Chapter Ten July- December, 2001



Sunday July 15



Oh oh!

I'm going to have to watch my mouth. We are thinking of doing a home exchange in Williamsburg, Virginia with a Norwich terrier by the name of Rebeka. She is probably one of those Southern Ladies you read about, and I wouldn't want her to think I was an ill mannered Yankee type dog.



It was a perfect July day yesterday, and we went up to Stratford for lunch, buying sandwiches in a deli, and eating them beside the river while we watched the swans. One of the swans swam up and hissed at me, which I thought was pretty rude so I told him/her (How do you sex a swan?) what I thought of him/her. TBC says that is exactly the sort of comment I have to watch, and that I shouldn't have told him to give Rebeka my web page address.

Monday, July 23



A good weekend with John and Rob and Nancy and Betty and Wyatt. It's really exciting having everybody here. The most exciting part was probably when Margi was serving dinner in the sunroom, and went out to the kitchen and forgot to push in her chair. I decided to join the party, just to keep her chair warm for her, like, and there was a sirloin steak on the plate about two inches from my nose, and , well, what can I say? I did what any normal dog would do, and to heck with my soybean kibble hypoallergenic diet. About 15 seconds later I was under the dining room table with 4 people on top of me trying to pry my jaws open. I was determined to hang on, but with two physicians and a physio, all of whom know something about pressure points, even an iron jawed cairn terrier didn't have much of a chance. You know what they did next? This is the unbelievable part of the story. They threw out the steak!!! I spent the rest of the dinner licking the sunroom floor.



The next day it was really hot and we went for a long long walk on a beach about 25 minutes west of Port Stanley. After that we came back and sat around on the deck. Margi had bought a wading pool for Wyatt, which Wyatt hated, but I thought it was great. I did get the deck pretty wet, climbing in and out.



Tuesday, July 31



Oh No!



John and Betty have acquired two kittens.



One of then is called Sabine. Like in The Rape of the Sabine Women. Which had always sounded sort of fun, but with a cat? I mean, gross me out.



So what am I going to do with two kittens? TBC is worried that I will think they are fat squirrels and kill them and eat them, but cat meat isn't on my diet. Let's be thankful for small mercies here. Maybe I can chase them all over the house, wrecking havoc as I go. Or maybe they will imprint on me and think I am their mother .I will get to meet them in a couple of weeks when we go to Ottawa for a visit.



In other news, we had a good weekend with Gail and Bob Lock, Rob's parents. Bob played duck toss with me for half an hour or so Saturday night, and we went for some good walks. I also got to play in Wyatt's pool on the deck, and get everybody wet. There were no steaks left lying around but after TBC and Margi went to bed, I decided to lurk outside the guest bedroom. Sure enough, Bob opened the door, and I darted in and grabbed socks and underwear. I will leave the ensuing chase scene to your imagination. TBC and Margi slept through all the fun.



Saturday, Aug. 11



Well!! They have been to the City of my Birth twice in the last ten days, and didn't take me either time. Still, I got to stay with Marlene and play with her dogs, which is always fun. It has been really hot down here, so I was in and out of her wading pool all day. TBC says that he is amazed by the fact that we go up to St. Thomas all the time, and I never get especially excited when we are near Marlenes, but when my sleeping crate is in the back seat, I start to get excited when we are two or three blocks away. He can't figure out how I know that we are near Marlenes, and also thinks that it involves a lot of abstract reasoning to realize that being near Marlene's is not exciting unless we also have my sleeping crate in the back seat.

We are off to Ottawa next week to visit the kittens.



Wednesday, Aug. 22



Back from Ottawa, visiting John and Betty and Wyatt and the kittens. Kittens. Yes. Well.

TBC says that I spent the first three days in total denial, by which he means that I behaved like any polite well bred Cairn Terrier would, and tried to pretend that they didn't exist. When Griffen came up and poked his nose at me I looked in the other direction. When Sabine made rude noises, I walked away. When Griffen and Sabine rolled around incestuously on the couch together, which they spent a great deal of time doing, I pretended that John and Betty did not have a cat problem.

