The moustache on my dog is looking content.
It sounds like a bad translation from an English-Hungarian phrasebook, doesn’t it?
But it is: and it is worrying enough when my dog looks content. That usually indicates cheese embezzlement or chocolate charlatanism. But the moustache: that is really concerning.
My dog, you see, sports the most enormous Neville Chamberlain moustache: and it acts a little like seaweed.
Did you ever do that thing as a child, or as an adult with your child, where you roam the beach and pick up a piece of seaweed?
Children instantly recoil from it because it looks like the creature who resides inside one of Dr Who’s Daleks. How some cultures can bear to eat this stuff with that provenance beats me. Anything that looks like the inside of a Dalek is not allowed on my plate, no siree, not even if the good Doctor Who himself were sitting at the table, telling me if I ate it he would take me for a nice ride in his Tardis.
Anyhow, there one is on the beach with one’s offspring or someone else’s offspring, and one does not want the children to recoil from this natural wonder. One feels a sermon coming on.
Children, you say, do not recoil: for this seaweed is the most nutritious substance, a gift from Mother Nature. It may be green and floppy, but it has some surprising uses, even if it does smell like the armpit of a squid who has been partying hard for a week without the aid of squid deodorant.
Uses? Small voices question skeptically. What possible uses can a green shiny floppy piece of smelly seaweed have?
Ah, you say, tapping your nose and wishing you hadn’t because now you, too, smell like a fishmongers at whelk time: Ah, well. lets take this home and try something.
And you all trail back to the holiday house, you holding the offending green slime because none of your beloved little ones will touch it with a bargepole.
The children stand back at the lintel to the house, watching you, because your highly eccentric behaviour has excited their curiosity, and they want to check whether you are going to do something even more outlandish before tea.
Which, of course, you are. Your eagle eyes are scanning the house for a protrusion: a nail, a bracket, a flower basket: anything from which you can hang said seaweed. Finally after some possibly unneccesary ceremony – all this infant attention is going to your head by now – you select the hook which also suspends the holiday washing line from the house to the far end of the garden, and hang up the seaweed.
You turn round to meet small pairs of eyes with just one question in them; why?
And then comes The Punchline. Briefly, you wonder whether the payoff will pay off; whether all this momentous build up will be worth the trick at the end.
Because of course, seaweed – kelp, specifically – can tell you what the weather is.
In fine weather it will shrivel and become dry and crisp; but as soon as the humidity rises it absorbs the moisture in the air and becomes limp and moist once more.
Of course, one could just use one’s eyes and look around; but why, when you have such versatile stuff as seaweed hung up on the hook of your washing line?
The children wonder briefly but obediently at the versatility of seaweed. Generally, the seaweed will hang there all holiday and be forgotten, so that the next incumbents of the holiday cottage find it waiting for them as a charming green slimy welcome gesture when they arrive.
My dog’s moustache is much the same as the seaweed: one can tell, by how it is behaving, the dog’s approximate state of mind.
Thus, if it is rumpled up in a Robert Redford boyish mop: he is feeling playful and possibly elated.
Sometimes it becomes inexplicably trained into the most pronounced of handlebar moustaches. This tends to happen during his louche cushion dwelling sessions.
But the Neville Chamberlain I-have-in-my-hand-a piece-of-paper moustache: that means trouble. And the dog has it: right now.
I have just carried out an inspection of the house.
Earlier, I responded to his usual post-teatime promptings to be fed with the regulation half-cup of dry food.
This was obviously not what our canine family member had in mind, and he took matters into his own jaws.
One only needed to walk into the kitchen to find that while I had carefully put away the dog food in its customary cupboard, he had opened the cupboard, painstakingly removed his bag of food, placed it on the floor, and guzzled the best part of a very large bag indeed.
Well. I had found my evidence.
Except that my son Felix had discovered something else.
Way up on the top floor, where Felix has a little attic bedroom stuffed with toys, I usually keep the door closed during the day.
A roaming dog can find much with which to make mischief in the hours when the mistress of the house is away, up there, especially in these post-christmas days of left over sweeties.
And when I arrived upstairs Felix informed me the door had, indeed, been closed when he arrived. But inside, an entire tube of chocolate candy-covered beans lay in tatters across the floor.
My dog has turned into Houdini. Now, as my cat learnt to do long ago, he has begun dematerialising on one side of the door; and materialising the other. And today, he even reversed the process to get out again.
He doesn’t look that clever.
Moustaches can be deceptive.
Kate Shrewsday 
Hilarious! I can just picture him.
Has he been sick?
(Another use of seaweed: for interest. Several wound care products are derived from seeweed, have the name ‘alginates’ in the wound care formularies. Not a lot (of non nursing) people know that.)
Thank you. Some extra information to add to my seaweed sermon next Summer. No, Macaulay looked subdued and miserable all evening, and I did keep the vet’s number to hand: but this morning he is his old squirrel-chasing self once more.
