"I Woof Therefore I am " Extract from Chapter three

A wooftastic 'tail' about a loveable ex-pat pooch living in Tenerife. The book is from a dog's point of view of course, about settling down in a new country, coping with the cultural differences, and learning the language (although woof-speak is universal, mas o menos, there are still some differences which need to be understood, otherwise a dog can have muchos problemas with his furry Latin amigos).

The ex-pat / travel genre has been popularised by some very successful books, but until now man's-best-friends' take on it has been little explored. We're familiar with "Walking over Lemons", but there hasn't been a "Bouncing over Bones". Most of Tenerife's ex-pat Brits know and love Joe Cawley's "More Ketchup than Salsa", but we've all been waiting for "More Saliva than Salsa".

"I Woof Therefore I Am " is more than an ex-pat diary though. It is a gripping story, with a plot that is the mutt's nutts, and some wonderful illustrations. Full of twists and turns, it will make you laugh and it will make you cry. Quite simply it's the dog's danglies of a book.

...We decided to leave Costa del Scorcio and explore a bit further afield. We walked along the coast for quite a way until we came to a bustling fishing village called 'El Blowo' (apparently this was short for: 'El Blowo-de-Sombrero-Off"). It looked like a cool place. Fekin windy that's for sure. Almost blew my fur off in fact, so maybe it would blow a few of those pesky fleas away.

We stopped outside a cafe on the board-walk called 'Flashpoint'. They'd left a bowl of water outside for passing pooches. How considerate was that - wooftastic in fact. I was starting to like this place.

Some of the humans there were wearing rather strange outfits. Skin-tight black gear which smelt well weird. Actually the more we sniffed it, the more we liked it. Apparently they were called 'wet suits' and some humans wore them to go in the sea. Judging from the odour, these suits were also handy when they were 'caught short'. Hmm - nice, I approve.

The real purpose of these smelly suits was to keep the humans warm while they were doing some funny stuff called 'water sports' (after all, the poor things didn't have fur coats to keep them warm, like we did). Apparently El Blowo was famous for water sports like surfing, windsurfing and kitesurfing because the non-stop wind made the sea very bumpy. Funny eh ? That would just make me sea-sick, but these humans-in-smelly-suits liked to use the bumps to leap into the air. They called it: "getting some air" ... ironic really, cos for us dogs this means passing wind and sniffing it - far more logical (and pleasurable) really.

Water sports were certainly peculiar activities to spend your life doing. The participants had to carry all this heavy equipment across a sand-blasted beach, chuck it in the water, and jump on. Then they spent several hours charging around, getting their air, and falling off. It looked daft to me, and I'm not even sure that I'd call it a sport. I mean where was the ball ? or the stick ? or the frizbee ? Humans can be such strange creatures sometimes.

We spent quite a while in El Blowo, checking out the restaurants, and getting to know some of the local pooches. One of them was a cross-breed mutt called Stitch. She had a cool life as the official cockroach catcher for a local surf station. This Stitch dudess spent her days snoozing outside the door, and sniffing new customers as they came in to hire equipment. She only had to fulfil her cockroach catching duties on a part-time basis, and anyway it was fun work chasing those little brown buggers around. Most days the surfy customers would throw a ball for her to chase on the beach, but Stitch said she was a bit tired of that. "What do they think I am ? a performing poodle ?". I knew what she meant, being half poodle myself.

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