One aspect of the situation which was particularly difficult to cope with was that Griffen seemed to really like TBC, purring wildly every time he came in sight and climbing into his lap at every opportunity. TBC, being the polite well bred Cairn Terrier owner that he is, pretended that he didn't mind this. Well, better him than me. At least the kittens didn't bug me a lot. They spent a lot of time hunting and killing mice (they are allowed to run loose) and then bringing the mice back to John or Betty. I suppose. Different strokes, etc. TBC and John were building a retaining wall and they dug up a big pile of dirt for me to lie on. That was better, because it was a good place to watch the kittens and the others working on the wall.



After a few days of this, Nancy and Rob arrived, and we all went up to visit the MacLeods at their cottage. They had a huge problem with tame chipmunks who would come up on their deck and mooch food. That was a problem I knew I could deal with, except I wasn't allowed. When I became rather insistent, I got put in the car, but good old TBC kept getting me out, and then I would bark at the chipmunks, and the chipmunks would sit in the tree and chitter at me the way they do. So that was fun.



Back at John's, I finally got fed up with Sabine hissing at me and started growling at her when she did it. And I chased Griffen up a tree, except he couldn't hang on and slid back down, which was mildly amusing.



Then on to Kingston, where Rob and Nancy came to visit us in our motel, and then we went over to Nancy's place, and I got to explore. She has our old couch! I didn't know that. We also went out to a farm where Rob sometimes works, and there were 3 collies that were very nice, and I made friends with them, and Rob's parents showed up at some time during the evening.



So all in all it was a good week. I found a dead mouse on my walk last night after we got home, and thought I would smuggle it back in the house to see what all the fuss was about. It was pretty desicated, and frankly not much fun. Margi found it this morning and threw it in the garbage, and nobody told me I was a good cat, which is a bit of a relief.



Sunday, August 25



Our exchange in Williamsburg in October with Rebeka and her family seems to be pretty well set. Paul Roush writes to TBC, "We've had a week of thunderstorms, a phenomenon that terrifies Rebeka. She refuses to be mollified, choosing instead to go on the offensive with non-stop barking in order to drive off the enemy. Eventually, the thunderstorms subside, thereby confirming in her mind the efficacy of barking as the best path to ultimate victory in the cosmic struggle." God, he talks like TBC, but Rebeka does seem like a Norwich terrier of rare discernment. I wish I could meet her.



But maybe better not, I might get carried away. We went out for a walk after dinner last night to see the school bus which Josh is rebuilding to take back to B.C. with Doobe. I was fooling around with Doobe, and tried mounting his right front leg. That didn't work, so I switched to the left front leg. Still nothing, so I started work on his right rear leg. At this point Doobe grabbed me with his two front legs and lifted me off the ground. I sort of lost it, and started yelping at TBC, "Help, I'm being buggered, I'm being buggered, Help, Help". TBC, predictably, thought this was funny, but did pull Doobe's ears to make him stop and we continued our walk while Margi looked at the school bus. She caught up to us later, and said to TBC, "I had to tell Josh and Ken that I guessed you were too shy to come in and see what they were doing".



Tuesday, September 4



You know, I'm afraid it's true that Paradise Lost makes for a lot more interesting reading than Paradise Regained. I mean, here I am, an ordinary, happy, enthusiastic Terrier, thinking about Milton in my spare time, and there isn't an awful lot to talk about. Nancy was down for most of last week, and that was great, as usual. As soon as TBC and Margi open the bedroom door, I go down and lie with my nose pressed to the crack of the guest bedroom so I won't miss Nancy when she wakes up. She always spends a lot more time playing with me than TBC or Margi do. She is back in Kingston now, moving into a new apartment.



I had a nasty experience a couple of nights ago. On my evening walk, TBC let me get into a patch of burrs. I insisted on trying to chew them out myself, but got one stuck in my throat. I thought maybe I could dislodge it with a large evening snack, but that didn't help, either going down or coming back up. I continued to hack and cough and suffer, until TBC and Margi eventually said, "Oh Hamish, just go to sleep. You'll feel better in the morning". I did, but I am sure you would have been much more sympathetic Nancy.



