My beloved New Forest has a heart of gold, but he’s not the brightest. If he were a dog, he would definitely be a Labrador. A sandwich short of a picnic, yet at the same time highly motivated by food. Most of the time I have no idea what’s going on in that fluffy little Forester brain. But this morning he surpassed even himself in the stupid stakes.
You may have noticed, it has been raining quite a lot recently. We live on top of a hill, but even so, there’s a lot of water sitting around with nowhere to go. As a result, we have a very extensive puddle half way up the drive. It’s about 10 yards long, three yards wide and maybe six inches deep.
The Forester and I set off for a hack this morning in thick mist and drizzle. He reached the middle of the big puddle, and paused to offload an enormous poo. We then proceeded on our ride a couple of kilos lighter.
An hour or so later we ambled home, dripping wet. I had reached the point where my reins were like washing lines and I was miles away, thinking of a nice dry kitchen and a hot cup of coffee. As we came down the drive, I suddenly felt my Forester screech to a halt, eyes on stalks and ears nearly touching in the middle. There, ahead of us, like a mini Loch Ness monster, a dark ghostly shape rose up out of the puddle into the misty air.
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I tried to explain to him that it was a monster of his own making. But he was having none of it. From his point of view, the monster had arrived in the puddle while we were out — he certainly hadn’t seen it when we were leaving — and he was not prepared to take any chances. It took a lot of persuasion to get him past, despite the fact he knew his haynet was only a few yards away in a nice dry stable on the other side.
He really is “special” in every sense. Bless.
JG
