Well, the big has day arrived, and my new houseguest appeared on my doorstep with her slightly giddy parents, a big bag of rather healthy looking dog food, a shiny new purple lead and matching collar, towels, shampoos and a tin of treats.
After watching Pip and Dawn depart, we stowed Ms Pudding’s luggage and over a cup of tea and some welcome nibbles, I invited my guest to make herself at home, so that we might get re-acquainted.
Of course, Cockapoo’s, like many dogs and not a few cats, have those large dark eyes that always seem so communicative.
‘Well,’ says I. ‘I was thinking it might be nice to pop for a stroll later on.’
‘A stroll, the very thing,’ I seemed to hear my houseguest reply. ‘A bit of a pootle around the neighbourhood after supper to help with the digestion?’
‘Precisely,’ I respond, glad to hear we are in accord.
The weather has been quite mild but wet until a day or so ago, but after supper, as I lock the door behind us, the chill in the air is unmistakable.
Its a fairly hilly area of Leeds that I live in, and I’d like to use my guest’s visit to help get my legs in shape for New Years snowboarding, but Ms Pudding is my guest, so naturally I leave the route to her.
As bedtime approaches, I try to make sure my guest has everything she might need for the night, before turning in.
Its not a late night, and I sleep reasonably well, but do wake up a couple of times, to the sound of my houseguest padding around, coming up the stairs to check on me, before going back down to the lounge, where she has elected to have her bed, under the coffee table.
It feels a bit chilly in the house when I wake, and looking over at the clock I discover its still twenty minutes to 7 am, when the heating is programmed to come on. But I’m awake, and I’m determined to get off to a good start, so after the usual ablutions I get dressed and head down stairs to find my houseguest full of beans and equally eager to greet the new day.
Ordinarily at this time on a Saturday morning it would take the house catching fire to stir me from my bed, and even then there was nothing known to man that could persuade me to follow such foolishness by actually leaving the house, but the laws of hospitality are abundantly clear, and so in what seems no time, I find myself once more pulling on my boots, before closing the front door behind us and heading out for a stroll.
There’s a thick white frost covering everything this morning, decorating my front garden and driveway wonderfully, but it comes with an even more pronounced chill in the air and clear pale skies.
The sun is only just struggling over the horizon, but it promises to be a bright, sunny day.
We turn right at the end of the drive this time, and head up and over the hill towards Headingly, which helps to warm the legs up nicely. Then as we reach the top and start to walk down the other side, giving me chance to get my breath back, the conversation lulls for a moment, before Ms Pudding delicately proposes, what I’m sure will be the first of many philosophical conundrums for me.
‘You know,’ she begins tentatively. ‘I can’t help but wonder how you manage to find your way?’
‘You mean, how I decide which way to go?’ I ask. ‘Or, how I find my way home?’
‘Well, both, but more the first,’ she explains, before adding. ‘With your face being so far from the ground and all.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I respond, slightly wrong footed for a moment. ‘I suppose I’ve always thought it was an advantage to… have my face up here, I think it lets me see much further…’
‘Really!' How remarkable,’ my guest replies, before catching herself. ‘Oh, well of course, that perspective has a lot of merit. Its just that…’
‘Yes?’
‘Its just that you miss so much.’
‘I do? What kind of thing is it that you think I’m missing?’
‘Well, I don’t really know where to start,’ she explains, looking genuinely stumped for a moment.
‘Alright,’ she continues, leading me over to a nearby pile of leaf litter gathered by the wind. ‘Take these leaves for example, when I look at them from down here I can tell a big, boy dog and two smaller girl dogs recently came this way, they came a different times, the boy dog coming this way just a few minutes ago, while the girls came last night.
‘But, then if I move my face a little closer to the wall… ah yes, a pointy red dog came this way, their scent is always very strong, very, very strong, quite beguiling, intoxicating, heady even…’
‘A pointy red dog? Do you mean a fox?’
‘Oh, yes, yes, that right, got a bit distracted there for a moment. Yes, a red fox came this way in the night, after the girls and before the big dog. But that’s not all, oh no…
‘If I move just a hair this way, yes, there it is. A whisker face, clear as day, a boy on the hunt, creeping low and slow. I’ll bet he was after a pink tail… yes here we are. The pink tail had stopped under this hedge to eat some human food, I think you call it Pizza, and the whisker face stalked it while it was eating.’
‘Whisker face, pink tail, you mean a cat stalked a rat here?’
‘Yes, yes, keep up,’ my now rather excitable house guest responded. ‘Lets just go a bit further, yes, that’s it. You must see what happened now. The pink tail must have sensed the whisker face… and, just as its claws were closing in, it drops the pizza and runs…’
‘But I don’t see any Pizza,’ I interupt.
‘No, no, the human food was snuffled up by the big boy dog this morning.
Anyway, pink tails are fast, and this one makes it to the gate, but only gets half way through before whiskers gets a proper grip on it, dragging it back and holding it down for those pointiest of pointy teeth, and the show is over.
‘Whiskers takes his dinner over to that wall, yes, and then he’s up and over to find somewhere nice to enjoy the crunch.’
Slightly aghast at the drama which has just unfolded before my eyes, I quietly concede that Ms Pudding, is as usual, correct. And that having your face so far from the ground may help you to see further, but you definitely miss all the detail.
With sympathy in her dark eyes, Ms Pudding takes pity on me, and describes a few more of the dramatic scenes that my high face would otherwise have missed on our morning’s walk.