Let me show you the dog!

I think I told you that I am looking after our landlady's boyfriend's dog. They are gone to Greenland for some time now and we're having Tschumi for one half of the week. The other half he stays with a family that knows him well and where they have more time for him than we do.

Me and Tschumi are getting along better these days. He was being really bratty and reserved the first few days after his owners had gone. I think now that he might just miss them so much and that's why he reacted very apathic towards me and the boys. Now this week he kept following me around the house, wanting to play with me. He was happy and jumped up when I told him we were going for a walk, instead of just trying to continue napping.

This afternoon, the landlady's parents were here to look after her garden and Tschumi didn't have a problem with that. But afterwards they came over and scorned me for leaving the door open (which I had been told to do by her because else the dog can't go in and out).
When they did that, the dog started to bark real wild, pushing between me and them and I had trouble shooing him down until they left.
I like to imagine that he wanted to protect me. :o)

Of course, he is still about as big as a small calf and if he decides that he doesn't want to listen to me, I don't have a chance. Like the other day when Trev saw a hedgehog upon coming back from a walk and Tschumi went right for it, leash (and me on the other end) or not. He got his fair share though, cause that little friend pricked his nose - serves him right, nosy dog!


I think he is just very intelligent and mostly knows exactly what he is expected to do - but he also knows that none of us stands a chance against him and that his real Master is quite far away. We're lucky he's so benevolent and decides to play 'well behaved dog' most of the time.

I even let him off the leash so we could play in the water one day when it was very hot. Even though his master almost never uses the leash I do keep him on it because there's so many things that catch his attention here and if he runs off and goes hunting after cats - or worse: fawns and rabbits! Everyone in the village will know and we'll be in real trouble.

I often go shortcuts over the fields with him because we both don't like going the same routes over and over. But because I'm not very far sighted (it's a metaphor - my eyes are fine, thank you ^^), we often get in trouble when we hit hidden rivers that cross our path, or fences and other things. One night we had to sneak up on the railway bridge to cross a deep trench. I was really scared that a train would come - just like in the movies. Of course that didn't happen.  And the dog really enjoyed the little excitement. :o)

Wouf! ...err... Thanks for reading!