Darlings, I keep remembering things that I should have told you about Huck and Simon.  Those were the dogs that made me the worryingly canine woman I am.  I still tend to call a grandchild over with “here boy … please” because of their influence.  I am, honestly, mostly dog.  Though it was Chester, my beloved and much-missed dog I raised from puppyhood that taught me fluent dog – look, if I raise a lip or make a sound deep in my throat when I’m with you, I’m talking dog.  Ask your hound to interpret, he’ll know.

Okay, having made my weirdness quite clear to the point of embarrassed silence, back to Huck.  If he wanted you to do something, he didn’t fuss or bark or simply gaze at you and hope.  He took you there.  He would take your wrist in his gentle mouth and lead you.  I’ve never known another dog do that, not even Simon.  He thought it out for himself.

Gentle mouth – Simon once caught a duck basking herself contentedly on the lawn.  We saw and ran, he ran for as long as he could and then let her go.  She legged it, panic-stricken, down the lawn, paused in the rose bed and continued towards the Broad.  When we looked in the rose bed, she’d laid an egg.

Egg – once Simon stole an egg from the kitchen.  Of course, its retrieval turned into a game.  We chased him about the lawn for a good half hour unable to catch him until, starting to get bored, he relented.  We took the egg from his mouth.  It was undamaged, not a crack.

Here is the house I lived in then.  Sorry for the grubby picture.  I must tell you a bit more about it, in dog terms, tomorrow.