Walking to the beach yesterday with the dogs, a cyclist stopped me and said “is that a cairn terrier?”, I said it was, and she asked if she could pat her. “We had a cairn for years, she died just before Christmas”, she said tearfully. The husband chipped in that the dogs coat was exactly the same colour as their beloved departed pet as well. Katie takes the pats in her stride, even though it’s pretty rare for her – it’s usually the cuter little schnoodles that get the attention, or even worse, when we are out with our friend’s alaskan malamute that looks just like a wolf, none of my dogs get a look in (even though she’s actually a bully and quite stinky much of the time – but, hey, you have to give the public what they want). And having said that, when we got to the beach, an excited little girl came up to us: “can I pat your little doggie?” – meaning Katie again! Two lots of pats in five minutes, that’s a record. Then the girl looked at the schnoodles and asked “are they your twins?” I was taken aback by this, but actually yes, they are sisters born at the same time, and maybe I have other twins as well, but they are full of holes and aren’t here right now – so I said they were. Felt good about being the local mad dog lady for the next 20 minutes, until the old dog went missing amongst the shrubbery, and when I finally found her (a tough job because she’s quite blind and pretty deaf too – I do call out her name if she goes missing but that’s mostly so onlookers know what I’m doing, not just some mad old lady scrabbling through the undergrowth), she was half way through eating an old dead rat. She must have rolled in it before tucking in as well, because she stank something awful. Now she really would remind anyone of their dead pet, and not recently dead either. Stupid dog.
Back to the beach this morning, the adoring crowds had gone, replaced by three grumpy old retirees, looking peevishly at a bunch of kids playing happily in the water. When they spotted me, one of them said loudly to the others “what does she want three bloody dogs for?” Aha – this is more like the usual attitude we dog owners expect.