Rent-a-Dog

Every so often, Blight-of-my-life and I try to decide whether or not we should get a dog.

Up until quite recently, we didn't consider that it would be sensible as we were both working full-time, so the unlucky perisher would have been stuck at home on its own for great chunks of the day. Now that Blight has retired, we are in a better position to provide a good home for an unsuspecting animal.

Even though we have a couple of horses which live at a nearby farm where we own some land, we've never had domestic pets here at Cyber Mansions.
OK, we did have to look after the enormous jar of stick insects during the school holidays when Blight was teaching, but they are pretty low down on the "loveable companion" scale.
Even assuming you could figure out which was a stick insect rather than just a stick, they all tended to look a bit similar. It wasn't made any easier when I asked Blight if any of them had names.
"Oh yes." she said, "They've all got names."
"OK. What's this one called then?" I asked, pointing at what I hoped wasn't simply a dead twig.
"That one's called 'Sticky'."
"That's not awfully original... so what about this one?"
"That one's called 'Sticky' as well."
"Hang on a minute, are they all, by an chance, called 'Sticky'?..."
"Well... yes."

Stick insects were a bit of a disappointment.

But what about getting a dog?
What we need is to try one out from some sort of Rent-a-Dog service.
Fortunately, our next-door neighbour has gone away for the weekend, so we've volunteered to look after his dog, Kiera, for a few days.
Kiera is a springer spaniel. She's getting on a bit now, so she's not as barmy as she used to be, but she is still pretty enthusiastic about going for walks, so I'm getting more exercise than I've become accustomed to.
This must be 'a good thing'.

I've never really doubted that we will get a dog, but I expect that this weekend will make it sooner rather than later.

All I'll need to do then is talk Blight out of naming it 'Sticky'.