I took Steve out again this afternoon, and we went exploring all sorts of new places. I didn’t know that you could get to the river so quickly from my home. We crossed the road and went down a long street with interesting trees on both sides. A couple of people thought I was cute when we passed them. Some humans have such good taste! We had to walk over a high bridge over the road to get to the river. For some reason Steve seemed to think I was going to jump through the railings when we started to cross. He seems to think I’m daft since my skilfully-executed dive into the stream the other day. He doesn’t realise that my whole act is built around knockabout physical comedy – like the time I pretended to miss the table in the pub one afternoon. It’s all done for laughs.
I was off the lead for ages, as there wasn’t any traffic around. We came to the bridge I’d noticed on our second wander around, and this time we went across. I remembered the path as soon as we got to the other side, and ran down to the river straight away. After a nice swim to liven myself up (and a quick shake over Steve, as usual!), we decided to explore a new area. We went up a narrow lane that was thick with fallen leaves, and I had great fun digging up heaps of leaves with my nose and throwing them around. I found a spiky round thing lying on the ground, but I didn’t get very far pushing that with my nose. Autumn is a fantastic time for finding strange objects all over the place. I think it’s my favourite time of year so far.
Further along the path I heard a loud scary noise. It wasn’t a car, or even a lorry. It was a sort of crunching, grinding noise with banging every so often. It must have been a machine of some kind, It sounded so close that I just stopped in my tracks. Steve really had to work hard to persuade me that whatever it was, it was far enough away not to be dangerous. But that wasn’t the scariest thing that happened that afternoon. Far from it!
The noisy thing was still worrying me when we got to the top of the path, but there was no sign of anything. I found a lovely big puddle to splash around in, and followed Steve along the track until I saw the really scary thing behind a fence. It looked like a big black shaggy dog, but it was the wrong shape. It had stubby little legs and a huge head, and really long hair. I didn’t like it one bit. On the other hand, Steve went over to it and patted it on the nose.
Then an even bigger scary thing appeared and walked over to the fence. It was huge, brown and black, and with really long legs. Steve started making a fuss of that one as well. I couldn’t even look at them! He said they were horses, and they were friendly, but I wasn’t having any of it! I just sat on the path and whined for a while until he got the message.
We walked on for another minute or so, and went down another path beside a high stone wall. This was better, because there were great muddy bits that I could have a splash around in.
We got back onto the main path and I decided I’d better clean myself up a bit, so I went straight into the river. When we walked on a bit, we saw an elderly chap walking slowly about fifty yards ahead. I ran up to him, being the friendly sociable animal that I am, but remembered at the last minute that I was wet. I decided not to jump on him, so I ran back to Steve and jumped on him instead. The chap turned round and started chatting to Steve, so the three of us walked on slowly until we came to the care home where he lives. He was really nice, and even laughed when I shook water over him after another quick dip.
I thought we were going to go straight home, but Steve had a better idea. We walked into town and up a back lane into a pub. It was quite quiet in there, and I expect Steve thought I’d lie by the fire and dry off. Not a chance! It was another new experience, after all. I went and said ‘hello’ to some of the customers, and tried stealing Steve’s coffee while he was chatting to a friend. There were some young girls in there with their parents, and they made a fuss of me too. The fire was quite tempting, though. I had a quick sniff at it and almost burned my nose on the door. There was a big pile of firewood at the side, though, so I pinched one of the logs and started biting chunks off it.
By the time we were ready to go, I’d managed to make a fair old mess. Steve had to scoop up all the bits of wood and throw them on the fire. Everyone said ‘goodbye’ to me as we left, then we walked home by the back lane as usual. I liked that pub, we’ll have to go there again. But I don’t think I’ll be going anywhere near horses for a while. Maybe I’ll wait till I’m a bit bigger – or as big as than that weird stumpy one, at least.
Stella's Rambles 