Mornings

How do your mornings start? If you are a dog owner, are you met with a happy smiling dog face telling you its morning, its wonderful and you should get up? Not me. As the clock approaches the time for the alarm to go off (ie a work day time) I come round to some wriggling in the bed - Winnie sleeps in the bed, but that's another story.....

The wriggling increases with the odd small squeaky noise, a bit like a guinea pig, plus an occasional kick from a small back foot. If this doesn't work the kicks get more frequent, as do the squeaks. Finally either the alarm goes off or I give up and get up. Not for me the leap of joy from under the quilt as a jubilent canine dashes to charge downstairs with me. Oh no - all I get is a head peeping out from under the quilt (especially if it is winter time and the heatings only just gone on). This head is rapidly withdrawn under the quilt...

So I stagger downstairs, acoompanied by my ever faithful.............Siamese cat. I put the kettle on, put fresh water in the water bowl, give the cat his breakfast. Still no sign of the small thing. I add dog biscuits to the dog bowl - still no small thing, get the wet food out of the fridge to add to the biscuits - still no small thing. Only when I proceed to mix the wet food with the biscuits does madam appear. If I take too long then the anxious looks start, swiftly followed by the guinea pig impersonation again.

As the food bowl makes contact with the floor she is ready and waiting. She then very carefully picks through the bowl eating all the meat and leaving the biscuits - so glad I took the time to mix them all up. When this is accomplished she disappears again; back upstairs under the quilt.

Dillon the cat and I carry on, going about our tasks until I reach the point where I am ready to take Winnie for her morning walk. Naturally I call her from downstairs and naturally she doesn't appear. So I traipse upstairs, extract her from under the quilt and put her collar and lead on. I am then frog-marched around the town - the speed of the frog march depends on the outside temperature. In extreme cold Winnie employs the 'walk so fast your feet don't touch the ground and get cold technique'. It certainly is one way to prepare yourself for the day ahead, but brisk doen't begin to descibe the experience - there's nothing like arriving at the office completely shattered because your Jack Russell has been moving at twice light speed in order to get back in the warm. The whole experience gives you that 'lived in 'look at best and at worst its more like the 'seen life and its not been kind' look

So once you have staggered back over the threshold of your house and unplugged Winnie from her lead, she dashes over to her food bowl and eats all the biscuits she left earlier. Often the Siamese cat has removed a few from the bowl in our absence and patted them round the kitchen floor (perfect for getting stuck between your toes!), but these are all dutifully hoovered up by the Winnie monster.

This final task completed, Dillon and I are subjected to a two second searching gaze by Winnie and then she turns on her heel and goes back to bed - under the quilt of course.

That is the last I see of her for the morning. She will be waiting for me at lunch time, but of course that is a whole different ordeal.