Woody’s Dog Blog

Today I’ve been watching some Pingu with my babies (my human brothers actually). They’re not bothered about TV programmes really, except for Pingu, which they’d watch for hours if they could. It’s an animated everyday tale of a family of penguins: Mother, Father, Pingu and Pinga (and friends who include Pingo, Pingi, Pongi, Punky and Pingg) and it’s quite funny actually. It’s changed a bit lately though, the animation’s become all high tech and they’ve made it fast and slapsticky. They’ve changed the voices too, and Pingu has turned into a bit of a spiv. All his friends sound like adolescent morons. Grandfather sounds like he’s developed emphysema unfortunately and Father, who used to sound like Michael Portillo, has morphed into Michael Barrymore. We’re all a bit upset about it.

The vet told me recently that I wasn’t to put any more weight on. Now you couldn’t accuse me of being fat, but I am getting a little stockier as I get older (I’m five in June as it goes). I’ve decided to get myself one of those fat genes I saw about on the telly, so then it won’t be my fault.

Today was a gorgeous, sunny, hot day. Lots of people were in the park sunbathing, playing football and above all, eating. Sloppily, somebody had thrown a whole bag of chips and a large sausage roll onto the grass, so being the community-spirited dog that I am I decided to go and clean it up. My ma shouted at me and came after me, but every time she got near me I darted off, sausage roll in mouth. This carried on until I’d managed to scoff down the whole roll and a few chips. We’d attracted quite an audience much to Ma’s embarrassment.

I found the whole thing highly entertaining. It would have been funnier sped up with Benny Hill music, but you can’t have everything.

Yesterday started off like any other day … waited for the babies to come down for breakfast, got up, waited for the babies to drop their breakfast on the floor, ate it, waited to be taken out for a walk, went on it … usual stuff.

Then, in the afternoon, a rabbit called me from the woods. Naturally I ran over immediately (let’s not forget I didn’t get an Easter egg this year, so I was at least entitled to a bunny). I could hear him scratching about in his burrow so I dived down into it, squealing like a little piglet apparently, but this burrow wasn’t built for Jack Russells. There were tree roots and dirt in the way, so I kept digging and digging, and tearing the roots away with my teeth. Trouble was, I forgot to spit out one big bit of root before attacking the next bit, and this big twig got stuck at the back of my throat.

As the consequences of my predicament dawned on me (mainly that I wasn’t able to breathe) I decided to run back to my ma, who was in the garden adjoining the woods. I was coughing and spluttering, choking not breathing, choking not breathing, trying to dig the damn thing out with my paw, which made my mouth bleed and so all my teeth were bright red. Apparently I resembled a girly wolf. Ma scooped me up and put me in the front seat of the car (normally I have to sit in the boot, so I really must have been in a bad way).

It took about 4 minutes to drive to the vet, but it seemed like 4 years on account of me nearly DYING, and some old dear in front was bumbling along in her car so slowly she must have been pedalling the damn thing.

I won’t go into details, but let’s just say I was in and out within 5 minutes; they removed the tree from my throat and I was just fine. We went back to Shotover and I went straight back to that wretched bunny hole to tell him what for.

He’d scarpered.