Guest Post

Hi. It's me, Nessa. Remember me? I'm the dog that lives with Bilbo and Agnes.

Yep, I'm back again. Bilbo is in the shower and Agnes is still asleep, so I thought I'd try my hand...I mean, my paw...at this blogging thing again. I think I got the hang of it with my last post, but typing with paws instead of fingers is kind of a pain, so don't mind any typos, okay?

I wanted to get on the computer and tell you about what happened yesterday before Bilbo gets on and tries to spin it his own way...

I'm a Chocolate Lab, and we Labs are water dogs. We love to swim and splash around in the water and retrieve stuff like balls and sticks and dead ducks. That's what being a Lab is all about! Well, behind Bilbo's house is a pretty big piece of woods that's owned by something called a park authority, whatever that is. And if you go down the hill through the woods, at the bottom you find a nice, big stream with pools of deep water and a paved trail running alongside it for people to run and ride bikes and take dogs for walks.

So yesterday, Bilbo decided he would take me down to the stream for a treat and let me swim and splash around in the water and chase squirrels and do all that labby stuff I don't get to do very often. There's just one problem: you have to get to the stream. That means cutting through a lot of pretty thick weeds and trees and deadfalls and all sorts of undergrowth before you get to the stream and find that the paved trail is on the other side. I didn't care so much about the trail, but Bilbo sort of likes it, and he had a hard time finding a way across the stream. There are a couple of foot bridges and a ford with big, round concrete posts for people to walk across, but none of them were close to where we were, so he found a place where the banks weren't too high and the water wasn't too deep and there were some big stones in the water, and he tried to walk across on the stones.

You know, a 200-pound person makes a pretty big splash and a lot of noise when he falls in the water. He was using words I haven't heard since before I learned to poop outside instead of in the house! I thought it was pretty funny, but Bilbo didn't seem to think it was as funny as I did.

Well, anyhow, he finally calmed down and we spent a long time playing in the water. Well, I did, anyway...Bilbo just kind of stood there drying out in the sun while he threw my toys for me to chase. It was really fun.

After a while, we came up out of the water and found the paved trail and started walking home. But if you know anything about Bilbo, you know that while he's a great guy, he has the world's worst sense of direction. I mean, this poor guy can get lost in a telephone booth (lucky for him there aren't any telephone booths any more!). He started walking in the direction he thought would take us back to the main road by the local school, but he soon found out that the trail had a bunch of forks and branches, and ... well ... we ended up pretty lost. We finally came up out of the woods between some houses and walked out to a road with a name he didn't recognize at all (and he's lived here for about 20 years!).

Well, you know how humans are. He didn't want to stop and ask anybody where we were, and he probably felt pretty silly anyway, still being damp and covered with sand and his shoes making squishing noises when he walked and all. So we just kind of wandered around, trying to figure out where we were. Eventually, Bilbo decided we'd go back down to the trail and try again. We walked for a while and tried another path up to where the houses were, but we ended up in almost the same place we'd been before!

I thought this was pretty funny, but Bilbo didn't seem to enjoy it that much. Finally he remembered that he had his fancy telephone with him, the one that has a bunch of things on it called apes or something ... stuff that doesn't have anything to do with making phone calls. Humans seem to collect these and keep them on their phones. Go figure. Apparently, one of these apes was able to tell him where he was.

He wasn't happy when he found out, and he used some more of those words.

It seems that we'd gone pretty far from where he thought we were. And while the distance to our house in a straight line was not too far, there wasn't really a good way to get there, and not all the trails were listed in his ape. So we had to walk along the sidewalks and roads to get home. We walked in a big circle about three miles long before we finally got back home to where the tile floors are cool and the water dish is full. Believe me, I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening lying down and resting after that long expedition.

Now, don't get me wrong - I love Bilbo and I'm glad he was nice enough to take me down to the stream to play. But next time, I'm going with someone who knows where he's going. Or, at least, someone whose phone has better apes.

Oops ... I think he's done in the shower. Time for me to go. Have a good day lying in the sun and barking at squirrels and joggers.

And don't ask Bilbo for any directions.

Woof.

Nessa.