Cookie has been a joy to get to know. I can’t keep a dog. Not with needing to drop everything and fuck off to who knows where at the drop of a hat. I love animals, but being primary carer for anything means that you have to be there for it all the time. Both of my parents died before I was thirty and I appear to have avoided children. I’ll look after a dog for a few days and that’ll be lovely. But I just don’t have the predictability to keep one full time, more’s the pity.
We had a very very very long walk in the morning. The sun was shining, the sky was clear. There is a very good network of bridleways and allotments here in Banbury. It doesn’t take long to find open space.
Cookie comes when she is called, and she runs like crazy when she’s free. I experimented with letting her off the leash in a big field. She bounded joyfully, and I might have been more relaxed had there not been an interesting horse. Still, she held back from jumping at it. She is, of course, a good dog. Oh yes she is.
I’ll be up tomorrow morning. That’s the joy of dogs. This evening the lads and I proved ourselves to be incredibly incompetent at Sea of Thieves, a cooperative online multiplayer pirate game. We died and died and died. It was atrocious and brilliant simultaneously.. Cookie sat behind me, occasionally mumbling, as I bailed the ship out. We eventually realised that we were just going to die all the time, and gave it up as a bad job shortly after midnight. I might have been inclined to have a weekend lie-in tomorrow after writing this late blog. But not with Cookie. I’ll be downstairs bright and early to offer walkies.
I could use a dog in my life more frequently. I’ve grown very used to cats and their ways. But dogs are so incompetent that they force us to step up for them, so they can just artlessly enjoy all the moments one after the other. Two days with that glory has helped me remember to downplay my own comfort. She’s an ace dog. She’s almost silent and mostly communicates with a head turn and a mucky paw. She’s a delight. And Jesus, she can run.
AlBarclay 