Son No. 1 invited us out to dinner a couple of days ago.

It’s the first time one of our sons has done that, and the occasion was merely that No. 1′s girlfriend was going home to Italy and they thought it would be nice to see us again before she left. 

We went to an Italian restaurant, which was amusing, because the first thing the lovely T did was to ask if I had a pen so she could correct the menu. She said that there were several mistakes, but one item on the menu supposedly consisted of two whole pigs and she didn’t believe it.  Neither did I, but sadly, a quick rifle through my handbag produced no pen, so the menu was destined to remain unsullied by admonitory notation.  I hope that no-one who ordered that dish was too disappointed.

Anyway, because Sid isn’t quite up to being left alone for a whole evening yet – and we also had a riding lesson booked for the next day – I arranged to take him back to his trainer to stay safely with her while we were out.

I wondered how he’d feel.  I mean, he wasn’t in the kennel block when he lived there before, he was living in his trainer’s house so they’d got rather attached to each other.   You see, he’d needed intensive nursing care when he first lost his leg, and then she felt sorry for him and didn’t ever put him back down in the kennels, so he’d lived as a house dog with half a dozen other greyhounds – a constantly fluid number, by the way, since she takes her rehomed dogs back for holidays as and when needed and they ALL stay in her tiny house with her own dogs.  That tiny house usually seems to contain an ocean of happy dogs.

So.  Would Sid get out of my car in the yard and say: ‘Yay!!  I’m back in the Land of Dogs’?

Or would he say: ‘Oh shit …  I thought I’d escaped!’

I pulled up and parked the car, clipped on Sid’s lead, and I took him in through the gate.  He seemed quite happy and interested in all the old familiar sights and smells, but when the door was opened and the welcoming tide rolled forth and enveloped him with happy yips and yaps, and The Pup ran up to bounce at him and lick his nose, Sid was Not so Happy.

In fact, he growled.

He growled at The Pup. He growled at Old Girl One-Eye.  He growled at the Young Floozy.  He growled at The Holidaymaker.  He growled at everyone except The Grinner, because no-one growls at the matriarch, but his hackles were up in a sharp ridge from head to tail, which reminded me of The Remarkables, only furrier.  But he didn’t lunge at anyone or snap, and his trainer said she thought he was probably warning them not to be too rough.  Perhaps he was also warning them to remember his new status as Doggus Primus in a new home, and needed to be cut down to size a bit.  I didn’t think it would take the Grinner very long to do that, in her quiet, non-aggressive way, and so it turned out. In a little while, when everyone had settled down and stopped bouncing at him (and presumably asking the usual inane questions like ‘Where have you been? and ‘what’s the food like?) he stopped growling and went to get a drink of water.

When I left, he came to the gate with me, and then trotted back into the house before I’d even started the engine, so I knew he’d be OK.  He spent the evening in his old accustomed position on his trainer’s feet while she watched television, and he ate left-over duck for dinner.

You say she spoils her house dogs?  Hmm … well, maybe. Just a tad.

When I fetched him the next day, he was part of the sea pouring out of the house, and once again he fought his way through the other dogs to get to me, where he positioned himself foursquare across my bows in a clear statement of ownership.   Having got over his grumbles, he was obviously happy in the company of his erstwhile shipmates, yet he was just as happy to leave them behind and come home.  You see, he never got the comfy beds in that house, because there were simply too many dogs with seniority – or in the case of The Pup, barefaced cheek.  So he bounced in through his own front door, checked out the kitchen, and then folded himself into his big soft-sided dog bed and snuggled down in the sheepskin with a sigh.

I really missed that dog.  Just in the 24 hours he was away, a Sid-shaped hole was evident in our household.

Oh, yes – and since you ask, the dinner was lovely!  Despite the non-appearance of the twin piglets on my plate (yes, I chose that meal), despite the fact that the one and only egg-free dessert item was cheesecake, which I hate, and despite the fact that my ‘Fairly weak, please’ cappuchino came strong enough to strip paint, it was a great evening. 

The fragment of pig they bestowed upon me was, in fact, delicious. I couldn’t have eaten a whole one anyway.

When I started thinking about this week’s ABC Wednesday, the word that popped into my head was ‘holiday‘.  I think it’s a word that means different things in different parts of the world, but here in England it usually means packing a suitcase and going away for a week or two to relax, unwind, and maybe experience something different.

