We Keep Walking

I’m a dog, OK? Got that? They haven’t. They’ve bought me a coat. A green waxed one that does up with Velcro. Velcro, I ask you! That puts me down there in the fashion stakes with toddlers and old ladies in motorized wheelchairs. And false pockets; the point of them being ....? Firstly, I don’t need pockets. Secondly, they’re on my back so I couldn’t reach them. Thirdly, as I said, they’re false. Absolutely pointless. And they bought the wrong size. They got the XXL because there was a label on it saying ‘Labradors’ amongst others. Tell me, would they go into a shop and buy a coat on the basis that it said it was suitable for humans on the label? No. Exactly. And so it slips because although they’re always watching my weight and I’m not actually as fat as they think. Does that mean that they have an eating disorder by proxy? Being overly concerned about my weight just because it’s all the rage is just too unbearable. Suddenly, they’ve started walking me twice as much as before. Which would be fine except that I’m 91 years old. Well, I’m not 91, I’m only 13 but humans are incapable of understanding this so we constantly have to bring it down to their level of understanding.

So we go for these walks around the neighbourhood. They’re so inconsistent. Sometimes they make me sit at the kerb and wait for non-existent cars to pass by and sometimes, especially if it’s raining, I get whisked across at like a ferret on a piece of elastic to the sound of them shouting ‘Come on, Monty! Be quick!’. I’ve got a friend for whom this command is a euphemism for defecating in the back garden.

Tonight, we went for a walking in the dark and it was raining. Where’s the pleasure in that? And I was made to wear the blessed coat. And yes, it’s the same route we took last night and the night before and it still looks exactly the same. I sniffed at privet hedges and lampposts in the most annoying fashion I could in an attempt to get them to vary the route. When we got back to the front door, one of them said:

‘Have you got Monty’s coat?’

‘No. Isn’t he wearing it?’

These humans are really dumb considering that they can talk to each other.

‘I’ll go back and look for it.’

So he did. He went plodding off in the rain to look for the green waxed coat that had fallen off somewhere onto a dark grass verge. He would get very wet. What he needed was a nice new coat. Waxed, the whole length of his body, false pockets on the back and Velcro around the neck. And when he got caught short, we’d see if he could manage to urinate up a hedge without taking it off.