Today we were down to the City of My Birth to buy a new bed. I didn't see anything wrong with our old bed, but that's humans for you. They are probably trying to impress Rebeka. Speaking of which there is another dog by the name of Denny who wants to do an exchange with us. I think we are going to meet him on our way down to Williamsburg. Mr. Roush says there are lots of great walking trails around their new house in Williamsburg.



Saturday September 15



I wish that would stop all this furniture moving. It's most confusing, and the new bed has sort of a fence on the top so I can't see Dooby as well. Then they put a fender bench at the foot of the bed where I always sleep, so I went to sleep on the fender bench a couple of nights ago and didn't sleep anything like as soundly as I usually do. Besides which the bed is about 3 times as high as I am, even higher than the old bed, which makes it more difficult to say Good Morning. The following picture gives some indication that I just wish they would make up their minds where they are going to put things. If they want the mirror on the floor, that's O.K. I can live with it. But just stop moving things around.

I suppose I shouldn't complain. Rebeka has had to move into a whole new house. And we have an exciting week coming up, with a Cairn Terrier Fun Day tomorrow, and the down to check on the cats at the end of the week, and after that we are going to spend a night in Nancy and Rob's new apartment.



Monday, September 17



I was up early for Cairn Terrier Fun Day, trying to persuade TBC that it was time to get out of bed. Finally got everybody up and on the road, but then we had a long drive, and I was beginning to think that maybe I had the day wrong, but eventually we got there. I joined 3 or 4 other cairns pulling our owners down the road from where the car was parked. When we got to the spot, there were hundreds of other Cairns. I met my old litter mates, Henry and Halo and Gracie. Gracie seemed a bit grumpy, but the others were doing great. Mind you, if they really wanted it to be a Cairn Terrier Fun Day they should just have one big enclosure where we could all run around together and fight and screw and pee as much as we wanted to. Now that would be a Fun Day! As it is, you spend a lot of time listening to owners talk. And talk and talk and talk. And then you are supposed to do things to amuse them, like jump through hoops. Literally. They call it agility training, as if agility is something that requires training. I just did not see the point. Then there was a contest with cairns doing tricks. I think this proved to TBC once and for all that the words obedience training and Cairn Terrier shouldn't be used in the same sentence. And the dress up contest - I mean really. There was one dog with a pretty sharp orange coat who looked really proud of himself, but the others all looked as if they thought this was as demeaning as I did.

I witnessed one poignant moment when Linda and Halo were reunited. People probably don't know the story, but Halo had been Linda's dog for a couple of years, but then she got sick and had to go and live with Henry. So Linda came over, and for a moment I don't think Halo recognized her, but then she remembered and started behaving the way I do when TBC and Margi come back after leaving me all alone for awhile. It must be hard to have different owners, but I know sometimes dogs don't have much say. There were a lot of different dogs there, and a lot of different owners. I sat very close to TBC and Margi on our way home in the car.



Wednesday, September 26



Hey Nancy, I think your new apartment is really neat! We picked Rob and Nancy up in Kingston last Friday and then went on to John and Betty's place in Ottawa to have a birthday dinner with John (speaking of which, my birthday is Oct. 4, and TBC had better not forget this year) and to check on Wyatt and the cats. Wyatt has learned to sit up, and the cats have learned to harass me. They seem to think it is funny to follow me around and then jump at me. They have a thing where one of them gets at the top of the stairs and one of them gets at the bottom, and they sort of trap me in the middle. TBC and Betty had to rescue me a couple of times. If this goes on very long I may have to forget my manners. In any case we were elsewhere a lot of the time. Most of Saturday was taken up with Ken's wedding. Margi had made a bow tie for me, which I wore with good grace (c.f. the comments in my previous entry), but wasn't allowed inside where everybody was eating. Sunday we went to a brunch at Sheba's house. At least Sheba knows enough, and is mature enough to avoid me instead of vice versa. Then back to Nancy and Rob's new apartment in Kingston. It is a really neat apartment, with a lot of our furniture in it, which is sort of confusing, since TBC kept telling me it was "motel rules" where you don't bark at people in the corridor. I can sit up on the back of our old couch and watch out the window at all the passers by, and they have a neat coffee table to lie on. And no cats!



