The beginners guide to (bohemian) dogging

Here is the Perpetual Spiral guide to dogging -

1. You don’t know who you might meet as it can be pot luck who is there, so make sure you are clean and well presented.
2. If you are lucky you could be there quite a long time, so best take a drink to keep yourself hydrated.
3. Always take a toy or two with you, they can turn a boring time into an exciting time.
4. The larger the car, the easier getting in and out is – this is very useful at the start and the end of the dogging activity.
5. Where possible, you should endeavour to remember the names of people you meet.

Now that I have the attention of you all, I am of course talking about walking my dog, rather than the more salubrious kind of dogging. So those of you who are dirty perverts can go stand at the back for the rest of the post and think about how you should cleanse your dirty, warped mind.

I have discovered so many places to take the dog walking and as a consequence so many people and other dogs that it is an if I have a whole new social circle. We have places to go for short walks, medium length walks, huge walks, watery walks, hilly walks, you name it.

Last week I bought the best dog present ever, a box of 60 tennis balls off Ebay. Recently she has really got into chasing after a ball and we were losing a fair few (one time I did not realise how far I could fling a ball and promptly flung it into the middle of a river, I got a sad look for that one). I reasoned that from the pet shop it was expensive to keep buying them in packs of three, so 60 for twenty quid was a bargain indeed. One week later we are down to 56 with the River Thames having claimed a couple more at the weekend.

My driveway has become a collecting area for sticks, last night I counted four of them sat there by the back door. Quite often a stick will get picked up, taken on a walk and brought right back home again. I hope by November to have collected enough for a bonfire on the 5th!

Dog injury

Do not panic, the dog is not injured, rather her owner is, so in that case you may resume panicking.

A fair few days ago, I was sat on the sofa about to tuck into a somewhat tasty looking bag of crisps. If you could picture the scene you’d see that I was on one side of the living room, sitting as I always do in my favourite seat and the dog was curled up in her basket on the other side of the room.

One thing I have come to realise is that the dog has the kind of hearing ability that is akin to scarily brilliant. On a field she can hear the rustle of an animal a long distance away. In the house she can hear the opening of a tasty bag of snacks from anywhere.

I opened the crisps and before I knew it, 40kg of dog was steaming over to see what delicious snack food she was going to get. Such was her excitement that she jumped up to get closer to said snack food. For me this is where it all went wrong, she caught me entirely my surprise and I was therefore completely unprepared for her arrival.

Almost in slow motion I saw this grey blur come into my field of vision and then plonk straight down into my lap. Unfortunately for me, the dog put pretty much all of her weight into one of her front paws and the first thing that paw made contact with was my testicles, specifically my left one. I swear I saw stars float past my eyes for a good five minutes afterwards.

What was more embarrassing was explaining what had happened to the doctor who I’m sure thought it was some kind of sexual game gone wrong rather than an innocent dog incident.

The diagnosis? A badly bruised testicle and a dog that loved the bag of crisps that ended up on the floor.

Black hawk not down

The army helicopters were out practising manoeuvres again last night.

As I wandered through our field of choice, the dog was playing with what looked like the best stick ever, when I was aware of the dull thud of a helicopter approaching, even over the dulcet tones of Heidi Rodewald (www.stewsings.com click on Bio page and then scroll down) echoing through my ears.

Unlike the last time this happened, this time there were two helicopters. The first swooped overhead probably 200 ft off the ground, with all of its lights out. Now that was quite strange. The second then followed seconds later, with all its lights on almost as if it was searching for the first one.

It was very impressive indeed. In fact I was so impressed that as the second one came over I waved at it. It was of course dark, so I put my wave down to excited boyish joy at such machinery. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Dancing in the dark

In it not always advisable to go dancing in the dark, especially when you are in a field walking the dog by torchlight.

Picture the scene, I am wandering round plugged into a world of my own listening to my new MP3 player. For some strange reason I wandered a different way over the field, it was very dark and without the torch (seeing as there was no moonlight) I couldn’t see where I was going. Of course this darkness doesn’t seem to bother the dog who is haring around like a frenzied monster. Because it is cold, I have on my big ski coat complete with fleece a hat and gloves, so I am nicely insulated against the wind and the wetness.

In an effort to keep in touch with the music of today I downloaded the top 100 Indie play list and was happily listening away when on came an unknown song that I really liked. So I did what I’m sure any person would do, I had a little dance and strutted my stuff as I walked along.

I then promptly fell into what I can only describe as a furrow. At the time it felt like a ditch, but on reflection it was more like a furrow. Anyway one moment I was ’strutting my stuff’ the next I was face down in a muddy field. Several thoughts ran through my mind, firstly along the lines as to what had just happened, secondly along the lines of the pain now shooting through my knee and my back and then thirdly a sense of panic as it was dark and I was lying in a big patch of mud.

The panic over the darkness was subsided when I realised that the beam of light I could see was my torch. I then slowly got up, established that nothing was broken and that I was simply covered in mud. Aside from a twinge in my knee and my back throbbing I seemed okay and slowly hobbled on my way to firmer ground.

During this entire debacle, the dog was stood there looking at me inquisitively with her head cocked to one side trying to work out what was going on. We eventually made our way onwards and an hour or so got home. I’m sure I’ll be aching a little tomorrow.

Next time I’m walking through that field, I won’t vary quite so far off the beaten track, I give no guarantees that I’ll stop the dancing though.

The evolution of the walkman and the return of the BGW

Many many years ago I fondly remember receiving my first cassette walkman. I must only have been eight or nine and I marvelled in my new found world of musical entertainment. It wasn’t really a walkman, rather a version made by Boots. I clearly remember that it was quite bulky, had buttons for play, fast forward and stop. Once you’d listened to one side of your cassette you had to take it out and turn it round. It also had headphones with orange foam on them.

Over time I progressed to a much smaller cassette walkman, then one that you didn’t need to take the cassette out when the side you were listening to was finished as well as having a reverse button!

I marvelled at my first CD walkman, yet now laugh at the sheer bulk of it along with the huge quantity of batteries that it consumed.

It might therefore come as a bit of a surprise to hear that the first MP3 player I got was a hand me down, from of all people – my father, about 8 months ago. He had bought an iPod and therefore his Creative Micro was no longer needed. The one time an MP3 player came in handy was when out walking the dog, without some music my head just churns and my mind goes off on incredible tangents. I also used the albums that I listened to as a guide for the distance I was walking. For example, Ryan Adams – Gold, is a 2 1/2 mile walk. A few weeks ago the inherited MP3 player lost its ability to hold a battery charge, which rendered it pretty much unusable. However I had a fair chunk of Amazon vouchers and found that they had some great deals on MP3 players.

On Monday I pressed the button and ordered this. An 8GB player is more than enough for me and it will force me to change my music around every couple of weeks. Ironically, it was cheaper to get it on next day delivery rather than normal first class post. I also bought a batch of CD’s to rip for use on the new player at the same time. After a quick charge and some time spent loading songs on during the day, it was suddenly walk time on Tuesday evening.

We walked and walked, then walked some more and then walked a little more. After about 6 miles the dog stopped and looked at me with a look that told me she’d really had enough, so we headed back home. She promptly flomped down on the sofa and fell asleep, snoring loudly for several hours.

The big giant walk (BGW) is back. The dog is now dead tired at night and I’m enjoying being out for long music filled walks once more. Every time I change the music I’m going to pick an obscure album that I haven’t listened to in a long time and listen to it, I have some CD’s that I haven’t listened to for ten years I’d say.