Today is International Dog Day. I know, I know... every goddam day is international something day but this is dogs. It's a big one. According to Wikipedia (Who are asking me for money again and I suppose I probably ought to give them some, since I link to them all the fricken' time...) it's "...an annual observance held on August 26 to celebrate dogs of all breeds and backgrounds, promote dog adoption, and raise awareness about the welfare of dogs around the world. It also recognizes working dogs and the roles they play in human society, including service, police, military, and search and rescue dogs." It hasn't been going that long. It started in the USA in 2004 and spread, although not, apparently, all that successfully to where I live. I could only find one local event linked to it and that's a party for dogs at a pub in town. I'd link to it but all the info is either on Facebook or Instagram and I don't like to encourage that sort of thing. The event starts in an hour and I very much doubt I'll even have finished this post by then, so it's a bit of a moot point anyway. Instead, in honor and celebration of the day and because I thought it would make for a nice, quick, easy post for Blaugust, I thought I'd do a list: "Ten Things You Didn't Know About Beryl". I even had ten pictures to go along with it that I took this morning, when we were out on a walk, so they're good and fresh, which is more than I can say about Beryl. Unfortunately, when I sat down to write the post, I couldn't think of ten things to say about Beryl or at least not ten that didn't make either her or us sound deranged. Plus, ten pictures take up a heck of a lot of space in a post, unless you make them really tiny. So it might end up being fewer on both counts. Maybe a lot fewer. We'll have to see how we go. Here's the first fact, anyway. 1. Until she was something like two years old, Beryl really wasn't all that interested in food. Half the time she had to be persuaded to eat and treats didn't really motivate her much. That led to us feeding her by hand a lot, which we still do, much of the time. Well, I do. Mrs Bhagpuss says she has more sense. It also means that, of late, we've had to train ourselves out of feeding Beryl on demand or praising her just for eating something because now she's often eating as much as she can get, just like any other dog. Well, so long as it something she likes. She can still be very picky, at least by dog standards. 2. Possibly related to her earlier disinterest in eating, Beryl will not take any treats from strangers, even if they're her favorites. She also won't drink from any bowl put out by kind, thoughtful dog-lovers in hot weather, even if she's really thirsty. She seems to think everyone is out to poison her. There's certainly no need to warn her about stranger danger. Except... 3. Beryl loves old ladies. Pretty much any old lady will do. She's not discriminating. She has three modes when meeting strangers: suspicious, aloof and enthusiastic. She's suspicious of most people who appear to want to pet her. She backs away and has nothing to do with them. That's her most common response. Less often, she just stands there and lets petting happen to her, without in any way participating in or endorsing it. When it's an old lady, though, she acts as if she's just met a long-lost friend. She pants and simpers and stands up on her hind legs like some kind of performing... erm... dog. Of the three, the only one that isn't potentially embarrassing (For us, not Beryl, who is impossible to embarrass, like all dogs.) is her neutral stance. 4. Beryl used have just a few favorite places to sleep but in the last few months she seems to have decided anywhere will do. She particularly likes sleeping in doorways. She tried the back door, the door to the living room, and all the bedroom doors but her favorite is possibly the bathroom, which is great fun if you need to get up in the middle of the night for a pee. Today she decided to try the kitchen doorway for a change. We think she may be trying to kill us. 5. Although she looks like a cuddly lap-dog, Beryl is an excellent watchdog. She's alert to the slightest unusual sound, even when she seems to be asleep. She doesn't bark much but as soon as there's any hint of a threat, like someone trying to deliver a parcel or ask if we've found Jesus yet, she barks fit to raise the dead. Scares the life out of me, sometimes. 6. She may be ever-alert to potential human intruders but as she gets older and wiser she's becoming more and more laid back about other animals. She used to chase madly after birds or squirrels but now she mostly just looks at them with disdain. The two exceptions are cats that think they can take a short cut through our garden and pigeons that think it's fine to sit on the corrugated plastic roof of the conservatory. If she gets even the slightest hint that either of those abominations might be happening, she goes berserk. The cats then climb up something and sneer at her and the pigeons, already being well out of reach, just ignore her. She'll probably get the message that she's never going to reach them eventually and then she'll pretend she never cared in the first place, just like she has with the squirrels. 7. Unlike most dogs, Beryl loves going to the vet. Our vet's, which is an actual animal hospital, is five minutes' walk away and when we go there, as soon as we get near to the entrance she starts pulling to go in. She must be the only dog that runs up the path to get into the vet's. Once she's through the door, she's straight onto the scales to weigh herself, something she also does in the Garden Center pet shop, where they too have a stand-on weigh-your-dog device. She only starts to look nervous if she has to go past reception into the back, where the examination rooms are, but even then she's about ten times less anxious about it than she is when she thinks she's going to the dog groomer. She is not a fan of bathing and blow-drying. 8. She's not a fan of swimming, either. She likes to go in water but only up to her knees (If dogs have knees.) Even if other dogs are swimming, she won't join in. It might be because once, when she was a puppy, we were walking across some unfamiliar fields and we came up a slope and Beryl, who was on her lead but forging ahead, walked onto a nice, flat patch of very green grass that turned out not to be grass at all. It was duckweed floating on the surface of a deep pond. She went straight through and disappeared, completely out of sight underwater. It was like a cartoon. I'm surprised she didn't stand there for a second, do a double-take, then sink. Since she was in a harness, I just yanked her straight up and out and she shot into the air and landed back on dry land about a second later. I don't think she had any idea what had happened except that she was somehow soaking wet. An experience like that would make you think twice around water in future, I guess, although future, I guess, although really it ought to be grass you'd need to be suspicious of. 9. Beryl likes both town and country walks but mostly she likes walks that go somewhere interesting and preferably somewhere new. For a small, fluffy dog she's very adventurous. She'd be quite hard to place in a classic D&D alignment. She's very lawful when it comes to following paths, for example. She does not like to take short-cuts or deviate from the designated route and she looks at us sternly if we do. If there's a closed gate with a dog-sized gap next to it, she'll wait for the gate to be opened rather than go through the hole. But if there's some free exploration to be had, like climbing up or scrambling down slopes, she can be positively chaotic. Little excites her more than a good clamber. 10. Beryl loves to play. Just not with other dogs. Or outside. Playing is for indoors, with humans. If a dog tries to get her to play, she looks at them like they're having some kind of psychotic break. In four and a half years I think I've seen her play with other dogs fewer than half a dozen times and for less than five minutes in total. Conversely, every single evening without fail she comes to me and demands I play with her for at least half an hour. In the house she'll chase a squeaky toy, pick it up and bring it back for another go over and over again but try it outdoors and she'll look at you like you've lost your reason. Phew! There we go. Ten things. I'm not saying they're ten interesting things but then that was never in the contract. As for pictures, five seems about right. Have a great rest of your International Dog Day!