Well, back in June 2007, that’s what we did.  We went to the US to visit friends, and once that part of our holiday was over, we got on a plane and headed up to Vancouver, which was one of the zillions of places on this earth that I had never seen.

There were many fun things to do in Canada, and here is just one of them – it’s the most suitable one for today, because it’s all about horses.

Stanley Park in Vancouver is a wonderful place, 400 hectares of forest and lawn and paths and hiking trails, close to the heart of the city.  Now, I’m not much for hiking, or cycling, or in-line skating either – all of which you can do in Stanley Park – but I do love horses.  So when I found out they do horse-drawn tram tours there, I had to go!

See that lone passenger up there in the front?  That’s OH, that is, in one of his famous hats!

If I remember rightly, this pair of horses was comprised of one percheron (the dapple grey) and one percheron/shire mix.  Handsome, though, aren’t they?

When I got in and sat down beside OH, I couldn’t help noticing I had an excellent view of the horses’ hindquarters.

I also had an excellent view of the complex harness arrangements.    You will notice that they wear ‘horse nappies‘!  I guess that it’s the law in Vancouver, so I’m wondering if the Mounties have special dispensation?  I can’t see them galloping off to apprehend a villain with the dung bag bouncing around behind, can you?

Oh, and don’t forget to check out those wonderfully decorative hames!  There they are, those antenna-like things, sticking up above the horses’ collars.  Now, if I remember rightly, hames were originally for running the traces – or reins – through.  Perhaps the idea was to take some of the weight off the horses’ mouths, and also to prevent the traces falling to the ground and tripping them.  However that may be, this particular harness is arranged somewhat differently and doesn’t appear to need any support at all.

Here’s a close-up of the percheron’s head.

The harness in the previous picture is very neat and tidy, but I can’t help thinking that all this stuff on the poor horse’s head is a bit heavy.  He’s wearing a head collar as well as his bridle, presumably for hitching him with, and are those chains really necessary?

Oh, and talking of hitching – here’s where they wait for their next lot of customers.

It’s kind of cute that their hitching rail is decorated with horse heads, don’t you think?

As we drove out of the park, we passed another tram coming back round.  I wonder if they get bored, pulling trams around all day?  And yet these heavy horses do need to work in order to keep fit, don’t they?  And I do love to see them.

Happy trails!

Footnote: I’ve just upgraded to the newer WordPress blog, but in the process I’ve lost the ability to post big pictures and have them resize themselves nicely and come out clickable for the full view. Apologies for that, I’m looking into whether I can have that back, and if so, how!

We have so many slugs and snails in the garden that my one and only hosta is in a pot.  If I planted it out anywhere, it would be in shreds in no time flat, because I can’t bear to kill anything – besides which, I’ve seen too many pets poisoned by slug bait to risk putting any down in my garden where Sid might get it.

So my hosta is destined to remain small and confined, but it is still beautiful.   And when it rains it is most beautiful of all, because those waxy leaves repel water so well that that raindrops are forced to sit there in lovely rounded droplets until they fall off or dry out.  Perfect for Macro Monday, don’t you think?

You want to know how I keep the slugs and snails from climbing up the pot?  Easy!  I stand the pot in a large saucer of water, which they cannot cross.  Luckily, hostas love soggy ground – they grow well as bog plants – so it’s a win-win situation!

I would love to have a whole border of these lovely plants, but … oh, well.  Life is all about compromise, is it not?  And why should I have a pretty garden at the expense of those who actually live in it, all year round?

The other day, OH looked out of the window and saw this collared dove on the bird feeder.

Well, it’s not unusual.  There are three collared doves that feed here on a daily basis, but this one looked a bit ruffled so he called me over and asked me if it was alright.

Clearly, the poor thing is not alright at all.

In fact, he seems to have been involved in an accident.

I thought at first perhaps he’d flown into the window and broken a few feathers (these doves are not the brightest birds on the planet and quite regularly clunk into our windows), but it’s worse than that.

He’s not only bent a few feathers, but he’s broken his beak, poor thing.   What’s more, he has a bald patch on his head and his eyes look a bit wonky, so I’m guessing he hit a car, or vice versa.

I tried to catch him to take him up to the Exotic Pet Refuge because they will take wildlife too, but he wasn’t having any, so I had no option but to put more food out and watch.  He’s managing, for now, because he can clearly fly, and he can also eat, and he’s now been hanging around doing both for several days.

But I’m wondering how he’ll fare this winter.

Good luck, little bird!