Home again and pick up the intelligent dog.

Sunday 8th January 2012

We returned home on Thursday. I had looked at the weather forecast and it was supposed to be sunny and calm all the way.
Well, up to Carlisle it was chucking it down with rain so hard that we could not drive above 50mph. After that it was just windy but dry. There were several wagons lying on their sides after being blown over on the motorway in Cumbria.
Everywhere in Scotland there appeared to be lakes where there had not been lakes before and most of the rivers we crossed had gone over their banks but at least we could go at a decent speed as it had at least stopped raining.

At the ferry terminal in Aberdeen I went to book in and the man on the desk said that we may possibly be late arriving in Kirkwall as there was bad weather. I thought "sod the expense, we will have a cabin". This was a good decision we managed to get a good sleep even though the boat was rolling a fair bit and crashing directly into the waves at some points.

I must remember to book a cabin in future if I am travelling in winter.

At home both of our fields are totally waterlogged even though they are on a fairly decent slope down to the sea. Hopefully we will have a bit less rain and a bit of a breeze for a while now to dry things out.

One of the presents that I got for Christmas was a test to see how clever your dog is so I say down with Molly today to see how she would do. Pam was very dismissive, saying that even if Molly knew what to do, she was to awkward to do it. I, on the other hand, have total faith in my clever little dog.

There were twelve different tests that she had to do involving long and short term memory, problem solving, learning new commands and body language. I am happy to say that Molly exceled herself and in what is supposed to be the top 5% of dog intelligence. On the more rational side though, maybe border collies account for 5% of all dogs and so she may be average for a collie. (We all know that border collies are infinitely more clever than normal dogs.)
The bumph with the test did say that I have to take her to advanced training so that she does not get bored. This would be OK if the damned animal would only learn one simple command, namely "come here" instead of legging it off and ignoring me.

I think that she is looking especially superior and devious in this photo, possibly thinking "What did you expect stupid".