4th November 2002
Hi all,
Lorraine and I have a new addition to our household. No... it isn't what you might think, so all the ladies out there can just calm down, stop thinking about names and all other details and listen to the facts. Its as simple as this:
We've got a dog.
So onto the important details. His name is Cookie, he's a cross-bred Collie and (naturally) he's adorable! We've got him from some friends of ours, who unfortunately cannot keep him as their daughter is allergic to him.
Being honest, I never saw Lorraine and I taking on a pet of our own. It wasn't that I didn't like animals, my parents are animal lovers and as a result of that I was always around animals while I lived with them. So why didn't I want one? Simple - I knew the sadness that came from their inevitable passing. I didn't want to willingly volunteer for that. But then Cookie was offered to us, and as we had looked after him before, knew he was no trouble at all and that he was such a lovely dog... well, it wasn't a difficult decision to make.
And so Cookie has become "our boy", complete with a new bed and lots of new toys. We've even had one "It's a boy!" card through the letterbox (I won't say who sent it, but if I did tell you then you wouldn't be surprised who the sender was). He's being spoilt like a baby, but he comes without all the disadvantages of a baby (crying, screaming, vomiting... you get the idea). Neither can he fulfill "The Martin Povey Hypothesis" of becoming a murderer/rapist/robber (boy, you can't tell that Martin and I used to get fed up with girls going on and on AND ON about babies, can you? By the way Martin's hypothesis deserves in-depth coverage some day, because he's right - by the law of averages some babies do become evil. To prove the point it is worth remembering that even Alan Mullery was a baby once.).
We've had him a matter of days, and he's already changed our lives significantly. At the moment we're in the horrible six-week period where people who don't know the value of money choose to spend it on stupid rockets that light up the sky and fill the evening air with loud bangs. As if I didn't already dislike Guy Fawkes' Night (can't they rename it "Guy Fawkes' Month" yet, or at least tell people that it is meant to be November 5th, not October 5th that the festivities take place?) enough, now I have to put up with my dog being scared stiff too. Great.
So over the past week or so we've been in just about every night, looking after Cookie, trying to keep him calm. He's already taking over our lives, and we couldn't be happier about it.
Have a good week!
Tony
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