Coming back from Kingston on Monday we stopped at the City of my Birth and got a couple of dark green leather chairs for the sunroom. Cairn terriers look great against dark green water buffalo hide, but I don't think they are as comfortable as the old chairs. They need a bit of breaking in. Good job for Rebeka, who sent us a picture of herself yesterday. She is a good looking dog, with a worried expression on her face. You don't need to worry Rebeka, I will leave you a page of Vacation Exchange instructions, and there isn't really that much you have to look after here. We have a big beach which I know you are going to enjoy. Speaking of pictures, I got a pinup from a 4 month old cairn called Taylor last week. TBC printed it out for the door of my crate.



Last night Margi and I were out for a walk and met a small black cat with two white stripes down its back. I would have liked to make friends (Hey, you have to keep trying), but Margi wouldn't let me. I don't know why. All the kids are coming for Thanksgiving, and then we are off to Williamsburg.

Thursday, October 11



Has it really been two weeks since I wrote anything on my web page? We have had an eventful time.



Last Wednesday at lunch TBC noticed that Margi was turning yellow. So he took her off someplace to get redyed, I guess. Anyway, I was home alone all day and most of the evening, and when TBC got home he had forgotten Margi. This was very upsetting. TBC had a long talk with me (long talks with TBC are even more upsetting) most of which I didn't understand because he kept using terms like laprascopic cholecystectomy and ERCP. For the next few days we kept driving up to London to visit Margi but they wouldn't let me see her. I was worried that the dye job wasn't turning out very well, but eventually we got her out of the hospital late Friday afternoon and she was back to a normal colour, except she had lost 8 pounds because they wouldn't feed her anything. Apparently they didn't do anything except not feed her. Right after she got back John and Betty arrived (without the cats, thank goodness) and then TBC cooked a big dinner, it being Friday night, and then Nancy and Rob arrived. I expected TBC to serve Margi a plate of hypoallergenic kibble, but they all tucked into TBC's famous Basque Saute of Chicken Breasts which always smells great. After dinner I got my birthday presents. My actual birthday was the day before. TBC had wished me a happy birthday but had explained that we would wait to celebrate it until Margi got home from the hospital. Thanks to the people who sent me cards ("Enjoy the soya bean cake" Yeah. Right.).



The rest of the weekend was taken up eating and going on hikes and playing games and sawing down a tree. Somebody left the front door open at one point and I got out and ran a long way and Rob got lost looking for me and we had to drive around the village calling him. We went for about a two hour walk at a new conservation area which we had never been to before which was really good.



So now the kids have left and we are getting ready to leave for Williamsburg. Hope Margi doesn't turn yellow again. You will hear all about our trip when we get back. If you are reading this, Rebeka, I will leave you a page of Vacation Exchange information and a box of chew toys.



Monday, November 5



I am the dog who lives in the car.



At least that's what it felt like for the last 3 weeks.



I shouldn't complain. It was a great home exchange, but I did spend a lot of time waiting in the car while TBC and Margi went sightseeing. Sightseeing is pretty dull, and there are lots of different places you can sit in the car. They came back every couple of hours to make sure I was O.K. and to move the car to make sure it was in the shade. Several days we had temperatures in the eighties. And I got to go for an interesting walk just about every day. Rebeka's house was cool, with all sorts of room to run. She has a flight of stairs so that she can climb up on the bed in the middle of the night, which I think is a really good idea which TBC should incorporate in our decor. The house is right on a golf course, with golfers and golf carts which are sort of like squirrels - you bark at them if you feel like it, but you don't really have to. Margi took me for a lot of early morning walks beside the golf course. One evening we went over to visit Willi, the long haired dachsund who lives next door, but I had to come back home before dinner and wait in the car again. But here I am yattering on, instead of showing you the pictures. If you didn't see the pictures before TBC removed them from my web page, tough luck.



