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My dog is a whore.  We took her out to Bourton on the Water and the Cotswold Wildlife Park today.  She was the biggest attraction at both places.  With children, parents and foreign tourists stopping to pat her on the head.  I’ll give her credit that she was very very well behaved.

Two observations, our dog is not male, why do people immediately assume every dog they see is male.  Wouldn’t it be easier to refer to her as “it” until they know the sex.  It’s far less offensive.  I wouldn’t go around assuming your child is one sex or another, kindly don’t do the same to our dog.  Two, why does everyone ask how old she is then say she’ll be a big dog?  Gah!!

So, if I had a pound for every time someone asked me how old he is… I’d have about £100 I think.  Next time I’m going to tell them “He’s a 10 year old pygmy Golden Retriever, bred as an experiment, but they decided against further breeding programmes so there are only six in the world.  He’s been this colour all his life.  Oh and the breeding programme included no visible male organs…”  Sometimes you just want to slap your forehead.

Oh and she has my full and unwavering permission to “see off” another person who has the gall to call her a bloody “Labradoodle” she’s a Golden Retriever.  A beautiful Golden Retriever at that.  I did tell her out loud, so the moron who had the gall to insult her, that she was a Golden Retriever and don’t listen to anyone who tells her otherwise!

For those of you who have read “Marley and Me” you will know that the dog got expelled from obedience school.  I suspect Lily (aka Pupzilla) will get expelled as well.  Our first class last night.  First thing she does? Stands up and lets out the biggest burp I’ve ever heard her emit.  I am not joking.  It was a one big buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppppppppppp.  R and I had our obligatory “Face / Palm” moment, i.e. we both put our palms to our foreheads, then tried very hard not to laugh.

Following on from the mighty belch, she wouldn’t stop barking.  We cannot work out what was up with the little monster.  All she did was bark and pull on the lead.  Epic Fail dog!  To finish it all off nicely, she wee’d on the floor.  The dog is going to get expelled.  We shall see how she does with her homework this week.  Which I’ve yet to work out  as I’ve not read it.

More tales of Puppy school next weekend.  She’s going to a dog sitter overnight on Thursday as we’re off to the Festival of Speed next Friday.

Wow it’s really very humid today.  Took the dog out for a walk and came back hot and bothered, then stupidly decided to do the laundry and hoover.  I’m now seriously hot and icky.  Bleurgh.

Pupzilla decided to eat the travel bowl while I was having breakfast.  I kind of decided “if she’s not trying to eat me while I eat my breakfast… meh”.  Also, how is it possible to get all excited when she goes to the toilet outside? I just did.  I feel we’re making progress on her bathroom habits.  Which for those of you who have puppies or kittens… it’s a relief when they don’t keep making a mess of the house!

OK for starters I appear to be turning into some strange woman who only talks about her dog.  Shoot me, it’s better than complaining about the cost of fuel or how the country is going to the dogs (not mine clearly).  Anyway, I’ve started talking to the dog while out on walks with her.  Yes this does make me sound as nutty as I probably am.

Anyway, today she decided to freak out when another dog came near her today, she wet herself (oh goodness I’m embarrassing the dog in public).  Anyway, she totally flipped out, really rather upset (she’s still afraid of big dogs).  I apologised to the owner of the other dog, who then left, when I looked down, what do I see? a big smiley faced puppy staring back with big waggy tail… My dog is an actress, she’s going to win an oscar for that performance.

It’s nice coming home to someone who appreciates you being there.  Lily has her ears back her tail goes so fast her bum wiggles around.  It fills your heart with joy at something un-questioning that wants your affection.  That said, she’s slobbered all over the sofa, just got herself wedged under it (my hands hurt from lifting it), has made a mess of the living room floor and is little miss destructo!

Well I’ve got the gallery tool working on the site.  There is a page dedicated to photos of the little shoe chewer.  Please click on the link to the right titled “Lily” or alternatively follow this link to Lily’s Photos.

Obviously the decent photos I didn’t take.  However I’ll do my best to try to take some decent photos of her and stick them on here.  Can’t make too many promises on that one though!

Well interesting few days.  I spent Friday and Saturday in London attending the Nielsen Norman Group conference on Intranet Usability.  Really interesting, best thing I’ve been to in a very long time. Hopefully I’ll get to apply some of what I learnt to my job.  Still it was exhausting, lack of sleep the night before, and staying up late talking to my best friend, all but did me in. 

Today I’ve done a mad dash to find puppy food (as she’s stopped eating the food for older dogs we were told to feed her), done the food shopping, watched the Grand Prix and baked a cake.  Yes, all in that order, I’ve still got the housework to do yet.

Brilliant Grand Prix today, Lewis deserved to win.  Which leads me onto something interesting I read on auto blog.  Apparently, Richard Hammond is going to be the F1 presenter when it goes to BBC next year.  If it’s true, then rock on!  Now all we need is someone like Suzi Perry to do the pit commentary.  I wonder who will do race commentary, I hope Martin Brundle moves, I like his commentary.  Perhaps Murray will come back?  Who knows. 

Anyway, I’m thinking of some blog posts on usability following the conference.  More soon!

The dog just burped… twice…. can’t stop laughing.  It was an almighty brrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaapppppp hehehehe. 

We have psycho puppy.  She’s gone from nice, sweet, sleeping a lot with a bit of play, to complete psycho puppy.  I only left her with R for the day while I went to work, come home and she wants to eat me.  Alive! She has a foot fetish, we’ve had to find her an old sock to chow down on, as she’s content with pinching them off the arm chair.

We built her a little lair, and at some point while R was in the bath, she stole a par of socks from the bathroom, only we didn’t know for another two days.  We found the socks hidden in her lair.  Goodness knows what else she’s going to hide in there. 

So far she’s pulled the towel off the top of the lair and dragged it into the middle of the living room, then promptly trotted off and got the rug from the hall as well, that was only this evening, within half an hour of me getting home. 

We’ve been reassured she’ll grow out of it.  Hmmm.  Let’s just say she’s like a living re-incarnation of Marley.  As I said… psycho dog. We’ve been given instructions to ignore her when she barks, get up and leave her.  I was going to say she was fast asleep… she’s now trying to eat R, her sock abandoned along with the rest of her toys, hand is FAR more tasty.   

It was big, it was black, it was hairy, and it was going to kill me.  OK so it wasn’t going to kill me but the rest was true.  It was a spider.  A big spider.  They don’t normally bother me, but this one started to scuttle towards me as I lifted the dog basket up.  So I did the only thing I could think of, squeal.  OK squeal and then suck it up into my freshly cleaned Dyson.  I’m never going to somewhere nice in the afterlife, but in my defence, it was going to kill me.

Just been out for our first country walk.  The dog being here and needing a walk, we took a stroll up the road and then went off up a country track.  Wow.  Not only was it really fresh and sunny, but we saw hares racing around and other dog walkers.  It was really enjoyable, I need to buy some knee high socks, ’cause my wellies keep getting stuck to my calfs.  Yeah, yeah… jokes about knee high socks, try your best, I don’t think blue hunter wellies, knee high socks and a short skirt is about to set any trends in a hurry.

Really enjoying this country living business, walking in fresh air is a great way to clear your mind!