I have to get up early tomorrow.  EARLY.  REALLY EARLY.  Pav and I are going to a training class.  Experimentally.

One of the many, many things that have not gone right recently is that Southdowner decided that since she was going to the show anyway—the dog show Pav and I were going to attend with her when I still had a dog minder to look after hellhounds in our absence*—it would be good exposure for Pav to come along too, without me, and have a New Experience.  It’s not like Pav doesn’t adore Southdowner.  I am a boring discarded toy when Southdowner is around.

However, Pav didn’t think much of this plan.  Pav apparently achieved orbit in a manner that confounded scientists and astronomers all over the globe.  There is going to be a special seminar next summer on Small Furry Tricolour Flying Object seen for a few radiant and confusing hours one afternoon in late October 2013 in southern England.  I’m not planning to attend.

Meanwhile . . . Southdowner brought her home in a steel reinforced butterfly net and gave me a severe admonishing about socialising.  She needs more experience of the world than Peter, a few neighbours, some handbellers, and random people on the street rushing up to her and saying Oh!  A mini bull terrier!  I LOVE bull terriers!  I’ve always wanted a mini one!, which I’m afraid Pav and I are getting rather blasé about since it happens so often,** are giving her.

Oh.***

So along with all the other rubbish this week, I’ve been attempting to crank up the machinery to try to provide Pav with suitable horizon-broadening adventures.  I hadn’t much cared about the government raising the age for the free bus pass . . . but public transport is a great adventure for the lap-sized hellcritter.†  Hitherto when we go into Mauncester or Ziggeraton for fresh woods and pastures new we just carelessly take Wolfgang:  a frelling bus ticket costs even more than petrol for your profligately individually owned internal combustion engine vehicle:  What Is Wrong With This Picture.  Sigh.  But you do get more critter-socialising bang for your buck-plus if you travel in an interesting manner.  And then there are the trains . . . which even to approach the gate to the track costs an egg-sized†† pearl or your first-born child, which latter is not an option in my case.  Arrrrgh.

There are also dog training classes.  We googled extensively while Southdowner was here, and I had this list when she left.  There’s something wrong with everybody on it, starting with the people that other people have warned me off.†††  Then there’s the so-called professional dog trainer who doesn’t even have her own message on her phone machine—and I hate those robot answer messages that come with the machine so you don’t even know if you’ve dialled/punched the right number—and blah and blah and blah.  But I eventually thought of someone I’d liked the look of last year when a tiny manic Pav was freshly my problem—only his puppy socialisation class is Wednesday evening, and I’m way too garbagey a bell ringer to give up my home tower practise nights.  And then, you know, I thought Pav and I were getting on with our socialisation, in our casual amateur way.

I rang him and said I had a year-old mini bull terrier who had Not Reacted Well to her first dog show experience and he didn’t quite laugh but he’s heard it before.  And he suggested that as a trial training class experience—just to bring her, sit on the sidelines, see how she reacts and give him a chance to assess her—SATURDAY MORNING AT TEN FRELLING O’CLOCK might be a good choice.‡  He’s half an hour away and I will have to hurtle hellhounds before I leave. . . .

Good night.

* * *

* Aside from the extreme nuisance value of not having any dog minder . . . the irony is that we’re happier without her and I feel pretty much a doofus for not recognising the signs that All Was Not Well.  I still feel the end of the line could have come a little more gently.  And . . . what do I do now?  Having lost one dog minder from using her too little and another from using her too much I feel a trifle bemused about what faulty approach to implement badly next time.^  I’ve said this before, right?  Well, it does keep recurring.  With the alternate plan of staying home for the rest of my life.

^ Finding—and keeping—a child minder must be exponentially worse.  But at least kids eventually outgrow needing one.  Dogs never do learn to take themselves around the churchyard and cook supper.

** As Southdowner said when I first met one of hers, they’re Marmite dogs:  you love ’em or hate ’em.

*** Speaking of the many manifestations of my canine-related cluelessness.  I had no idea.

† I’d originally planned to take the hellhounds on some public transport but dogs on buses are at the discretion of the bus drivers:  great.  Swell.  And what if your bus driver says ‘no, I don’t like dogs/I’m not in the mood/AAAAAAAAAUGH’?  I can’t pick them up.  I can pick Pav up.^  I can pick her up and march up the steps and thrust my foresightfully prepaid ticket at the driver and keep going.  It should work.  I’ll let you know.

^ Barely.  SHE WEIGHS THIRTY-FIVE POUNDS.  IT STOPS HERE.  And once Southdowner and/or Olivia get this showing bug out of their systems she’s going back to being a SLIM hellterror.  Just sayin’.

†† Only pigeon-egg-sized.  Not chicken.  They’re not greedy or anything.

††† Can you believe there are still professional trainers out there recommending choke collars and Appropriate Force and so on?!  What?

‡ I don’t think he said frelling.  I have said many things, including frelling.