A Story of Dog versus Bicycle
This is a tale about what happens most Thursday mornings in a certain household in Aberdeen, Scotland. The particular details relate to this week, but the basic pattern of events could be pretty much any Thursday in any year...
The dog wakes up when his human comes downstairs shortly after 6 a.m. He notes she is wearing clothes which are brighter and more close fitting than her usual garments, and this, together with the fact that the next thing she does is check her bicycle tyre pressures, tells him he will shortly be abandoned for several hours while his human goes off to meet her friends for their regular Thursday bike ride.
But wait. All is not lost, perhaps? He can hear rain on the roof of the conservatory, above the noise of his human chomping through her big bowl of muesli and Nick Robinson on Radio 4 talking about the fate of Yevgeny Prigozhin.
It is still raining quite hard when she takes him for his morning walk around the park, and for a few hopeful minutes he can dream that the wet weather will prompt her to stay indoors, with him, after all.
Fat chance of that. As her friend Anne is fond of saying: "Why did they invent Gore-Tex?" At 8:45 am sharp she pats him on the head and, despite deploying a plaintive look in his eyes together with his adorable - so he's told - head tilt, she wheels her 'wet weather bicycle' (the one with the mudguards) out into the road, and there he is, left all alone. Abandoned once again.
It is six hours later when she returns, all rosy cheeked and happy, knees creaking a bit. She tells him five of them were out today, Anne, Sonia, Sheila, Margaret and herself, they rode out to Monymusk for coffee and delicious scones and plenty of lively chat. The sun came out, the wind blew them home and all in all they'd had a fine time.
But there's more disappointment for the dog, who has to wait a while longer for his afternoon outing. His human claims that having cycled over fifty miles she needs not only a shower but also more food - the yummy cheese scone was insufficient fuel.
After what feels to him like for ever, she finally puts on his lead and they go out. By now his expectations are low and he is unsurprised to find out this is to be a boring urban walk, less than two miles, and even on the path by the River Dee he is not allowed to roam free, apparently in case he decides to chase any of the baby bunnies hopping about on the river bank. As if there would be anything wrong in that.
Towards the end of the walk he is made to pose in front of one of the prettier front gardens just a short distance from his house. His human takes a close up of one of her favourite dahlias, saying if he includes this in his post it will definitely qualify for the Nature Friday blog hop.
