Luci's diary: water – when it's fun and when it isn't

They left me behind again the other day. Went out for the whole evening. And the worst of it was that, when they got back, number 2 smelled of another dog. Another dog! All over his hands. Like he’d been stroking the ghastly thing. I had to lick his fingers for ages just to get the smell off them. It was quite fun, actually, and by the end his hands smelled right again – that is, they smelled of me.

Talking about smell and getting clean, the humans decide every now and then that I need to smell of something else. So they wash me.

“What gets into them?” I ask Misty the cat, “why do they say I smell? I don’t smell.”

“You do smell,” he says, “you smell of dog.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” I ask, “what’s a dog supposed to smell of? You wouldn’t want me to smell of cat, would you?”

“I don’t know. Cats smell good. I wouldn’t mind if the whole world smelled of cat. Except for the bits I want to hunt and eat.”

“That’s just silly. You like my smell. That’s why you always want to lie on my blanket. Even when I want to.”

He looked a bit embarrassed then, like I’d caught him out in something he didn’t want to admit to. He just sort of mumbled back at me.

“I just like the feel of the blanket. It’s a good blanket. Nothing to do with you.”

“Anyway,” I went on, “even if I do smell a teensy weeny bit of dog, that’s no reason to clean me is it?”

“I keep telling you. They’re domestics. That’s what they do. Clean things. If you let them. I only let them serve food, but that’s because I’ve shown them who’s boss. You just let them push you around, so you get washed. Serves you right.”

It wasn’t very nice. Hot water and silly soap suds. And it lasted for ever. And left me all wet. So wet that I had to run around and roll everywhere just to get a bit drier. That left the couch quite wet which made it less comfortable to lie. Human number 2 wasn’t pleased.

Me. Wet. Miserable. Getting the couch damp
Why do they keep doing this to me?

“Why’ve you made the couch all wet, you silly dog?” he asked me, all annoyed.

He doesn’t like it when he can’t sit at his end of the couch and play with his dratted computer. It makes him quite irritable. Usually I just give him the sad-eye look and he stops, but this time I was fed up myself, what with being all bedraggled and all that.

“Don’t blame me,” I told him, “it was human number 1 who put me in the bath. Why don’t you get her to stop?”

But it didn’t do any good. He never understands when I talk to him. It’s so sad, isn’t it? They have such limited intelligence, humans.

Talking about water, though, we had a bit of fun when we went to see that other family we visit sometimes and who sometimes visit us. They have the granddaughter, apparently. I don’t understand why they keep her if she’s our granddaughter. We ought to take her home with us so she can play with me a bit more often.

Anyway, near where she lives, there’s this place with loads and loads of water. Believe it or not, it just goes on and on, so you can’t see the end of it. It’s OK, because you can wander in and paddle around a bit in it, and it’s fun: not hot, and it has no soap suds. Tastes odd, though – terribly salty, which makes me feel funny sometimes, but still you can play a lot of games in it – I played that silly game with the humans, where I bring them a stick so they can throw it into the water. They so enjoy that and I think it’s terribly fun to see them with their trouser legs rolled up over their knees…

Only thing I really don’t like about that water is that it’s a bit tricksy. It can be all quiet and flat like, and letting you wander around in it, and then it suddenly gathers itself together in a big lump and throws itself at you. Usually when you’re not watching, so it catches you from behind. Rotten trick. It meant I had to keep an eye on it and sometimes had to belt back to the line to stop it catching me.

Come to think of it, that was quite fun too. Outrunning it, you know. That water, it’s going to have to learn to be bit quicker if it’s going to catch me. At least, when I’m watching out for it.

Loads of water. Fun when it’s behaving itself, like here

When we got back home, Misty was on the couch. At my end. The bit that smells of me. And I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t have the excuse of lying on my blanket because it wasn’t even there: I’d taken it with me.

It’s the blanket he likes, is it? For the feel, not the smell? Yeah, right. 

I reckon everyone likes my smell, even the humans, who keep rubbing their noses on me.

Which just leaves me wondering: why on earth do we have to keep going through that stupid bath business?