- After years of running races and triathlons - some of them quite long
and some fairly quickly, I'd come to think of myself as a "runner." I
now know, after finding myself tethered to a running West Highland Terrier (westie), I am, in
fact, not.
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| "Donut" - photo copyright Andrea Chow |
- That fundamental human skill - where we learn to holler "Off!" -
is best taught by the westie command action of jumping onto things
humans once considered special.
- Two individual leashes are
simply in the temporary state of being what we call "untangled." Their
natural condition is a tightly coiled knot, linking a hapless walker
with two westies intermingling like coy in
a restaurant aquarium.
- An 1800 sq. ft. house has over 1700 sq. ft. of
additional space in which a westie can nap than its owners originally
allowed for. This is not entirely a problem, given the incredible
Swiffer-like quality of westies' coats.
- If I yelled as
loudly as our two westies bark I'd be hoarse. If I ate as relentlessly
as they could I'd weigh as much as a horse.
- Squirrels must
have either an agenda or a perverted sense of humour, considering how
rarely they stop and bob their tails around for 15 minutes unless
westies are barking at them.
- A walking westie's ability to
hoover anything off the ground without breaking stride is on par with
its resolve to clamp its jaws shut when humans try to find out what was
sucked in.
- A fence may be built to dog-proofed standards, but
can only be certified once a westie has wedged, stuck, jammed, wiggled,
shaken, pryed and thrust its snout along every centimetre of its length
and seams, countless times a day, for several weeks. Just to be sure.
Because, you never know when something might want to get in. Or out.
--
Yes, I know - two articles ago I was ranting about dog owners ignorantly blocking pathways. Now the shoe is on the other foot - we've adopted two Westie rescues. Life, it would seem, is not lived linearly.