Kate, this is too funny! What a clever dog – or a determined one. I hope Macaulay is okay as chocolate cannot be good for him. the vision of a Chamberlain mustache is just too much for an early morning vision. haha
I am pleased to report that Macaulay is fine, Penny, although I did have the vet’s number close by last night because he looked so miserable. I think the chocolate was the least of his problems: the half ton of dry dog meal began to ask questions pretty soon after he had eaten it, I fear. And yes, that moustache is way to much at 6:30am.
Poor pup! I recently ate almost an entire bag of those gummie fruits. Like Macaulay, I have no self control. You cannot imagine what all that gelatinous stuff made to hold those things together did to my intestinal tract. Pups and Penny’s just have to be watched.
Pups, Pennys….and Kates…..
Ah, Yes! The tried and true “The dog did it!” excuse! (or cat, ferret, hamster – insert the most useful pet type here). I will tell you that just yesterday I had eaten ONE cookie (that’s biscuit for you) out of a new box I got for myself to indulge in occasionally. I left the open box on my bed. I had to leave quickly to pick up my husband at work and didn’t put the cookies away. When I got home much later there was no longer any trace of the cookies. Just a very clean wrapper sitting on my pillow. Princess didn’t even have the courtesy to look sheepish. She just walked in and sniffed around to see if she had perhaps missed one. Sheesh! I had already spent my cookie budged for the month. Now, every time I want a cookie for the rest of the month, I get to look at her and frown. . .
Hi Paula 🙂 The worst thing is that reproach works for about a minute after the crime, and then they lose all recollection of why you are ranting. Dogs mercifully forget their mistakes 😀 It is an excellent thing that the word remorse is not in their world view…and now there’s a cookie-shaped hole in your world. And a sweetie-shaped hole in mine…
That is some dog. Are you sure he isn’t really a cat?
I’m pretty sure: he doesn’t treat us as The Staff 😀
Old Neville sure got deceived by that other mustachioed fellow, huh?
Ah, but that was a clipped, controlled moustache, Carl, and I know you will understand the difference better than anyone else! Having watched shoes with characters take centre stage on your blog I can just see the two moustaches negotiating…
Awww, I love your stories about Macaulay. He sounds like an interesting character to be around. I love how every dog has a certain physical feature that often shows their frame of mind, for those observent enough to pay attention. Macaulay’s is obviously his moustache, which I find fascinating.
Not many dogs have them, Kristine, but I suspect they play a large part in the non verbal communication of dogs that do. Shiva’s ears are brilliant communicators. But her tail comes a close second 😀
Fun post. But do watch chocolate around the house ~ it’s poison for dogs.
Loved: “It may be green and floppy, but it has some surprising uses, even if it does smell like the armpit of a squid who has been partying hard for a week without the aid of squid deodorant.”
Fear not, Nancy, we have instigated a new chocolate curfew policy. The dog seems impervious but livers and kidneys are funny things aren’t they?
Glad you enjoyed the partying squid 😀
Don’t think they have armpits.
oh dear, so soon after the orange segments incident
Not good…
he’ll never change and that’s why we love him
About the dogs and chocolate problem. I have always understood that it is poison for dogs. Our first dog never had an affinity for it, so I didn’t have to worry. Princess, however, is another story entirely! She goes bonkers for it, and can smell it a mile away! The darker the better for her – which is supposed to be even worse. I have discovered however, accidentally, that it is not as poisonous for some dogs as others. She apparently is immune. We still don’t let her have it, but if she accidentally ingests some, we don’t race to the vet anymore either. He says that she is one of the lucky ones. . .I wonder, though. It still makes me nervous!
Thanks for that – it would explain a lot!Mac has a cast iron stomach, Paula: but I think the kidney can store up toxins- the effect of chocolate could be cumulative. Better safe than sorry 🙂
We used to eat seaweed when I was young (and now it’s all the rage with sushi). It was called Dulse (locally pronounced DULL-iss) and was particularly popular around Lammas Fair time in Ballycastle, in county Antrim on Ireland’s north east corner.
It was chewy and tasted mainly of salt.
It’s celebrated in the song of the festival. Here’s the chorus:
“At the Ould Lammas Fair boys were you ever there
Were you ever at the Fair In Ballycastle-O?
Did you treat your Mary Ann
To some Dulse and Yellow Man
At the Ould Lammas Fair in Ballycastle-O!”
What a wonderful comment, thank you! I had no idea it was eaten in Ireland…chewy and salty would figure.
You have enriched next year’s seaweed sermon considerably 🙂 Thank you!
Thanks for the laugh, Kate 😀 Love that Chamberlain image of your naughty dog – I could perhaps compare notes, but it might depress me!
I know what you mean – I know dog training is uppermost in your thoughts at the moment. Hope Quest is responding much, much better than Macaulay
😀
I love stories about Macaulay. Any dog that can change from Robert Redford to Neville Chamberlain is a true artist. I envy his ability to dematerialize. It would save me a lot on locksmiths.
Kit Kat taught him, I think. I have a feeling all cats can do it: adds a bit of spice to Schrodinger’s theories 🙂