I should know better

"Can I have some more of that nice pink fishy `Merlin` stuff?"

In response to several enquiries, Rio`s brother has been named Merlin. I considered "Tiberius" for some time, (mainly to piss off my friends), but it was high time I settled on something.

He has now to learn it, and food plays an important part. At the moment, not being the sharpest knife in the box, he thinks "Merlin" means "pink oily fish" (he just had a lot of my salmon steak to reinforce the name lesson), but I have never had a dog so dim that he didn`t learn his name, not even Orlando...but that`s another story.

In view of his solid podgy body and surprising turn of speed, I rather think he does not resemble the legendary wizard as much as the Rolls Royce jet engine....one way or the other, Merlin he is.

"What`s wrong with this picture ?
My brother is in it !!!"

No, not dead....just nothing much happening here. I`ve had a quiet time looking after puppies and coughing up every colour known to man (and one small sad spider I must have inhaled in the garden.) The most exciting event of the week so far was wrapping up the treeferns for the winter, and the only highlight to come is a visit to Dr Doom for a session with the dreaded Flow Meter.

I am hopeless with this item. You blow into it and it reads off your lung capacity. But somehow I can never manage a proper mouth seal and get the sort of result that suggests you are optimistically testing a week-old corpse. I did it last week and he said cheerfully that the reading would be fine for a geriatric confined to bed with chronic bronchitis and a collapsed lung. I am left wondering if I can fake it with a concealed bicycle pump....

Meanwhile the puppies grow on. Storm and Shadow still carry labels that say "may contain nuts". Rio still batters her brother. Truly is blissfully unaware that the countdown to her pudding club membership has begun. My transport arrangements to the remaining Championship shows are in doubt.

And so we head into winter.

Shadow............

Another weekend`s showing leaves me wondering whether I need to be led away to a quiet place I can be cared for.

This one was in Ireland, involving the dreaded bus to the coast, the loading of said bus on a ferry, a short sea journey and a run out to the showground. Old hands know that sleep is possibl e on the bus and less likely on the boat, and I got my head down as soon as possible...

...and at four am I was shaken awake, somewhere in Ayrshire. An anxious face looked at me - "did I have a hearing aid?"

I was totally lost. I can hear a pin drop at 100 yards. Where was I to find a hearing aid at 4am on a bus full of dogs? Did they think I carried a selection? Was it for a person or a dog? Was it the unnamed creature howling in the dark depths of the bus?

I did what you do in these emergencies. I went back to sleep with a murmured suggestion as to where they could insert the hearing aid......well, that`s what they seemed to be talking through.

And on we went, and were very sociable on the boat and very confident as the bus decanted us at the showground.

It didn`t last. We were in for one of the worst judging experiences of the year. The Judge Who Didn`t Have A Scooby And Wanted Her Lunch. Each dog received about 30 seconds of very divided attention. Dogs were not handled on the table - exhibitors, however, were handled quite a bit, pushed and shoved here and there. Male dogs were not examined for those two essential items, and I could have slipped the girls into male classes with a good chance. It was an appalling and disheartening performance, and we were all painfully aware of what it had cost to get here and how long it would take to get home. It`s at times like that you hear the refrain "we must be nuts!" forming a sad background chorus.

It was a long trail home on the slow boat, which takes 3 hours and smells of diesel and fish. On the bus I finally found out about the hearing aid - a door alarm had gone off and could not be silenced, and some prize candidate for the funny farm had suggested it was being set off by someone`s hearing aid. At times like that it seems prudent not to look too closely at the people you are travelling with.

Home by 3am and glad of it. No more shows for a month. I am taking it easy and assessing the two puppy dogs, Storm and Shadow. They are at that delicate stage of development when their future depends on them becoming entire.

I have told them both to go and sit under the big walnut tree and just wait for the nuts to drop.