expected to get along famously. There will be no scraps (no, not food, the other kind, though I don't seem to be getting scraps either, must write a memo to Mother about that). There will be no shenanigans. There will be fun. There will be brotherly love (yuck yuck yuck). There will be occasional sharing of the sofa. There will be 'doing as you're told'.

I tell you, the regime in this house has to be experienced to be believed. Other rules include:

No barking at the binmen at 6am on a Wednesday morning
No barking at people passing by the pub, especially if they have dogs or small children
No barfing and then eating it up (ha! just let them try and stop me)
No running across the room and taking That Whippet's dinner from under this nose (well, if he will let me, then why shouldn't I?)
No chewing up of random items to spite parents who have gone out without us (that's for Dylan mostly)
No stealing logs or bark from the wood pile and then crunching it up and strewing the wreckage around the pub (well, what else is the wood pile for?)

etc. etc. Fun is being squeezed out of my life.

I need a dog swap. If you have a luxurious house with polite and intelligent gundogs in residence who enjoy chase, wrestling and barking, preferably with a dog bed in every room and no objection to me using yours for my most excellent roaching, and you have plenty of meat to feed me, then please let me know. Ideally, you should have a stupid bouncy highly excitable fast running annoying ball of hair that can come and live in my place here with That Whippet, then the parents might not notice I have emigrated to a Better Life.

Only serious swap offers please, I have high standards.

Stuff being benign....

He gets everything he asks for! Boing boing bloody boing. He makes me dizzy. Mum says it will be better now we can get back into our routine and get back to our new regime of calming meals (I don't care if they're calming, I just want them to be plentiful) and regular training. In the meantime, does anyone want a boingy hairy whippet?

It has been a whirlwind of activity here. There's this wierd thing called Christmas, which was kind of cool because one of my favourite people came to visit (though I'm not sure he loves me as much as I love him, he won't let me sit on him!) and we got presents to open (Mum complained though because she had to sew up our new toys on day two - why else do we have toys except to chew them???) and nice treats to eat. And then more people came to visit, some of them a bit on the short side (but quite fun) and the pub has been heaving.

I have been feeling quite sociable recently so have been checking out the customers. Many of them have interesting trousers (fantastically some of them stink of fish! Brilliant!) so I like to spend time catching up on the neighbourhood news. Seems when you live in a pub, you get access to lots of trousers! I quite like it.

Anyway, Mum says me and That Whippet have to draw up our New Year's Resolutions. I said hers should include more generous food portions for me and trying harder to find a new home for That Whippet. She said not to be so cheeky, and that my "brother" (ha!) is not going anywhere.

Great.