And What Of The Pup?

 

 And what of Cleo?

Cleo is, without doubt, the cheekiest, baddest, rudest, filthiest, most villainous pup we have ever met.

She is also the sweetest, funniest, smartest and most adorable pup in the world.

So really, she’s just an average pup.

To give an example of what we are living with I’ll tell you about this morning. I came down and there were no pees or shit on the floor. When I took her outside she peed straight away. I was delighted with her, gave lots of praise, then brought her inside to fetch a reward. And she got so excited about getting a treat that she made another little puddle on the floor. I never paid it any notice as I didn’t want to confuse her.

About twenty minutes later she deposited a little heap on the kitchen floor then another very long thin one which turned out to be a strip of black silage bale wrapping. Bloody farmers. That wrapping gets everywhere. Were it up to me I'd ban it.

She goes upstairs to see Bert and I go about my morning routine, drinking coffee, doing Wordle, drinking more coffee, finishing my book.*

Then I go upstairs. She has chewed lumps out of my special knee cushion I use when the old knees are playing up. That's twenty quid she owes me. There is a shredded toilet roll all over the floor and a pair of knickers on the stairs. She has pulled the towels off the dryer and pruned my geranium. I thought Bert was keeping an eye on her but he's fast asleep.

Evie asked me this afternoon,

Do you love her yet?

I replied,

Nearly. It will take another couple of weeks still.

Black plastic silage wrapping is not the only thing that annoys me. People who mow the grass verges in front of their houses is a pet hate. Their need to be ‘tidy’ will be the ruination of the natural world.. Also, there is nothing attractive about shaved yellowing grass.

I had to buy vegetable seeds this morning. Our closest garden shop is in Galgorm Castle grounds. The verges there are cut about six feet on either side of the road, the rest left wild. It was a sea of cuckoo flower cardamine pratensis and was so lovely to see. When I was a child meadows weren’t as scarce as they are today and cuckoo flowers were abundant at this time of the year. I didn’t know then that the orange tip butterflies, so commonplace then, were dependent on the cuckoo flower as a breeding plant. So, more wild areas, less shaved verges and more butterflies, moths and pollinating insects.

This is when I find Cleo most lovable

*The book I finished this morning was The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and I really enjoyed it. A tough read in parts but well worth it.