Something by Susie

What are your favorite animals?

This is easy, whilst I like most animals, well the friendly ones at least, you can’t beat a good snuggle up with your pet pooch.

We’ve always had dogs growing up, usually two at a time, golden retrievers, or as I lovingly refer to them, the barbies of the dog world.  They look so gorgeous but they are daft as brushes sometimes, but in the most endearing ways possible.

My dad’s last dog Poppy, as we discovered very late on, has a love for balloons. That dog is crazy for them. You can even tie them together, chuck them up in the air and she will pounce on them, but then gentley retreat with them to sit with them gently in her mouth. She likes single ones, doubles and even triples. She sits there patiently teasing you to touch them or take them, then she pulls her head away from you if you reach out for them, and turns back to you to tease you some more to try and get them, a game that can go on for hours. Before they’re even blown up she wants them….you let them go with no knot in them, and she will try to follow them with her eyes as the zig zag across the room. Then she pounces on them, waiting for it to be blown up again.

She jumps for them, chases them, let’s you bat them to her to bounce back at you off her nose. When she pounces on them and they eventually burst she scramles to get the pieces, then she waits…waits for you to blow another ‘balloony’ up for her. Oddly she is scared of fireworks, but not balloonies bursting.  She knows when you say “Poppy want a balloony” she will go to the draw where she knows they’re kept, and wait for you to follow, to take one out.

Harper is nothing like Poppy, Harper is a rescue dog, and true to form scared of everything. But like Poppy she loves to climb up on the sofa next to you and put her head on your leg, and just look at you. I don’t think there is a dog owner out there that doesn’t wish every day, that they could hear their dogs thoughts.  Don’t get me wrong I’m sure it’s -‘ooh food!, I love you hooman, ooh ball, let’s play, sleepy time, I love you, ooh food, treat,yes I am a good girl, I love you hooman, rub my belly’.  But we want to makesure that they know and understand how much we love them.

The truth be told, whilst I saved Harper from a miserable life, she saves me on a daily basis and she doesn’t even know it!  My life is better for having her in it.  The excitement I see in her tail, and her cries of happiness everytime I come home melt my troubles away.