The wind gets up their tails

The weather over the last few days here has been awful. More rain than you need to fill a bucket and seriously strong winds that blow you over.

The rivers around us all filled up and overflowed and the tiles on the roof of the house rattled constantly for three days, it wasn't very nice.

Also what wasn't very nice was having to send the dogs outside to go to the loo. There was a very good chance that Henry would see this as an opportunity to revert to pre-toilet trained days but amazingly he didn't and on Saturday joined Molly in refusing to go outside until lunch time. Both dogs curled up on the sofa and refused to move. I knew how they felt, I decided to join them and went completely deaf at Other Halfs suggestion that we go out somewhere instead of staying indoors all day.

The worst thing about the wind (apart from it completely ruining your hair) is that when it really blows Henry gets scared of it and runs indoors whether he's finished or not. He originally came from slightly warmer climes in England so the weather here was a bit of a shock to him to say the least.

The farm dogs on the other hand seem impervious to all the wind and rain and come to visit every day and have now started to bark at Henry and Molly through the front window while Henry and Molly bark back from inside. I'm not sure what's being said, it could be 'hahaha we can run around anywhere we want cos we are outside' or it could equally be ' hahaha we are inside in the warm with central heating and sofas for beds'.

The only activity on Saturday was a rather fierce game between Other Half and Henry which involved lots of barking, jumping, bouncing (all on Henry's side) and outwitting on Other Half's side. The trouble when Henry plays is that he gets so carried away that he sometimes bites your arm or hand instead of the toy that he's trying to get so I think Other Half came off worse, but Henry had a good time.

In the evening just for entertainment value I remembered the two dog balls from my last two dogs that you put treats into and the dogs are meant to roll them around to get the treats out. It makes one Schamko last about 20 minutes which is incredibly good value so I decided to try them out on Hen and Molls.

Amazingly Molly remembered what to do, even though I had only shown her once about a year ago. So she was off and away rolling her ball around the living room like a premier footballer.

Henry on the other hand had seen nothing of the sort before and took a little more instruction but it was far to hard to get him to concentrate on learning rather than trying to beat the ball up to get it to yeild the treats.

This was quite funny to watch and got even funnier when Other Half remembered that Henry's ball had a movment sensor in it where you could record a message and every now and then it would play it when the dog moved the ball.

Other Half being slightly mean decided to record his best telling off noise, the one he uses to instantly get the dogs out of the kitchen, then then set the ball and gave it back to Henry.

As soon as Henry moved the ball it made the noise. Henry stopped dead and stared at the ball. Then he prodded it with his paw and it did it again. Then he jumped at it and it shot accross the living room followed quickly by Henry who had started barking at the ball.

A dog/ball scuffle broke out and suddenly Henry was running off with something in his mouth that was telling him to get out very loudly.

Henry had somehow expertly managed to remove the noise part of the ball and was determined to chew it up to shut it up - brilliant dog, how brainy is that?

We fell about laughing and just managed to stop the noise thing from disappearing down Henry's throat.

I think we'll only get the treat balls out now and then, I don't think my nerves could stand it every day!