The World According To Me

Do you not just want to furnish her with pats forever?

Does her dodgy winking eye (a feature of the photo only) not melt your heart?

Does she not look like she's smiling at you? You can practically hear her asking you to take her for a walk by the river, whereupon you can both sit down on the bank and watch the sun set. How romantic/weird.

This is my surrogate child, "Lucy". She also responds to "Bella", "Poochie" (only when you say it in a high pitched voice, however) and sometimes "Turdburger" if she's been naughty.

Here are my Top Ten reasons why my dog kicks ass;

• Lucy recognises the words "Pretty girl" and sits down with her neck out so you can pat her when she hears it.
• When you ask her if she wants to go for a walk, she jumps up and down on the spot repeatedly until you get her harness, then sits down and extends her right paw, which is the one needed to get the harness on correctly.
• She loves pig's ears.
• She loves cuddles even more.
• She can do 'sit' 'lay down' 'shake a paw' 'hop in the pool' (her paddling pool) 'roll over' and after you give her a bath 'shake it out' (the water, that is).
• Lucy knows to sit down when we approach a street corner, and won't cross the road until told to.
• She doesn't like the men that I don't like either, and lets them know with a LOT of very tough barking. Before running away and hiding, mind.
• She knows my mum as 'nanna'.
• She follows me around wherever I go.
• When she gets told off, she sits down and emits an audible sigh. Sort of like a dog version of "Hmmpppph". So. Fucking. Cute.

What's not to love? I adore having her back with me. When I had to take her to mum's farm for her extended holiday, it was possibly the most awful thing I've ever had to do. I had packed up all her things into the car. Her metal food bowl, her toys, her kennel, blankets and assorted leads. I took out her harness and the blessed thing thought we were going for a w-a-l-k (If it was a top 11 - I could've added that Lucy knows what you're saying when you spell out the word 'walk' in an attempt to avoid overexcitement). That's when the tears started. So I bundle her into the car (she hates the car) and we drive down to the farm, tears rolling down my face the entire way. Mind you, she loves the farm, so when we pulled up and I let her out, she was more than happy to bound around with Max, play-fighting and competing for attention from my sisters. I honestly couldn't bear to hang around for very long, besides which my mum was getting annoyed at the crying from a fully grown woman. So I gave her biiiiiiiig hugs and told her I loved her, which she didn't fully appreciate because I was distracting her from her potential play-time, then got back into the car and started to drive away. At this point she finally noticed that I was leaving and she wasn't. Her little head cocked to the side and she started to run after the car, wondering why she wasn't going home too. I think that was the exact moment my heart broke, and I tried so hard not to look out of the rear-vision mirror. Of course I couldn't help it and wailed at the sight of her vainly trying to catch up to the car. But I had to keep going. I'm tearing up at the memory of it, writing this. How fucking pox am I.

She settled in very quickly to life on the farm. I had liberal access visits and always bought pig's ears with me to present to her, so as not to let her forget that I loved her and missed her terribly.

But now she's back, and I am so glad for that. Truly, pets are the fucking bees knees. There's something about the unconditional affection that a dog gives, so that when you've got a horrid day you can get home and someone still thinks you're great. When we went to collect her and bring her back to her new home, my mum asked Pom if he was "ready to play second fiddle". Pom was initially somewhat resistant, and Lucy was equally stand-offish to Pom, but he's succumbing to her charms, just as I knew he would.

And that's the way (a-ha a-ha) I like it.