Max and Paul's Excellent Adventure

Before we arrived at our next pet sitting gig, we spent the night in the Royal Toby Hotel, just five miles from where we had to be. The room was nice enough and we actually had room to move, which so many hotels don't provide these days.  We were booked into the Italian restaurant attached to the hotel, but high-tailed it out of there when we found ourselves listening to overly loud music, complete with ads. There was something amiss with their sound system and clearly no one had Spotify with a boom box so, not wanting to put up with commercial radio, we left and went back to the pub dining room. The meal was fine, but not memorable. As I was talking to Paul an older women hurriedly walked past with her husband, farting loudly as she went, which had begun long before she reached us. 🤣  Well, that was the end of me. We'd had a very long drive and a couple of large glasses of wine and I couldn't contain myself.  And when I looked over at the table next to us on the other s...

Oxenwood is a cute little hamlet WSW of London and rural. The nearest town with a  supermarket, Hungerford, was 5 miles away through farmland and down single carriage laneways. The house we stayed in was a 3 level semi-detached place. This is Rosie. Rosie is a seasoned labrador in that she eats anything, won't get out from under my feet in the kitchen, doesn't listen unless there's food involved, but is loving, affable, boofy and beautiful. Here she is enjoying her bone, the best half of £4.50 ever spent.  Here's Tilly. Tilly has been learning earnestly from Rosie and will also ignore any requests to 'come here', 'sit', 'stay' and 'don't eat that dead rabbit or roll in that rotting fish'. Tilly likes to play tug, but as she's stronger than any human, wins every game. The other half of the best £4.50 ever spent is in her mouth. And this is Button. He would have to be the most chilled cat we've ever met. He would have a morning ...

 And now...  For those of you who read the last blog entry, this is the antidote.  Voila Shacky!  Short for Shackleton. As in Ernest, the explorer, (and who was also called Shacky by his friends, apparently) of whom the homeowner was a fan.  Arriving at Hook Norton, having driven through some of the most picturesque Cotswolds countryside, we felt like we'd died and gone to heaven.  Peter and Adrianne welcomed us with great hospitality. Shacky was too busy having his dinner to pay much attention. We were fed beautifully made Thai chicken curry, plied with G and T's and lots of wine and given the home and doggo rundown.  Shacky was absolutely delightful. He's a "beddy whippet", so a bedlington terrier x whippet, otherwise known as a lurcher.  A lurcher, I discovered, is any sighthound breed crossed with a terrier, and they invariably end up looking like Shax.  He was about the size of an Italian greyhound with boundless energy and just the...

  And here he is, the Jinks factor, who liked to start his day between 4.15 and 5.30 AM. After two weeks he started to settle down a bit and not be quite so reactive.  The owner told us that he'll bite if he doesn't want to do something. That includes getting out from under my feet in the kitchen when I'm flying around trying to cook. And also when someone knocks at the door and you need him to move in order to answer the door and not have him escape and die on the busy road.   Huby is a cute little village with some exquisite homes and the best run and stocked community shop anywhere. It has a pub that we tried to go to, but was booked out.  And that's it!  A shop and a pub.   England is full of these little libraries. They're just exchange sites, really.  A great idea, though. Take a book. Leave one. Or not.  York is an historic viking town. Not that we did any touristy things. The whole tourist strip, of course, is overpriced and corny, bu...

  Our time in Great Whittington was short and sweet. The rear of the home, with wall-to-wall glass doors, overlooked large fields full of sheep and lambs. The home was lovely - modern, well-equipped and very comfortable. A huge TV with all the streams (Netflix, Prime etc) is always appreciated.  Our charges were happy pets and easy. They were characters, though, and full of mischief. Jarvis was like a tornado and would jump on top of Mole, out of the blue, for no good reason. You could almost hear him cackling as he sped off again. 🤣 Mole, from the minute we arrived, wanted to shag my (Max's) leg. This went on and on for a couple of days until the morning of day 3 he came flying upstairs and jumped on my bed, only to start the business immediately. That got me out of bed quickly and we had words... Mole was pint sized (a border terrier, I think?) who made up for his size with his perpetual unimpressed look. He wasn't grumpy, though, and he WAS adorable (apart from the shaggin...