Charlie

Today, we are going to have a story about our family dog, Charlie. (This photo is not actually of Charlie himself, it's someone else's Bearded Collie, but that's what he looks like. He comes up to mid-thigh on me (just had to go and dislodge him from under the heat pump to measure him) so while not technically a big dog, he's still a fairly formidable animal.) Charlie sees Mum as being Pack Leader, Kate as being a smaller dog he has to look after, and me as being his buddy. (We are remarkably similar in personality.) I am the only person he trusts to trim his facial hair. Aww.

He's a smart dog, and most of the time he is an awesome dog. But sometimes he is not. This morning, he was not.

Not so cute at 3am.

Anyway, Charlie likes soft toys. Yeah, I know, how cute. Ha ha, no. He likes to destroy them. When you give him a new soft toy, he is delighted and immediately removes and eats the nose, followed by the eyes. The next step is to pull the stuffing out through the remnants of the face, and it's really all downhill from there.

One of his current favourite soft toys is a monkey in a red waistcoat. It has, admittedly, seen better days - he has removed the hands, feet and face (although for some reason the waistcoat's been left intact) and the whole thing is manky and gross with dog slobber build-up. However, it gained a certain charm the other day when Charlie accidentally bit its squeaker, and it started playing a rather tinny Jingle Bells, startling everyone in the room. Charlie was terrified, barked furiously at the monkey, and went to hide in the kitchen. After that the monkey fell from favour and lay silent in the middle of the living room floor, until, at 3am this morning, Charlie stood on it and set the squeaker off. Cue huge volley of panicked barking.

Mum wasn't sure what was going on, and got up to investigate, clothed in a fetching white dressing gown with small animals on it.

Kate, in a rare moment of wisdom, assumed Charlie was barking at something minor and started to shout, "Quiet, Charlie!" at regular intervals. This had no effect whatsoever.

I thought we were being burgled and barrelled into the lounge in my onesie, clutching an ornamental dagger* and looking around for the culprit.

Mum, who was last to arrive on the scene, was confronted with a terrified, frantically barking dog, a knife-wielding nutter in a onesie, and a faceless monkey playing Jingle Bells. It was like something out of a B-grade horror.**

Artist's impression.

This morning, I took the squeaker out and stamped on it until it broke, after which Charlie daintily picked up the monkey, carried it purposefully to the furtherest corner of the garden, and left it there. Then he urinated on the silverbeet, ran inside, and tried to bury a piece of bread in my bed. Now he is sitting peacefully on the couch, where he is not supposed to be, surrounded by dismembered soft toys. He looks so happy that I haven't the heart to move him. Best. Dog. Ever.

*no, actually - it lives by the side of my bed for just this occasion. If I lived in America I'd keep a gun in the bedside table, but I do not live in America, so ornamental dagger it is.

**actually maybe not such a bad B-grade horror, either. Called 'Jingle Bells,' perhaps, or 'Night of the Knife-Wielding Onesie Nutter.'