During my very looong life, I’ve stumbled upon several bath maniacs - and that doesn’t even include myself! Let me introduce you to the master of the bath maniacs, my former dog Billy Boy.

This is the only pic I have of him nearby water, because he was never still long enough so I could take a shot. Either that or the water was splashing too much for the camera…

It wasn’t always like that. He had a rough start with water, falling through the ice in the winter when he was a puppy and got scared by that. We had to built up his confidence by throwing branches for him to fetch in the water, but it went very very slowly.

Until that particular day when we had a female dog with us, who loved to swim. She jumped from the quayside without fear and suddenly he did that too! You know how males are about showing off ;-) But I must say that he looked very surprised himself of what he just had done!

After that day he was a maniac when it came to something with water involved. He just loved to bath and swim. If he thought that we intended to go and have a bath without him, he kind of screamed out loud how unfair that was. He wasn’t howling or barking, he screamed I tell you.

He knew the way to the beaches too, as soon as we turned in the right direction at the road crosses, he started to make all those noises that could drive us totally insane. By he really was so happy about it, so it was difficult to get really annoyed.

Once in the early spring we went for a walk to the beach, but I said that, nah, better to not go to the regular sandy beach, because I didn’t want him to take a bath in that icy water. So off we went to some high cliffs instead, I thought that would be much safer. I thought wrong. He was so eager to get into the water so he literally slided down on his claws!

He was so happily excited over the water that I couldn’t get hold of my best commanding voice, I couldn’t help laughing at his happiness and he heard that I wasn’t angry on him, so he just continued down. An early spring bath yes.

He even started to ogle at me when I was taking a bath at home, but he did think that the edges of the bathtub was to horrible. Luckily. I don’t think that I had appreciated if he had jumped right in…

He could be in the water for ages, didn’t really felt that he got cold, we had to order him to get up from there - just like children. He made bubbles with his head stucked under the water, played with rocks on the bottom. I’m surprised that he didn’t build sand sculptures too ;-)

He didn’t like if you splashed water on him, but he did constantly splash water on us and all our things - by shaking the water off him - while we where screaming…

Mentioning children yes. This is two of my nieces when they were little girls, taking a bath at about the same spot as my dog was actually. Today they are 22 and 20 years old.

I have another bath memory of another one of my nieces. At that time my sister didn’t have their bathroom in order and they came and visit us. During the visit there was a bath of my niece planned - she stayed in the bath during almost the whole visit, playing with the water. It’s amazing how fun and for how long they can play with water!

She still is a bath maniac, 15 years old. Her first annual baths takes place the 1st of May every year - outside in the icy Baltic Sea. Brrrr.

Dogs or children, they do have the same kind of bathing maniac spirit that’s so enjoyable to watch!

NOTE: Every comment is equally welcome, even if you’re not participating in this Monday Memories-thing, we ♥ LOVE all comments :-)

This was the face of a dog I always will remember. Her name was Memorable, shortened to Able. Why I never understood, because she was all other things but able… Very very clumsy.

My sister took over her from a couple that hadn’t time enough to take care of her and that showed in the dogs behaviour. She was a nervous dog. She pee’d in the house in the nights at first - until she was allowed sleep in their beds, the poor one. She was always around your feet, so it was unavoidable that you sometimes stepped on her paws, she had a strange way of sort of throwing them under your own feet. It’s pretty hard to avoid it then.

She was furious at other dogs they met outside. Just throwed them on the ground with a wrrrooooar that sounded horrible. The “fun” thing was that she was about 98% noise and 2% dangerous. And that 2% was against herself! Because she almost never got to bite the other dog, instead she bit herself in the lips…. It seemed terrible, that noise and the blood - and she was the one ended up hurt every time. Unbelievable. My sister said that the dogs were never hurt, but their owners were in chock and looked like they needed some medical care after the horrible experience…

Able was very irritated at my dog Billy Boy, because she couldn’t get to him and he started to ignore her a bit too and that made her even more frustrated. I remember one time when we’re going out with the dogs. She was nagging on him constantly and we all could see that he was getting really tired of her. He started to warn her sign by sign, first with just some stiff body and angry eyes, then some wrinkling of his lips, after that he really showed his teeth - and she was dumb enough not to listen to him - then he just had an completely outburst against her. And what did she do? Scream like she was killed and he didn’t even scratch her…. We just laughed at it, she had it coming.

Loud noices made her scared. When we were “dogwatching” her once, she was really nervous over all the sudden noices. Our dog never noticed them, but in the end of that time with her, she got him a little bit nervous too - not for the sounds - but he wondered what she was so nervous about!!!

She was with my brother in law at his work during the days. Luckily enough, he was not working at any place where they wear nice clothes or were “sensitive”. Why, you wonder? Well, let me tell you about this dogs capacity to drool…. At lunchtime she was almost drowning in drool. Producing BUBBLES. I’m talking about big expert bubbles, like she had soap in her mouth blowing them out like kids use to. And when she had blowed enough of them, she felt like shaking them off - and all the people in the lunchroom got very happy of all the droolings flying around of course…. She was incredible popular.

Another really memorable thing about her was when she got sick. Something with her stomach, vomiting a lot and didn’t seem to feel so well. They went to the Vet, which only thought it was a gastric catarrh. Then she did throw up a rubber ball and they thought the stomach was irritated because of that ball. So she needed a strict diet with cooked fish and rice mostly. My sister got very tired of that food at that time. This was going on for ages, with several times at the Vet which didn’t find anything wrong.

