My name is Josie Anne Skidmore. I am a nine-year-old border collie. Anne found me as a puppy on a property near Tamworth. I live with my human companion John in Kangaroo Valley. Anne is John’s daughter. John says I am his canine companion. Some silly people say I am a pet dog, but I am not a pet or a dog. I am a free-living adult canine that thinks like a human. John says that I am an honorary human and a middle-aged teenager. I think that the real me is a human mind in a canine body.
How am I telling you all this? I talk dog talk with other canines and they talk the same way to me. We bark to tell unfriendly canines to keep away and to warn humans of any danger. We sniff one another and glance around with our eyes without moving our heads. We lie peacefully much of the time with our noses on the floor. I keep my eyes open and don’t miss much. John has learnt dog talk and I have learnt a bit of human talk. So we understand each other quite well. Now I want to tell you my story. I will tell my human what I want to say in dog talk, and he will type it for me on his laptop. You see, my paws don’t fit the keyboard very well. So this is my story… .
I will start with the things I like. I really do love puppies, especially human puppies. They crawl around on the floor or just lie there gurgling. They like to cuddle and so do I. There is nothing I like better than to cuddle up with human puppies. Sometimes, some of John’s family puppies come to stay. I play with them and when they get tired I like to cuddle up with them. Some of the human mummies do not like this much. They say I am not very clean, but I think I am very clean. I swim every day in one of our muddy dams. Then I roll in the grass to get dry, especially if a wombat has left a nice pile of poo with a strong scent. I like the smell of wombats. Then I wash my paws with lots of licks and comb myself with my claws until my coat is nice and shiny. I am a very clean canine.
John has a human friend named Brad who has two human girl puppies. At one time, John left me for a long time with Brad’s family. When he came back to take me home, the human puppies and I were very tired. We had been playing hard all day and were having a lie-down on Brad’s floor for a cuddle. I was in the middle with a little girl named Eliza on one side and her little sister Harriet on the other. I was very warm and cosy. I felt as snug as a bug in a rug, but it was nice to go home and have my tea.
Two of John’s family puppies came to stay with me last Easter. Sofia is a girl puppy and her little brother George is a boy puppy. They wanted to play with me. We went down to the chestnut tree to look for ripe nuts. I like chestnuts. We found some that had lost their shells and Sofia gave them to me to eat, so I think Sofia is a very nice girl puppy. There were plenty of nuts there for everyone, but they all had thick shells on. We had to wait for the big human people to break them open for us. Chestnuts are best when they have been roasted and are still nice and warm.
I like eating anything, especially human food if I can get it. Every day I have dried dog food that comes from the old Aldi shop in Nowra, plus two dog biscuits. I have chicken wing tips that are crunchy, and some dog meat out of a tin. I also have a whole tin of green string beans every day to fill me up. They come from the Woolworth shop in Bomaderry. I drink pond water and sometimes cold tea. The vet man said I am getting a bit tubby. I used to weigh 24kg and the vet man said I should get down to 23 kg. He weighed me again when we went back and he found I was 27 kg. Too much, he said. Don’t eat human food, he said. But I like human food, I said. John gives me a taste of his dinner sometimes. That’s very bad for you, the vet man said.
John and I go shopping in Nowra once a week. We go in the car. I like the car very much. John sits at the front and steers. I sit at the back and watch from the rear window. I push my wet nose against the glass and make it all blurry with my breath. When I get bored, I curl up and have a nap. We often stop at the park by the Shoalhaven River and I have a run and a paddle. But it’s nice to get home for my tea. When I get home, I go and see the wombats. They are my best friends.
Two of the neighbour dogs are my friends too. The dog next door is called Ringo. He is a big Labrador boy dog. He comes to visit every day, to see if I have left any food. (I never have.) My other canine friend is called Zephyr. He lives on the other side of our road. He is a Belgian Shepherd boy dog. I like boy dogs but I don’t like girl dogs. Zephyr has a sister named Ashie. One day she came to visit, just as I was coming home in my car. I jumped out and we had a noisy dog fight just outside my garage. It was all Ashie’s fault because she had no business to be in my territory. Ashie had to go to the vet man for repairs. I was alright. Ringo has a companion girl dog as well. Her name is Rosa. She is a border collie like me. She hates me and I hate her. She keeps to her side of the fence and I keep to my side. That way, we avoid having a fight.
My human companion says that I have now written nearly 1200 words, and that is enough for now. I wanted to send you my picture too, but I didn’t have any suitable. So Tony came and took some of me. I like this one best.
It’s time to curl up by the telly and have another nap. It will soon be time for bed in my laundry for a proper sleep.
And so to bed from the canine world.