Roll up! Roll up!

The first day of the new part time JR. Archie was rushing round in delight at 1pm, instead of pacing around for an hour or so at (sometimes) 6pm. So lunch was eaten, then JR and Archie went off for an afternoon walk. And I didn’t even do any ironing.

They came back sooner than expect as rain - which didn’t eventuate - looked imminent. It then turned out to be a lovely afternoon, with dark brooding skies, and so we set off for Doggie Heaven Hill again. And it sure was heaven today - we met SO MANY dogs.

We met a lovely old pointer, Ella, whose sister had died recently. She was very patient with Archie but stood no nonsense - she sat down as soon as he rudely tried to sniff her bottom.

We met two dog walkers, who had three dogs of their own. Two huge basset hounds, Lily and Archie, who were rather old and couldn’t walk too far on their short arthritic legs. The lady was pushing a pram with no toddler in it. Yes, it was for Lily for when she got too tired!

They had several other dogs they were walking, including two nippy little ones on leads, a collie who was muzzled because she liked to herd everything with little nips, a Dalmatian, a wee spaniel and an Australian Labradoodle. Never seen one of them before, but they come in small, medium and large, like schnauzers.

So we have mutual bottom sniffing - Lily, who was rolling in something unmentionable, Archie and the wee Aussiedoodle. I hoped the Dalmatian and the spaniel would join in - that would have been some blip!

PS I'm always unsure whether to capitalise dogs' names, so I used this advice.