Dog ownership. Day 3.
The night before last I put Tiko into the cellar to sleep on an old army blanket. I left the cellar door open so that she could go outside in response to a call of nature. Yesterday morning I woke up, put a handful of dry dog food in her bowl, went down to the cellar but she wasn't there! I called her but she did not come. Imagining that she had been hit by a car in the night or that she had walked all the way back to her former home which is fifteen minutes away by car, I climbed into the van and drove round our usual dog walk routes, no sign of her.
I returned home to pick up her feed bowl determined to drive to her former home. What was I going to say to her previous owners if she'd been run over? I parked in the road outside my house when what should I see bounding up to see me across the front lawn but Ma Petite Louve, my Little Wolf as one woman had dubbed her!
Heaven knows where she had been but she had mud on her nose. Perhaps she had recognised the sound of the van. It has a five cylinder engine so its note is quite distinctive. Anyway, I took her for our longest walk and when we got home, she jumped into the van and stayed there all morning even though the van was stationary! I even left the van door open but she just slept on the front seat. I was worried that she was ill but she soon perked up when her previous owner, Frans, visited me!
She never leaves the garden but I have no gates at the front and the road outside is fairly busy. If she saw a cat on the other side of the road, she might try to chase it and get hit by a car. I'll have to price up the cost of a pair of gates!
I'm sure we'll get used to one another! My camera is still not working properly so I cannot put up any pictures of her.