Here I am at Jamestown, watching out for Indians. If the settlers in 1615 had had a cairn terrier, he could have made friends with the Indians, like I do with everybody, and then they would have given him dog biscuits, and he could have shared them with the settlers, and everything would have turned out much better.



Incidentally, Rebeka liked the big package of dog biscuits which I left her, and said they tasted better than her dog biscuits. I discovered her stash of biscuits one evening while Margi was vacuuming and got a couple of them before TBC could grab me. Dog biscuits are not on my diet.





Another picture showed Margi and me in front of the capital in Colonial Williamsburg. This is where TBC and Margi spent a lot of their time, and it was OK for me to walk around. I got a lot of attention from the other tourists, but I couldn't go in any of the buildings, so most of the time waited patiently in the car.



Monday November 12



Went to a big Remembrance Day service in London yesterday. Pretty boring. There were lots of dogs there, and TBC said. unkindly I thought, that they were all better behaved than I was. Well, I mean, you don't win wars by just standing around, do you? Once we had found Margi and the pipe band, I thought we should circulate a bit. Make friends, meet people. Not just stand there. We did meet quite a few people who wanted to admire me, and one couple who had an 18 month old cairn which they had got from Barbara Barnes. So it was O.K., once I got TBC moving.

Last week we spent one day taking Margi up to London to have an ERCP, and now they are going to take her gall bladder out, which I guess is like my gastrectomy at about this time last year, but I don't know when that is going to happen. We have spent a lot of time raking leaves and working in the garden, and TBC has been spending a lot of time in the basement making "heritage toys" for Wyatt. I can help him chew on them. Oh, and Rob broke his foot just after we got back from Williamsburg, so has a plaster cast on his ankle. I could probably help him by chewing on that too.



Sunday, November 25



Things are pretty quiet around here. Doobie left for the west Coast last week. I stayed up all night in the front window so that I could bark at him as he left, in case he left early in the morning, and then he didn't leave until noon and I missed the big event. So I sort of miss not having him to bark at anymore.



We have a huge beach in front of the house when I can persuade TBC and Margi to take me down to dig .I will get TBC to take a picture of me digging in the zebra mussel shells so you can see what I mean.



Two nights ago on our evening walk I came nose to nose again with one of those funny smelling black and white cats at the corner of the garage. So that turned into another all nighter, making sure that it didn't come up on our deck. Maybe it was attracted by TBC's duck grease. Did I tell you about that? TBC has this duck recipe which he thinks tastes really good, except every time he tries it the duck catches fire. He decided last week that he would do it in the BarBQ, hoping that the grease would drip out the bottom. Some of it did, but a lot of it didn't, and caught fire, which was exciting. The duck was incinerated, as usual. They ate it anyway. Pretty funny.



Friday, Dec. 7



A fellow can't have any fun around here. While Margi was in the bathroom this morning I grabbed her glasses from the top of the dresser so that we could have a bit of a game of chase and squirmed under the bed. She called TBC and they tried to get me, but I escaped and ran downstairs with TBC in hot pursuit. He cornered me under a chair in the sunroom and started telling me what a bad dog I was. From other episodes, I sort of suspected that glasses were off limits, but I was so upset by the tone that TBC was taking that I peed on the floor. Now whose fault was that? Anyway, I didn't hurt the old glasses. I never do. I'm really careful, and I gave them back without playing tug of war or anything, so I don't know why they get so upset. TBC is just in a grumpy mood these days because he says it is going to be a tropical Christmas in Port Stanley and we should have moved to someplace like Thunder Bay where we would get decent snow at Christmas. Margi is mad because they won't take her gall bladder out until February and she thinks we should have moved to the USA where at least we would get decent medical care. TBC agrees with the last part of that sentiment anyway. So all I was doing was trying to get a little bit of Christmas spirit going. It's that time of year when they keep going out to parties and leaving their Cairn terrier at home. Oh well, things are looking up. We are going down to Kingston for a weekend to visit the new in laws (TBC said this morning, "Do you think Hamish is invited?") I had certainly better be, because we are also going to celebrate Nancy's birthday, and then Nancy is coming back with us, and then Rob is going to arrive, and then John and Betty and Wyatt, so it should be a great Christmas - even if it doesn't snow.



