A Sad Announcement

Willow has not been here for a while. He found it increasingly hard to get up the stairs to his desk this last summer, and very sadly he passed over to the Happy Hunting Grounds to be with his mother Pipkin and the rest of the pack last Monday 5th October. So this will be the last blog entry. His blog will stay up though, as a Memorial to a much loved dastardly dinmont. You can see my tribute to him here.

With much sadness,

Willow's Author Person

oh! the humiliation of it all....

here i am, handsome, debonair, happy.... a dinmont in charge of his domain.

and then it happened.

the horrid little blue van pulled into the driveway with all those nasty ringlet haired monsters barking inside. i knew what was coming and ran into the house (bad mistake). unfortunately there was nowhere to hide. kitchen chairlegs aren't very good camouflage for a dinmont of my manly proportions, however hard i try to look green and sticklike, and i was dragged out by the demon writer woman and hoisted up onto the table of torture. the writer woman seems to like going to the hairdresser. sees it as a day out, a day off. personally, i can't see the point of it all. so what if i've got a fringe long enough to make blankets from? makes me look all mysterious--and the moustache is useful for hiding bits of food in for snacking on at odd hours of the night. but the writer woman is a cruel and horrible person who has strongly differering opinions from a dinmont when it comes to questions of personal hygiene.

I tried to plead with those pathetic big black dinmont eyes of mine....

even the terrible tiny teckel tried to help by stealing the torture implements and running around with them. but nothing doing....

the clippers came out, and the humiliation began. fur everywhere. (yes, i know dinmonts are supposed to be plucked, but apparently i have floppy fur and it doesn't work on me--anyway, i bite anyone who tries and always have). then it got worse....

much much worse. (if there's one thing i really hate it's a bath in that horrible white sink they wash the boots in--do i look like i'm some kind of old boot?).

and if there's another thing i really really really hate it's that damnblasted hairdryer. makes my ears go all squeegee inside. you can see from this picture that i am a dinmont at the end of his tether...literally.

ho! i thought to myself. if they do one more thing to me in the hairdressing line...just one more thing...i shall jump and end it all. then they'll be sorry.

luckily for you, devoted reader and dinmont worshipper, they let me get down. they know when a dinmont has had enough of primping. the wimpy weasel and the tiny teckel were all over me of course, telling me how handsome i looked. girls are like that. now i just have to sniff out that eau de reynard i was saving for a rainy day and roll in it. then i'll feel more like myself. but first i'll have a little nap. all this uploading malarkey is very tiring....

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

the new addition

didn't manage to post till now--the writer stole my computer again. but here i am awake and raring to go. why am i not asleep at this hour? you may well ask, and i shall tell you. it's because the new addition is snoring. i don't know what the writer person was thinking of. was she not happy with me (best dinmont in the universe) and my sidekick the wimpy weasel? no. apparently not. a few weeks ago she drives off in a mysterious way to somewhere called 'wales' and comes back with this.

it's some wildly inferior breed called a 'teckel' (whatever that is). she says we are related, but i doubt it. it's some weird colour called 'wild boar', for a start and dinmonts only come in the proper shades of 'pepper' and 'mustard'. it also has an odd celtic name--cloghaneely kerridwen--or something equally unpronounceable. sophy is what we call it round here--or they do. i just call it that blasted puppy, and bite it to teach it manners. i'll be writing more about my trials and tribulations with chewed tails and stolen breakfasts. meanwhile, it has stopped snoring, so i'm off to catch 40 winks before it starts up again. it's a hard life being a grandfather figure.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....snoooooooorrrrrrre

back at last...

aha! the writer person is out, she's left the computer in the kitchen and i can get my paws on the laptop at last. she's been carrying it around like a baby and hogging it for months and my arthritis hasn't let me up the stairs to the big plugged in one. been a big day today--finally managed to do my piece for the lovely editor at the dandie dinmont magazine who has been so flatteringly interested in me. naturally i agreed to write about myself. what subject could be more relevant to the world? told the story of how i was a burglar-biting puppy hero (you'll just have to wait to hear that one), and let them into the secret of my favourite food. nearly strawberry picking time again, that's all i'll say right now. oh blasted bonestealers. here she comes. no time for a picture even. more tomorrow, paws crossed.....

chewing it over...and over

the author person has just mentionioned she's going off again. what is it with her? world book day or week or something? what about world neglected dinmont week then? but i've got something planned to punish her. there's a nice hole in the big bed, just under the tartan cover. i've been working at it for weeks, even though my bdf the wimpy weasel (bdf=best doggy friend, keep up can't you) says we'll get in trouble for it. trouble is my middle name. i thrive on trouble. anyway, the plan is to pull out all the nice fluffy wooly bed insides and scatter them over the kitchen for her return. i can't wait for the shrieking and swearing bit when she finds it really really late at night. ha! leave a dinmont home alone at your peril, i say. right. off to do a little more surreptitious tearing...will keep you posted as to results. see those innocent dandie eyes in the photo? how could they possibly do anything evil and wrong.

first sniffings

so you found me, then. willow here, dashing dandie dinmont extraordinaire. what? you've never heard of me? let me enlighten you then. i am the latest in a long line of literary dinmonts--we've been inspiring writers for centuries. walter scott? he modelled that dashing young lochinvar on a dinmont--well obviously. agatha christie? how else did she nose out all those crimes except with dinmont assistance? dorothy parker? who do you think told her that the cure for boredom is curiosity? dinmonts are renowned for it. and then john galsworthy...he couldn't have written all that stuff about society and that without a dinmont to spy it all out for him. dinmonts are really good at sneaking about and listening to stuff they shouldn't. anyway, now there's me. my author person lucy coats writes children's books and you can read about her stuff here. you can also read my interview about her if you want some real dirt. paws tired now, and i still can't work out this shift key thing. more sniffings from me soon. this blogging thing is exhausting....snoooooorrrre.