Harvey

This week we have been looking after Harvey. Harvey is a spaniel. Whilst well behaved at home - for instance he waits to be told when to eat after his food has been served, only gets on furniture with permission and sleeps through the night without messing the floor - take him to the park and he is va va voom incarnate. As I wander aimlessly through the woods at Newbold Beeches he explores every path at each junction. Sometimes I am unable to see him but am aware of a panting noise orbiting me in the bushes. This noise, on exiting the bushes, is usually covered in burrs, teasels and twigs. When he, one day, retires from seeing the world in terms of a last-chance-to-see he will probably have small shrubs growing from his lower body. Oh that's what the comb is for. Right.

Give sons the task of combing Harvey while I am out. They tell me they have to use a variant of pin-down and a side head-lock, taking it in turns to remove extraneous matter from the over-excited dog.

Harvey's owners are doing a Falcon Camp which is dead hard work offering holidays to under-privileged kids for a week. But if owners do grow to be like their dogs then one day Simon and Rachel will be running the world's liveliest Falcon Camp and the showers will be in greater demand than ever. Falcon camp leaders are probably already familiar with the side head-lock.

I cannot throw a tennis ball far enough to satisfy Harvey so instead of bringing it back he keeps it for a bit then runs into the woods, drops it and barks at me until I find it again. Discover that a red, plastic piece of apparatus I have been given is not a cruel pooch-scolding device but a sling to propel a tennis ball huge distances. Have a go. Ball leaves the sling at terminal velocity and hits a tree five metres away. Realise too late that it is going to hit me in the oh strewth that hurt. Shouldn’t have retired from the cricket team last year. Out of practice. Whilst rubbing it better Harvey barks at me. Have a second go. Ball last seen flying over Leamington Town Hall, Harves in hot pursuit.

During the evening Harvey removes flies from the living room, always an addition to our home when Jon is back from university for the summer (he works in a café; be very afraid). I'm not sure they all come with him.

On the day he arrived the single frog, who lives in our small town garden, leapt out of the bushes at Harvey. Now Harvey goes up to the bushes every time he goes in the garden and prods them (all the bushes, not just the one he found the frog in) to scare creatures out. The frog lives in a tank of rain water which it accesses using a piece of dead wood I placed conveniently. It is not a pond but I have put oxygenating plants in there so it is a nice, if a little stagnant, environment for a frog. Harvey prefers this water to Leamington tap-water. When Harvey drinks, two large froggy eyes come to the surface of the corner of the tank watching this creature as it heads off to find a frog in the bushes.

Our family has a tradition of only owning or hosting pets with personality. Harvey qualifies and is welcome back.