'I woof therefore I am'

Basil's story - the musings of our small (but thinks he's much bigger) terrorist terrier ... "Well here I am in my weird and wonderful new home ..."

The Woofer on his new balcony - on the look out for a woofing opportunity as ever.

"It's a funny old world if you're a dog. One minute you're freezing your bollox off walking round a muddy field in the rain, and doing the odd spot of kareoke on the park bench ..."

"Then this geezer puts you in this little wooden cage, drives you off to an extremely noisy smelly place (apparently called Cat Wick), and you have to endure hours and hours stuck in this crate while your stomach does all kinds of weird shit (but of course you can't actually shit, 'cos this might be my new home) .... then this other funny smelling geezer arrives and carries the cage around a bit more, and next thing is ... WOW, IS THAT MY MASTER AND MISTRESSES' VOICES ? - YES OH YES, THAT'S THEIR SMELL, YIPEEE WOOF WOOF WOOF" At this point His Master's Voice intervenes to fill in some of the gruesome details of that day's events ... He was meant to have been collected from his dog sitter (Chris) that morning at 6am to catch a Monarch flight. Yes, slumming it on a charter flight, but still with his own passport and at great expense a private limo had been arranged to collect him.

Mr B's passport photo

At 7am we got a text from Chris to say no sign of the person collecting him ! We had everything organised through a specialist animal transportation company, and had even arranged to pay £140 to transport him the few miles from Brighton to Gatwick - and still they managed to screw it up ! Apparently they'd lost some of his paperwork and didn't realise he needed to be picked up. Anyway, after a couple of hours of frantic phone calls between Tenerife and the UK, we finally got hold of them and luckily Chris was a hero and had taken The Baz to work with him. So finally another taxi was arranged and the driver turned up to collect him from Chris' work - but not until he had demanded the £140 - which, not surprisingly, Chris had left at home. Luckily, by now his work mates had fallen under the spell of Mr B's dubious charms and had a quick whip round (thanks guys). And the long and short of it was that he eventually caught a later flight - this time with BA, where he was upgraded to sit beside the pilot ... "NOT TRUE (says the Woofer) ... I already told you I spent the whole time cooped up in this bloody cage in the dark not able to have a shit ..." Anyway he was supposed to be arriving at 8pm and we were told to go to the cargo terminal to collect him. After more frantic phone calls to find out if they would still be open (having previously been told by the pet transport company that they closed at 5:30pm) we had a very emotional re-union scene in the cargo bay - even the tough guys with tattoos working there were touched. So after a sleepless night and a day that started with unbelievable stress at 6am - it all turned out OK in the end. He made it - what a brave little dog ! and a great present for Nikki who's birthday was the following day.

The Baz in his new bedroom

and for the final thoughts - over to the woofer again ... "yeah, it's not bad here really - well obviously it's still a dog's life, and I'm having a few problems with the language thing (although the lessons from the gnomes are helping) ....

Senor el Baz with his Spanish teacher

but it's well smelly here, and I'm getting lots of good walks - well more like rock climbs really ... plenty of cats to chase, and I never did like the rain much - the mud yes, but there's loads of nice volcanic dust to roll around in. And I get plenty of time to sit around in the sunshine and think up things for this blog - like 'I Woof therefore I am' - pretty clever that, don't you think ? I bet no-one's thought of that before ..."