Top Dog

It is so quiet here.
The hounds have been fed and watered and walked,
not necessarily in that order,
and this is their quiet time.
Their tummies are full,
they are satisfied,
they are cool.
Literally.

It continues to be hot here,
too hot for me.
And what comes with hotness?
Yes, thunderstorms.

They have been rolling around Bun Mountain Cottage now
for the last few days.
In fact since Mike left on his travels
a few days ago.
When we get thunder here
we have been advised to unplug all our computer connections
otherwise we might loose connection altogether,
resulting in a call to the IT expert to come and
fix it.
So all day up to now
I have been unplugging the connections
rendering the computer
useless.
Until the thunder
goes away.
Which it has done now.
And it sounds so peaceful
after the really torrential rain earlier.
Fortunately the thunder wasn't quite so bad.
Not as bad as the other day.

Some dogs don't like thunder.
Rufus doesn't.
He was getting a bit worried
when the thunder was rumbling around the mountain,
(small hill),
for a few hours.
He got steadily worse.
The panic grew in his eyes.
Then there was an enormous clap of thunder right overhead!
During all this time he hadn't known
what to do
or where to put himself.
He'd come to me for comfort,
or I'd go to him and stroke him and talk quietly to him,
but he wouldn't,
couldn't,
settle.
When that great big clap of thunder happened overhead,
he shot over to the corner of the room
where Paddy was lying on his bed.

I've noticed before with dogs,
how they will try and get into a corner
during a thunderstorm.
Our previous greyhound,
Clive,
didn't like thunder.
He trembled when it thundered
and it was impossible to calm him.
He used to try and get himself into a corner.
I think he tried to hide from the thunder.
Well I think this is what Rufus was trying to do,
unless of course
he thought that
Paddy could save him from it!
Rufus was squashed in the corner
sat upright,
behind Paddy.
Paddy didn't move an inch,
he wasn't bothered at all about the thunder,
or having a companion on his bed.
Which is unusual,
as Paddy can be a bit of a grump
if anyone disturbs him when he's on his bed.

A bit later Rufus was sick.
Fortunately not on Paddy.
I've never seen a dog react in that way before.
It seems so out of character as well,
because
Rufus
likes to be top dog.
He's usually happy go lucky too.
I don't think we've seen him like that before.
Fortunately he didn't seem too bad earlier today
when it thundered.
Though he did join me in my bedroom last night.
I was just falling asleep
when the thunder started.
Rufus came
for some human comfort and reassurance.
He settled okay.


I wasn't going to write about Rufus or the thunder,
I was going to tell you where I went in June.
But I'll save that for another day.

Sometimes
you just have to
go with the flow.

Now, what photos shall I choose?

I know.
I have been trying to make photo mosaics for months now,
and was probably not feeling very confident about signing in to allow use of our photos.
But on return from my trip I played around with some of the photos and made a mosaic or two.
Here's one made of photos from that trip.
Walls seem to be the subject.

But where are they?