Strawberries, Handsome Black One, Etc.

There isn’t much to report today. Suki hasn’t eaten anything at all. She’s taken two sips of water. She got her usual walk in the morning, courtesy Linda. Her afternoon walk was a bit late in coming because I was busy with other things around the house. Their forgiveness is one of the best things about dogs. No matter what you do they’ll never hold it against you. Suki was very happy to see me at 1 pm. She was verrry happy to take a walk with me, too. She wanted to run and I obliged. Being an old lady dog, she can’t run much, so she stops and starts sniffing after a few metres. However, she needs the exercise.

Ned was in fine form today. I think he was feeling quite lonely and neglected. He came up to me and meowed several times, which is a very unusual event. People that know Ned know very well what a silent cat he is [he believes more in action than in words]. Anyway, he wanted to come and snuggle with me and couldn't wait until I sat down. I was standing beside the bed when he had the uncontrollable urge to snuggle with me, so he leaped up from the bed straight on to my shoulders, just like Hanuman. I was caught off guard, to say the least. He then put on his purr-purr, nibble-nibble show, which is sometimes sincere. One never knows when exactly it is sincere. Such an outpouring of affection is usually followed by urgent requests [they're usually orders, not requests] for food. Today, however, he had already had his breakfast, so I thought he was being sincere. He was very happy to sit on my chest and rub the contents of his wet nose all across my face. It's difficult to say no to such outpourings of love and affection even when it's fake.

Linda and I took Suki to the Country Bumpkin in the afternoon. Strawberries are in season, I like strawberries and Linda likes picking them, so we thought it would be a nice afternoon to go pick some. It's hard to beat the price when you pick them yourself. Unfortunately, the sky started darkening when we left Reedsburg. By the time we reached there, a few drops had just started falling on the windscreen of the car. Since we'd already invested some much time into it, we went ahead and started picking strawberries, in spite of the weather.

Suki was delighted to meet a black Labrador in the parking lot of the berry farmer. She was in the car and the other dog came up to her. He was very well behaved and wasn't even on a leash. Suki and the Handsome Black One seemed to fall in love at first sniff. Suki was sitting in the car, sticking her head out the rear window, while the dog was standing outside looking up at her. She licked the Handsome Black One's snout and he wagged at her. They both wagged at each other and exchanged meaningful glances. It was all very cute! However, with the sky threatening to pour down on us any moment, we decided to start picking berries, even though Suki was BERRY much in love with the Handsome Black One.

We took Suki along with us to pick berries. She couldn't care less about the berries but she seemed to live the wild wheat growing around the strawberry plants. She snacked on a few of those while Linda and I picked as many berries as we could before the rain intensified. When it started raining hard, we stopped picking and paid for what we had. Suki was slightly wet and quite a bit smelly when she got in the car. The Handsome Black One, meanwhile, had abandoned his master and come running to the shelter of the farm "office" [good thinking]. We left the place just as it started storming. Suki had a good day, although, I think, she would have loved to spend more time with the Handsome Black One.