sins

have a way of finding you out - especially Murphy's! the hot cross bun wrapper was discovered in the garden this morning .... sans hot cross buns!

"Muuuurphyyyy!!"

Murphy's shoe collection

.. is expanding. Well, in radius if not in amount. I found one of Richard's (better) shoes in the flower border yesterday! Goodness knows how long it'd been out there for but it was soaked, and very cold..

who's bugging who?

Murphy has a strict rule - "all toys are Murphy's toys". This means that if Gizzy ever gets a toy (always a screwed up piece of paper, usually a receipt) and starts chasing it round the place - or even if she just darts about the house! - Murphy will get up and growl at, and chase, her.

But last night he got his some-uppance - she was curled up on his duvet behind the sofa and he was sleeping on the floor. She got up to run after Richard into the kitchen and Murphy snuck onto (HIS) duvet.

But she came back.

And she wasn't happy! She sat 2 feet away and glared at him. He paid no attention (having his eyes closed) so she got up and walked over... got onto the duvet and walked towards him..

when she got to his head he jumped and sat up, nervously. She kept on coming and as she reached his chest he leapt up and shot off the duvet, leaving it all to her again.

She curled up where she had been and dozed off.

(I felt so sorry for him I let him up on the sofa with me)

..and gizzy too...

made the most of our prolonged evening at rest (given that tomorrow is a holiday) and settled down for a snooze on Richard's book (he claims she came to see him and curled up as you see her here in 2 seconds flat - she knows how to make the most of a good spot when she gets the chance!)

Happy Easter!

As you can see Murphy made the most of the day...

and we've had a white Easter - snow on and off all weekend and it's lying now - so he's had lots of exercise and been bouncy all day with the cold, to work up an appetite for that HUGE egg!

(to all dog lovers watching - the only thing he got was the box!)

murphy's got his knack back!

hurray! I was worried for a wee while - he's always been so good at snapping at the dropped bits of poppadoms, grabbing them out of midair like a frog. It's instinctive, he's so fast. But he was missing them and scurrying all over the floor to get them, he either missed them completely or they bounced off his nose... but a bit of practice soon got him back into the swing of it.

I thought it might've been me - I've been good for almost 5 years and not had any major accidents (if you overlook the murphy - lead incident 18 months ago and the recent umbrella occurrence), but managed to smash a pint glass and the one remaining measuring jug within an hour tonight - come to think of it I think it was me broke the other one too, hmm...

Murfs then spent a pleasant hour on the sofa with Emily watching Stardust with us, his head in her lap(see the evidence!) Happy Easter everyone!

madhouse

I was about the only thing that didn't get any exercise last night - we were upstairs changing after work yesterday and suddenly something rattled against the door, then again. I thought it was Andy as he went past to his room, but when I heard a panting outside the door realised it was Murphy. He shot in, paused long enough to grab my slipper and leapt onto Richard - clearly upset about something!

I heard Andy downstairs calling him and back down he went (still with my slipper) - after some odd bouncing noises he came rushing back up and releapt all over Richard. "Hmm, some investigation required" I thought, and looked over the banisters - and the mystery was solved - Andy was chasing him round the hall with my exercise ball! He's a bit scared of it, you see.

Poor Murphy, he didn't want to exercise with that ball!

I remembered!

I was off on Friday (Tina and Katie were coming, remember? Come on, keep up!)

So I decided, once I had finished cleaning as much of the house as we hadn't done in the previous evenings (I drew the line at cleaning the fridges for overnight visitors!), to reward Murphy for keeping me company round the house while I pottered by taking him for a quick walk round the reservoir. So off we went.

I didn't have the right shoes or enough time to let him swim in the river (or towels with us!) - but that was OK as he was going to have his walk when we got back. But alas! We got back at 1.10 and I got a cup of tea and a chocolate chip cookie (or two) and settled down to watch a DVD, ready to let our patient boy out when Lou came for him. But she never came!

