Moses in the Bulrushes

Moses came to live with us yesterday. He is a delightful 10 week-old black Labrador, who has stolen our hearts away. He is utterly enchanting, and has a lovely docile spirit, although we are not fooled, and he certainly shows off his high spirits by jumping off the highest snow bank, and landing splat, having failed to negotiate the landing techniques used by older, wiser dogs. Our 9 year old yellow bitch, Sadie, has welcomed him into our midst, with a slight disdain for his foolish antics, but has generously allowed him to play with her duck, and he, in turn has offered her his new pheasant.

My brother, Richard, is slightly concerned about his name, worrying about a possible state of confusion when we ask him to get in his basket. We have, however, come to a good conclusive solution to this potential cause for rebellion: we are never to ask him to get in his basket while it is floating downstream. This will eliminate any fear of being found in the bulrushes by Phaeroah's daughter, with the resultant coddling.

He has settled in very well to a strict schedule of eating, walking, flying!, outside chores, chewing any one of his new toys: duck, pheasant, lamb, a nasty 'thing' that looks like a hand grenade which you stuff with a treat encased in peanut butter, it keeps him happy for quite a while, and takes his mind off any idea of chewing anything untoward!, at which point he falls into the lovely contented sleep of the truly happy.

His heritage is English, but I'm afraid that in his short life, he has picked up some extremely un-British habits. The way he boistrously laps his water, would prompt any Royal Marine to inflate his life-dinghy right away. I'm not quite sure how to correct this highly foreign behaviour, and so for now, the mop will have to be on hand to swab the deck of our kitchen floor at all times.

He and I are in the middle of a very exciting book by Minette Walters called 'The Breaker', and we think we know who dunnit! But we can't reveal it here, firstly, coz it might disappoint anyone who is almost at the point of recognizing the culprit, and secondly, we wouldn't want to appear foolish when the truth reveals the folly of our guesses.

We have wandered far from the bulrushes on this very sunny Sunday afternoon, but everyone is sleeping off our walkies, and this seemed an appropriate moment to introduce all and sundry to Maestro's Moses: Canto Della Terra.