Dear Diary,
Where do I start? I guess I should introduce myself. Seeing as we can’t do the proper thing and sniff each others’ bottoms, I’ll have to tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Zack – often called Zackary or Good Boy. I have two humans. They refer to each other as ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ but like me they have several names. We live in a grassy kind of place and together, we often go exploring. I like nothing more than when my humans take me to a new place and I can sniff all the new sniffs and be petted by all the strange humans. Right now, I am on a huge adventure with them, and I just have to tell someone about it.
My adventure started by being crammed into the car with all sorts of other, far less important, stuff. I was a little put out at not having the whole back seat to myself, but I could see my bag of food, so at least the essentials were packed. Normally when this much stuff appears in the car it means I am going on holiday stay with friends. This time it was different. My humans kept saying I was coming on holiday WITH them. They don’t normally join me on my holidays and I wasn’t sure if I could handle it (they can be very embarrassing sometimes) but I thought it best not say anything, as they looked so excited and I didn’t want to offend them.
After what felt like a couple of dog years, we arrived at Grandma’s house. “Woohoo!” I thought, “This is going to be a great holiday.” She always has a meat bone for me and she gives the best belly-rubs. But that wasn’t our destination – oh no – the next day we were off again. This time we arrived at a place that had lots of houses on wheels. The humans moved all the stuff into one of these houses and then I was allowed in to explore. Well it was quite exciting at first, lots of corners to sniff, but then Mum strapped me in and the whole house began to move! It was very loud, there was rattling and banging all around me. For the sake of preparing you for a similar ordeal, I shall be honest and admit I was a bit scared. My humans were strapped in as well, but they didn’t seem frightened at all. I trust them with the biggest responsibility of all (providing me with food), so I figured I could trust them that there was nothing to fear.
Well since then, we have been in this moving house a lot. We sleep in it and travel in it. The humans call it a motorhome, and it’s not scary after all. It takes us all over the place, my humans say we have already been to 4 countries! This makes me the most well-travelled pooch I know. Something you’ll notice straight away when you are as well-travelled as I am is that even though dogkind seem to speak the same language everywhere, the humans have different barks in different countries. I don’t understand them. I don’t think my humans do either. They always seem very confused. At least they try, bless them.
When we aren’t in the ‘motorhome’, and this is the best bit, we walk in all my favourite places. How do I know they’re my favourite? Well as soon as we get there, I go outside and decide that place is my favourite. The trouble is, that happens nearly every time we arrive somewhere. My favourite places normally meet the very particular criteria I look for. This includes lots of sniffs (grass, rubbish, I’m not fussy), things to climb and most of all SWIMMING. I love to swim. Especially after sun bathing or climbing on rocks. My humans’ love me swimming too, they always scream with delight when I come out to shake off next to them.
My humans have been trying the local delicacies and rating them. Dad has been trying local drinks called beer. I can’t say I see the appeal. Mum scavenges different smelling foods. She often shares with me in exchange for stroking my (super soft, if I do say so myself) ears. I think that this is a fair deal. I have been trying my own delicacies in the foreign lands too, I’ll write you a list of my top three:
Rinds from cheese – sampled outside a French Supermarket, good quality
Poop in forest – I am not sure what wild beast had left this delicacy, but I send my thanks to them, very good quality
Dead crusty sea animal – found on Belgian coastline, worth the hard work of chewing whilst being chased by the humans, extremely good quality
The coolest part about this trip so far is that I am always with my humans. Although I don’t like to make a fuss, I am always a little lonely when they go out without me. Well on this trip we go everywhere together. I am very patient and always wait for them to catch up with me when we’re walking. Although this one time, I did sniff an amazing sniff quite far away, half way up a steep hill. I just had to go find it even though my humans seemed unhappy about this and kept calling me back. When I got there, it was THE most amazing treasure – a pile of dead stuff! I did my best to eat it all, but I started to feel full, so I decided to share the rest with my humans. Well, when I went to find them they were gone! You just can’t leave your humans for 2 minutes without them getting lost. Their senses are not as superior as us dogs. Luckily after a few minutes, I heard them calling for me in distress and I was able to go and save them. They were so overjoyed at my return, they didn’t even seem to mind that I hadn’t brought them any treasure back.
Let’s see if I can keep them safe until my next entry. It’s my birthday soon, I do hope they haven’t forgotten! I’ll tell you all about it next time.
Zack