Gypsy has at last spared me a precious nanosecond in which to accomplish her portrait. She may well have fundamentalist leanings being that her head is covered most of the time as it is buried in the ground digging for freedom or the pipe to our fosse septique which is Willie Wonka’s factory to a dogs olfactory sense, and for the rest of the time I can only see her fundament at the far end of the lead or sometimes on my pillow as I wake. I was not good with babies, nor with children come to think of it and I’m not all that good with people but I certainly never wanted to be good with dogs so the fact that they have made me their new best friend is unnerving. As I sit at the computer my peripheral vision is filled with black floorbound sprawling attentive poodles. I have become a the Poodle Piper. Poodles are with me wherever I go. Dancing with wolves was nothing compared to dancing with pans of boiling water whilst negotiating a path from oven to sink through a mini pack of highly mobile barking shiny eyed blackness: the folk of the forest, otherwise known as dogs’ best friends, have become accustomed to the grey haired loon being dragged ever further into its depth by the two black hounds of Lilliput, twice daily. My wife has a friend who often offered advice in the form of this doggerel ” …the more you do, the more you may” which I would deride as bollocks and the ramblings of someone who has had the misfortune of spending too much time in Norfolk. The problem is that it’s true – particularly in the case of small dogs. Each pat on the head, each throw of the ball, each tiny piece of chicken offered as a treat and each click of the “walkies” lead mounts up, with compound interest, in the love bank of these small brained love sponges. To keep things simple in the kitchen, whilst doing a sword dance with two living claymores, I am baking potatoes which will be eaten with creme fraiche and, for the lack of Iranian caviar, lumpfish. There will also be the simplest and best tomato salad made from one of several delicious examples that I taxed from our daughter’s garden along with tiny, yet deliciously irresistible strawberries from the same source.
Roger Stowell Photography
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Oh, yes. You are completely in Gypsy’s power. And I can tell just how much the dogs must love the fosse septique 😀 Chuckling indulgently over here in the UK, Roger.
Very cruel, Kate, very cruel:)
I love your blog – and a great place to run into at about lunch hour . . yum! Thanks for the loads of inspiration and for stopping by my new wordpress child!
That’s very kind – thankyou. I loved your blog and I shall be passing by often.
“Small brained love sponges.” 🙂
They’re next to me now:)
Invite some Koreans over for dinner 😉
They may well eat the Koreans – you want an international incident. It’d be worse than playing the wrong anthem.
ROFL
Glad it appealed, Mad Dog.
The thing I love the most about the dogs in the kitchen is that they eat all the bits of veg we don’t cook!
These dogs are never going to eat a vegetable -ever:)
Have you tried cooked green beans? Dogs love them!
I’ll give it a go:)
I can almost (but only almost) smell those strawberries… mmmm (sigh)…
They are very good:)
The strawberries look beautiful, but whether they’re enough compensation for the poodles, I’m not sure …..(they wouldn’t be for me!)
The poodles are cool, but like the strawberries, they’ll be gone soonL)
I’ve had dogs, both large and small, competing with me for kitchen floor space and I don’t know which size is the worst. The small ones do get under-foot more often and the danger is real. On the other hand, I’ve never come upon one of the little guys lapping up what was to have been my dinner from a pot/pan atop the stove. It’s such a mixed bag.
I can do it some of the time,John, but I’m too selfish to do it day in, day out.
Living alone, Roger, for all the bother, it’s still rather nice have another heartbeat in the house. 🙂
That makes sense.
I was laughing all the way through this post – I couldn’t even pick out a favourite line. So many! Please tell me that you’ll be writing a book a la Peter Mayle about your adventures in France? Lovely portrait of the busy bee poodle. I definitely identify with this line very well: “Each pat on the head, each throw of the ball, each tiny piece of chicken offered as a treat and each click of the “walkies” lead mounts up, with compound interest, in the love bank of these small brained love sponges.” You’ve made friends for life Roger!
I fear so. But the up side is that we see them sometimes, have fun, and then they go home:)
What a lovely post. Anyone who has a dog, will melt when reading the walkies and love sponges. The strawberries look pretty good too but I’ll take the dog.
Difficult choice:)
Now THAT is the intensity of color I wish I could capture in my photos…
You can – it’s just knowing how to show it.
I can almost smell the dog, I mean the berries, the berries. Strawberries are a distant memory here, wish they weren’t but am glad the worst of summer is hopefully over.
We’re now in we call a heatwave – temperatures of 40C in the middle of France. Around us it’s 36C. But beautiful fruit everywhere:)
Great pictures!!! I like strawberries! =)
Rocío.
Thanks for passing by. Very cool drawings on your site.