Mollie

Today we had to look after Mollie, Jan and Alain’s blue Lurcher.  She’s actually grey, but the humans call her ‘blue’ for some strange reason.  I once overheard Jan call her a ‘little blue barking pest’.  She was only joking, of course – Mollie does bark a lot, but she and Jan love each other to bits.  Mollie really misses her humans when she has to spend the day here, she sulks on the bed in the back room.  When they come to pick her up her tail goes round and round in delight.  We call her Mollycopter, or the Copter for short.

At home, Mollie is the only dog and very definitely in charge.  She tried to be in charge here today and failed miserably.

Here’s what happened:  Annabelle and Pearl and I were relaxing in the living room when the Copter came out of the back room and started barking at me.  Annabelle told her to be quiet but Mollie took no notice, so Annabelle tried ignoring her (as advised by various Dog Whisperers).  That didn’t work, either.  The Copter went on barking at me until I couldn’t stand it anymore and went into Annabelle’s bedroom for a bit of peace.  Mollie shut up for all of 5 minutes, then started barking at Pearl.  Annabelle tried to shut Mollie up again but nothing doing.  Then Pearl told Mollie to shut up.  All Pearl did was growl softly and lift her lip, but that was enough – the Copter shut up instantly and trotted off to the back room.

The Copter doesn’t like being anywhere she can’t be in charge, and she’s definitely not in charge here.  Neither am I, and neither is Annabelle.  There’s only one person in charge here, and that’s Pearl.