Tuesday, Dec. 18

HELP !

Cairn Terrier urgently requires assistance

From people who read household hint help columns. What do you do when you throw up half a box of chocolates in the middle of a rug? A white rug. A white living room rug. Nancy's white loving room rug.



Wednesday, Dec. 19

HELP !

Cairn Terrier urgently requires assistance

From Miss. Manners and/or any available sex therapists. What do you do when you get carried away with licking the ass of your hostess's Doberman/German Shepherd cross and she nips you on the back of the neck? ( the Doberman, not the hostess). After you stop yelping.



Wednesday, Dec. 19 (Later)

HELP !

Cairn Terrier urgently requires assistance

From Miss. Manners. What do you do when nobody responds to your urgent request in time so you go upstairs and pee on your hostess's foot, and then realize that this was not an appropriate response?



Friday Dec. 21

HELP !

Cairn Terrier urgently requires assistance

From any member of the SPCA and/or a good behavioural psychologist. What do you do when you are left alone in the car (forlornly) while the rest of your family goes inside to party it up? I mean, I know I may have made a few little mistakes (see above), but is that any reason for TBC to leave me locked in a cold car? The behavioural psychologist is Nancy's idea. She says the problem, obviously, is to modify TBC's behaviour. Since the looking forlorn bit didn't seem to work all that well, we need a stronger punishment/reward combination. Couldn't we just get the SPCA to sue the bastard? No I take that back. It is the Christmas season, and I am sure TBC will see reason in a day or two. Spot remover is working not badly on Nancy's rug. Especially if she puts a coffee table over it. And doesn't it say something in the bible about your neighbour's ass? We could all sit around the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and try to find the relevant passage.



Monday, Dec. 24



Notwithstanding all of the above, it is turning out to be a great Christmas. Nancy and Rob are here in Port Stanley and we have a huge pile of Christmas presents under the tree. They are leaving this afternoon to spend Christmas Eve with Rob's family, but will be back for Christmas dinner. Then on Boxing Day John and Betty and Wyatt are arriving. Possibly with Sabene. Hmmm. Did I tell you about Sabine? This is so unbelievably gross. She broke her hip, and the Vet removed the hip joint. So now she has to walk without a hip. I guess sort of slithering along. So if she does come here for Christmas I will have to be really nice to her and not laugh or anything. But I think they are going to leave her with Betty's father, because TBC says cats don't like going for rides in cars. I had never thought about that, but you never see a cat with it's head out of a car window and its ears flopping in the breeze. Cats are strange.



So MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE.

Monday, Dec. 31



Wow, what a great Christmas. We had so many people here that the first thing I did this morning when I woke up was to go downstairs and check all around to see if anyone was left - and to check for cheerio crumbs. Wyatt is really a messy eater, and he throws things, like blocks and cheerios and shreds of ham and turkey. Our vacuum cleaner is broken, so it was sure lucky that I was on the job. I got really good at helping to open presents too, and they let me open my own presents myself. I got a red and black guitar. As soon as I got it out of the wrapping paper, I carried it out to the sunroom. Everybody thought I was leaving home with my guitar. But I came back and lay down on my back in the middle of all the wrapping paper and played it. I also got a neat reindeer to play on and chase. Speaking of which, I am practically worn out from games of chase. People kept forgetting that socks and gloves and stuff like that are fair game. And soothers. We went through a lot of soothers.



Got an e mail from Linda a couple of days ago asking for more episodes of my web page for the Cairn Terrier Newsletter. We had a party Saturday night, and Catherine and Christie were talking about the problems getting their books published. TBC was able to remark, casually, that I had got an e mail from my editor that morning begging for more installments. Catherine is Betty's mother. Incidentally, Betty and John did not bring Sabine. Probably just as well. I am not sure I could have coped with both Wyatt and the cats and Christmas and everything.