Swieb

I forgot to tell you: last weekend we went camping and we made some nice walks. Including one walk with my friend Swieb! Actually his real name is Swiebertje, but as a true friend I am allowed to call him Swieb.

Like me, Swieb is an expat. I am from Greece, he came from Spain. As a consequence, he does not like the cold Dutch weather. So his human bought him a sweater!

Yes, you may laugh. I laugh at him a lot when he wears this. He can handle it, he is cool.

Swieb is also very lazy:

And I mean really, really lazy:

But not last weekend, when we went for a walk. We chased through the forest and the sandy dunes, following our noses and enjoying the lovely smells of rabbits, foxes and deer. We had a good time. Alas there are no pictures of us chasing foxes, we were too fast for the camera! But it is true, we did run. You will be amazed how fast Swieb can go on his stubby legs.
Don’t tell him I called his legs stubby. He will not talk to me for at least a year, when he hears that. Must be his male Spanish ego.

Leaving my marks

As I told you in earlier posts, we are going to move house. The house is not finished yet, but M tells me we are moving soon. I am looking forward to it! It has a big garden for me to guard. I can’t wait to chase all the squirrels, rabbits and foxes out of it. There are some juicy cats living in the neighborhood, too. It will be fun!

We are at the new place almost every weekend. M and P work in the garden and I investigate the place. I am busy leaving my marks. Verbally, by barking really loud at humans and animals walking by. Hey, everyone should know we are going to live here! It will be my task to keep intruders out. It is important that everybody knows they will encounter a ferocious guarding dog if they step over the fence:

I am also leaving my marks in a visual kind of way. One can never be too shy on these matters, you know. It is very important to show this space is occupied, by a huge dog (with big feet).

The strangest thing

M did the strangest thing…. we were out in our garden, as we often are. Then M is tending the plants and I am sniffing for cats. But this time M took her gardening tools and began to dig. Not just dig up one plant, like she sometimes does, but ALL the plants!

She did not stop until all the plants were out of our garden and in big boxes.

I find this amazing. I mean: I like digging, but I am not allowed to dig in our garden. Of course this does not mean I never dig – I have some secret projects in the garden M doesn’t know of. But anyway, I thought digging was prohibited. Until now, apparently!

M drove away with all the plants and returned with…. other plants! She put them in our garden, which is now looking like this:

She told me I am not allowed to dig in this bed, nor in any other part of the garden. That is not fair! Why would she go on digging when ever she feels like it, and forbid me to do the same? I do not understand it, either. The plants she put in our garden smell different, they smell like our new garden. I can sense foxes and rabbits and cats – the cats of our neighbors there. Why did M move the plants? It greatly puzzles me.

Big Guardening

Sorry you have not heard from me for a while. I have been very busy exploring our new garden! M and P finally took me with them in their many visits to our new home. The new home is practically a building site now, we do not live there yet. It will take some months before we move, M told me. That means I have two houses and gardens to guard! A big responsibility.

I am very exited about our new place. The garden is huge! I have a very nice garden now, no complaints, but the new garden is much grander. It is an estate, for me to guard!

This is it, the front yard:

There is a back yard too:

I already discovered some very exciting things in our new garden. I found shit smelling of fox! Great, there are foxes for me to hunt there! I love that, foxes are my absolute number one chasing targets. I do hope I will get the change to chase one, soon.

Anyway, you will understand that guardening all this will take a lot of time and effort. Maybe I won’t be able to blog in the time to come. But when I have exiting news to bring you, I certainly will. For instance when I caught a fox! That would be nice.

Fox alert!

I like chasing birds and cats and little dogs, but most of all I like to chase foxes. I did it once. We were walking through a field and there it was, a slender fox, right in front of me. In cases like this I do not hesitate: I was off full speed immediately. The fox saw me too (they are not stupid, you know) and started to run towards some bushes. In order to get there, it had to cross the path where we were walking. I sensed where it was going and I raced towards the bushes too, intercepting the fox on his way there. I missed him by half a nose length – he escaped in the prickly bushes. Men, he was fast!

It was the best chase I ever had.

I would love to get another chance of hunting fox. So you can imagine I was thrilled when we were walking in the dunes and there it was, a big fat fox. Just sitting there, in the sunlight.

I smelled it and my muscles started to tense. It was pretty far away and there was a hollow with some prickly bushes between us, so I had to think up a clever plan in order to make this hunt succeed. Then the fox did this:

He arched his back to shit! This was a great opportunity for me, the moment to start the chase. You see: when one defecates, one is temporarily focussed on just that. One can not run and defecate at the same time. Every dog knows this. This was my chance to get close to the fox, he would never be able to outrun me.

But to my great misfortune M had me on a leash and would not let me go. I couldn’t believe she did not let me, I still can’t believe it. This could have been my one and only chance to chase a fox again! I am depressed, really depressed.