A Tale Of Two Hounds and The Sea ( or A Soggy Dog Story)

How apt that I should finish this painting of Lunil and Bil for Freyalynn the day before I left to take my own two dogs to the ocean. But that wasn't quite the original plan......

Poor Magpie cut her leg open a couple of weeks ago, and had to have several stitches, which meant she was made to wear 'the cone of shame' for a whole fortnight while they healed. She was very sorry for herself, wondering what terrible offence she might have committed, to have been punished in this way. As the removal of her collar coincided with our plans to visit a (non-doggy) friends holiday cottage on the beach for a few days, we had a wonderful idea. Magpie (short - haired, impeccably well-behaved, and very much in need of feeling like an 'only' dog for a little bit) could come too, and Daisy (good-natured, but whichever way you look at it, a bouncy, exuberant, water-loving mud monster) could go visiting by herself for a few days!
We congratulated ourselves on our great plan, and gleefully prepared for our holiday. On the morning we were due to leave, I took Daisy for a walk and play with her great friend Teddy, a German Shepherd of the same age, to wear her out. They raced, and tumbled, and rolled, through the peat bog, and through the muddy wallows, and over the muck heap, and this was the resultant state of her!

Thinking I couldn't possibly leave her with someone else in this state, I dragged her into the bathroom and showered her. This is where I shot myself in the foot.
Daisy emerged, clean, sweet-smelling and wonderfully fluffed up ( but distinctly unimpressed!)
and we set off for Cornwall without her. Unfortunately, her bath meant that over the course of the day her coat began to moult in enormous handfuls, until the house was awash with fluff, and she was not a welcome visitor anywhere.
So Daisy was fetched, and to her great delight, joined us at the beach.

She drank seawater and made herself sick,

played in mermaid's pools,

and galloped up and down empty windswept beaches

chasing seagulls. In short she did everything the children did, and had an absolute whale of a time, as did they.

Pie glumly put up with being bounced on by a large wet and sandy Tigger.
Steve and I and my sister spent our waking hours hoovering floors and washing mud spatters from the walls to try and erase all traces of Daisy's exuberant presence. Lovely as it was to have a break, it's nice to be home where a bit of dog hair doesn't matter!