Poor Murphy.... Lou had come for him before we got back so he missed his walk and had to put up with snoozing on my feet all afternoon instead. Fair exchange? hmm...

poor murphy

I was going to write something here but it's completely gone. Maybe it'll come back soon.

murphy & gizzy have a visitor

.. one of our youngest aquaintances, Katie - came over from Norway with her mum Tina to stay over on Friday night and we'll see them again for lunch tomorrow. Steve should've been over too but had a bit of surgery and wasn't discharged quite in time to make it over.. the lengths some people will go to to get a quiet afternoon watching the rugby and their team winning the Grand Slam!!

young Katie was quite delighted with Murphy and just entranced with Gizzy - or "mee-ow" as she called her most of the time - and spent half of this morning in the garden trying to throw things for Murphy to play with (plus she likes the trampoline). she amazed us all by (a) telling us her doll was sleeping upstairs - and then taking us up to show the said doll on our bed! (nobody had noticed her away for more than 3 seconds and we didn't think she could manage the stairs) and (b) appearing at the foot of the stairs in her PJ's to find out what was going on after she was put to bed an hour previously and we all thought she was asleep!

I think Gizzy at least was glad to see her go, life is more predictable without a 2 year old wanting to know what you're doing all the time!

useful!

at last - we've found a use for Murphy! I was MSN'ing Emily to get her to come and put her glasses in the dishwasher and she found a more traditional method of communication - dogpost!

Our hero put the St Bernard breed to shame with his tireless trotting back and forth between the living room and Emily's bedroom, notes tucked into his collar; fighting his way past the fearsome cat creature (although to be fair she was asleep) and through deadly territory brimming with threats to his safety (like my yoga mat leaning up against the wall, waiting to fall on the unsuspecting canine passerby).. well done our brave and trusty friend!

mind you, I'm not sure the St Bernards need quite as much bribery and encouragement from the rescuees to actually get there! The only drawback of Dogpost - you can only use it where the receiver of the post is close enough to be heard by the dogpostman !

As an idea for worldwide domination it may need some improvement, I think

all quiet on the Murphy front

hello everyone.... it continues to be quite uneventful here chez murphy. Who knows how long it will last? I took him for a run this morning and he was goodness itself. Wow. Spends his morning walks with me happily chewing sticks and turning up for treats whenever anyone else looks like they might be getting one... Archie the Airedale is very direct about such things, he just sticks his head in your pocket to get the bag of treats (assuming he hasn't battered his head into the back of your legs and brought you down first), whereas Murphy's chosen method is the constant hovering around and getting in your way with his head poised round about pocket level, looking at you expectantly.

Our recent additions in the morning, Holly and Mischa the spoodles (that's not the name but I forget) - crosses of spaniels and poodles - are much better behaved and don't beg the way the boys do. But when Mischa has been (literally) run over by Archie and gets a bit scared, Holly goes and bullies him back, it's really funny, she keeps running up and barking right at him then running away again, til Archie moves off sheepishly (well, as sheepish as Archie can be, he has a great line in barefaced cheek!) Last week Lynn was heading off early and Archie didn't want to go so simply lay down and refused to move!

The photo shows our great morning walk earlier in the week with a snow blizzard - the snow lasted about 3 hours and 2 days later it was 12 degrees but we were briefly hopeful for a decent bit of the white stuff that morning.

correction - the photo will show it once I find the camera to download it!

hello from the west

Here we are in sunny Glasgow - well sunny at the moment - it was pouring when we arrived yesterday and particularly when we met up with Susan and Ian to take Murphy a walk round the country park! Not that it hampered the Murf's enjoyment of the mud, water and bushes to explore!

He's been very good - we left him with Mum & Dad while we went out socialising last night and he was apparently very good. We took his new toy, the Cookie Monster with us (an old soft toy of Emily's) and before we left him he had ripped the eyes off it (we rescued the plastic bits from his mouth before he swallowed them) and sooked all the stuffing out the head. He doesn't try to eat that, he spits it out and returns to the fray. Apparently as soon as we left he lost all interest in it (well he'd sooked the head dry by then). That's my boy!

In the meantime back at home Emily is looking after a friend's lab puppy... but Gizzy has apparently taken excpetion to the intruder and is defending Murphy's territory. She keeps following poor Charlie round the house and smacking him on the nose! Poor Charlie doesn't know what to do. So we've had to suggest quarantining Gizzy into the utility room where her food is.. she's probably stretched out on the clean towels as I write this, plotting her revenge. Welcome home Murphy!