We took CC on her first picnic. We were at Primrose Hill on the recent glorious Saturday:
Here she is on the stairs:
Big head and scary eyes
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Today we celebrated the sunshine and took Couscous to Whitstable. She was a little worried about the water to begin with but soon got the hang of it.
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Just found out that a dachshund was the first official Olympic mascot – 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Its name was Waldi. Here is a picture of Waldi next to a Couscous look alike – http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/OlympicPrimer/waldi.htm
Couscous dug up an old bone from the back of the yard and promptly reburied it nearer the house (destroying a tulip in the process). Here she is in action:
And after…
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I had left CC with her bone but when I looked some time later she’d disappeared. I found her upstairs on the rug, curling up with her favourite toy (after taking it out of its box):
Sprung
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CC shows her cheekiness and cleverness in finding the warmest part of the new lounge room – the top of the sofa by the radiator cover…
I know I shouldn't be here but...
Comfy and warm
Not a care in the world
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Couscous wrote a poem this morning (there may have been a ghost writer involved as well…)
I can’t see in colour,
But you know, when I’m blue:
You stroke and cuddle me
and make me feel brand new.When I’m red with anger,
and I go slightly mad,
You make my crate tidy,
Even when I’ve been quite badBut best of all is night,
When I’m no more a grouch,
You let me snooze between
you, prostrate on the couchI can’t see in colour,
It’s all just shades of gray,
But you make up for that
With kindness, every day.
We have discovered the signature tune for Couscous – the theme to ’30 Rock’. I can just see the video : her swaggering down the street with cuts to her getting up to mischief and having adventures.
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Chatting to a friend in OZ who asked about Couscous. So here she is napping my by desk on her favourite bit of vetbed…
Napping
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This is a website dedicated to the stray dogs of the Russian metro. Passengers post photos etc showing the dogs using public transport.
There is one special sub-group of strays that stands apart from the rest: Moscow’s metro dogs. ‘The metro dog appeared for the simple reason that it was permitted to enter’, says Andrei Neuronov, an author and specialist in animal behaviour and psychology…’This began in the late 1980’s during perestroika’, he says, ‘when more food appeared people began to live better and feed the strays’. The dogs started by riding on overground trains and buses where supervisors were becoming increasingly thin on the ground.
Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. ‘Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?’
‘They orient themselves in a number of ways…They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.’
The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by , but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. ‘Right outside this metro’, say Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, ‘a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.’
From: Susanne Sternthal, “A wolf in dog’s clothing”. FT Weekend January 16/17 2010, pp.24-29.