Happy Birthday Sister Bliss!

Little Sister Bliss the Dandie Dinmont is one year old - well one year and 12 days actually.

She is still delightful, seems to have got through the canine equivalent of the 'terrible twos' and is busy teaching herself about 'nature' in the form of mole catching, mouse watching and rabbit guard.

Happy Birthday dear little Bliss!

Sister Bliss the Dandie Dinmont is in temporary crisis!

Dear Sister Bliss - you can see how miserable she is. She has scratched her face and, now it is healing, it is itchy poor lass. So a couple of days in this 'modern' Elizabethan Collar will give her wound time to heal.

Every dog knows that, if one is wearing a collar like this, that one cannot walk, cannot puddle (let alone pooh) and that one must immediately descend into great depths of depression.

Boy has tried to talk to her; to reassure her that it isn't an implement of torture and now she does realise that she can shut her eyes and have a snooze without a near death experience.

This is the ultimate 'be cruel to be kind' sort of thingie for an owner to do. But all will be well when she begins to smell the chicken that will shortly be roasting and she gets a 'special meal' in compensation. I don't think it will be many seconds before she learns another skill - eating whilst wearing a collar!

Dandie Dinmont Terrier uses Skype - Official!

Maxxi Jazz - the Dandie Dinmont Terrier who has mastered Skype!

By now you know that Sister Bliss & Boy live with me and Natty Dread & Maxxi Jazz live with my partner. What you might not know is that my partner and I communicate with Skype. I have a set of headphones with a built-in microphone, my partner uses the computer speakers and a separate microphone. That means that my Dandies hear what I say but not what Peter says - Natty Dread and Maxxi Jazz can hear me loud and clear.

Peter noticed it first of course. Maxxi Jazz, as soon as I began talking, became very alert and animated. I wasn't suprised - I had held the tiny, wet, slippery little being in my hands whilst Natty Dread came to terms with whelping for the very first time. But this was different. He had found a special voice, a computer voice! Somehow he has realised several things. One, that I can't see him, two, that it is me speaking on the computer and three, that he has to make a noise so that I know he is there.

We have developed this. Now our conversation begins with me asking Maxxi Jazz if he is there and, when he responds in his very special voice, I suggest that he asks Peter for a biscuit which he does and Peter duly gives him one. But this computer relationship began without reward so is all the more remarkable.

But there is a tiny little bit of a downside, at least there used to be. At the beginning, if Peter was out of the room, Maxxi Jazz, perhaps feeling like a little snack, took it upon himself to try and use the computer and Skype. Peter found him several times sitting on the keyboard speaking to me - no mean feat of agility for a not very small Dandie Dinmont Terrier!

Now it is part of the telephone routine and, if I forget, he will speak to me and remind me that he should be given his biscuit.

During all these conversations, my two can hear as they mostly are in the two beds under my computer desk - the 'day beds' whilst I work. The rather odd thing is that they don't respond at all when I suggest to Maxxi Jazz that he asks Peter for a biscuit - they don't even cock an ear. The biscuit word normally would be the beginning of a flurry of dramatic activity but if I say it 'online' they just seem to know that it doesn't involve them.

Dear Natty Dread, at Peter's, studiously ignores anything that comes out of the computer and barely moves to get her biscuit which has been hard won through intelligence by her son, Maxxi Jazz.