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.