At last I suggested them to book a appointment at the Veterinary Educational Center, where they have experts Vet teachers. They did. They were doing an x-ray at the dog and found another ball stuck inside her! So they operated her and what did they found? Another ball that didn’t show on the x-ray! All together she had swallowed three balls…!!! Next time my sister went there for a check-up, they had put the balls in a display case in the waiting room, as an example on what they had operated out from dogs…

So shortly after that, Able got to taste a bit from an ice cream. And what did she do? Swallowed the stick too before my sister had time to blink!!! My sister thought it was very embarrassing when she called the Vet to ask if it was likely to come out the natural way this time….? (It did)

When you were out on the beach with her, you had to watch out, because she was rolling big round stones and if she was above you on the cliffs, you’d been in the hitzone! And her way of “swimming” - if you even could call it that. I’m still laughing at the memory. When we throw a wooden stick in the water for our dog to fetch, she always wanted it before him. But she couldn’t swim at all - making very high leg lifts splashing the water in front of her so she couldn’t see where she was going! That splashing and her eyes, what a combination! Every one seeing her were laying on the ground laughing them self to death. She had no chance. But we did noticed that she got better at it with the time, not splashing that much water any longer.

Then we had her absolutely oustanding - or should I say upstanding - style to pee! I don’t know if she thought that she was a male dog or why she did it that way. She lifted her leg against a tree you see - but that wasn’t all! She very often lifted BOTH her pair of legs in the back, balancing on the front pair of her legs for quite a while. Marvelous!

So ugly she was with her red eyes peeping at the sides like Marty Feldman, a little pink around the mouth - and the up pointing nose of hers…. And her feet, very long and ugly. What a sight she was!

…and yet so adorable!!!!

So don’t tell me that dogs don’t have any personality.

NOTE: Yeah, I know, I’m totally crazy, but I loved that dog. She was so ugly that she was cute!

My former dog Billy Boy once met the moving stone. It was the most exciting experience for him. He had never seen such a strange thing.

Could you imagine? A stone that moved around! He didn’t recognize the smell of it either. He was very puzzled about it. His forehead was full of wrinkles over this mystery. He was trying to figure out what it was and how to get to know it, because every time he was coming close to the stone - the head disappeared in to the stone! How could this be? As soon as he backed off, the head was there again! Was there some kind of magic involved?

Sure, it was fun to see the head go in and out all the time, but after a while he thought that he should wait out the stone. So he laid down just in front of the stone and were watching it eagerly, waiting for the head to come out again so he could investigate it further. But the stone just took a very fast peek to get the direction and moved. He followed and once again laid down right in front of the hole where the head came out every time.

They kept doing that for the whole evening…!!!!

He was totally exhausted from all the watching and mystery solving when we went home at last and very disappointed. He never got the chance to tell the stone what a nice guy he was - and how fun they could have had playing together.

That was the kind of dog he was, he never hurted other animals.

Except from insects, he snapped them immediately…

Oh boy, do I have a icky wife… She continues to do her nose stuff obviously. No wonder I’m pulling my hair in frustration what to do with her and getting grey hair - the hair I still have left… Remember the earlier post about My wife is picking my nose.

She seems still to be consistent with the icky habit to put things in her nose. This morning she was pouring coffee in to her nose (I swear, it’s the truth!) and one of her eyes!!! At first I thought that she was just very hungry as usual, before I realized that she was in to the nose thing again.

At least, this time it was her own nose and not mine!

She states that it was like two antennas going up to her face from the coffee and it must be aliens trying to break in to her nose and up to the brain to suck out the content (good luck I say, there is nothing there for them!). Or maybe our net pet Basil that have turn in to some nasty big spider with other awful habits, like breaking in to peoples brain and eat them up.

OK, we are a little bit worried that Basil maybe isn’t the sweet little pet we thought, he has been lurking a good time now, maybe he will come forward soon and has been growing in to an enormous size. Maybe we brought him with us from Brazil….? The world’s most dangerous poison spider….? Getting really worried here….

So, no wonder that I’m tired all the time, think of what I have to live with, one monster after another!!!

Here comes the other shitty story I was mentioning in our earlier post “Picking up interesting shit”. I can see the funny in almost everything, don’t know about you, but I going to tell you this anyway.

My old dog Billy Boy was freezing a lot in the winter time, so I was thinking that I should knit him a sweater. There was a lot of thinking involved before I could begin. What colors to use, what model and so on. I had a hard time deciding what colors to use. I couldn’t decide, so it went as it did. Black and yellow stripes…

He looked like a wasp in his sweater! Especially when he was running around like a maniac.

I remember the first time I should put it on him, it was hard work because I couldn’t stop laughing. I was giggling so much that I had problems to do anything, even to breathe.

At first he thought it was strange to have it on, but I actually think that he liked it - except from the fact that he didn’t like that I was laughing at him all the time.

I couldn’t resist to take a photo of him when he was doing his poo duty - oh, boy was he grumpy on me for that! His face expression said it all, throwing very angry eyes at me.

Once I saw something very interesting in his poo. It’s true, honest. I saw something black. Yes, I took a wooden stick to poke around in it. I’m a icky person, I know, but also very curious. So are you, so I’m sure that you want to know what it was. It was a black plastic bag for dog poo! He had swallow a whole bag without my notice. Probably because I also used to have dog candy in it…

Poor dog, having such an awful owner. He had to live through a lot of strange stuff that dog…. But he also had a good life I can assure you. Never alone at home, always with us.

It was not just me that did laugh at him - every one that was passing us did laugh at us or smile, so I guess I did a good deed there, making people happy…

I can’t resist to write about my long gone dog, Billy Boy. He was a mixed breed between Labrador and Boxer and he certainly had the spirit of a Boxer. He was an extremely lively, healthy and happy dog with a lot of personality.

I got him when he was only eight and a half week old, full of life energy, which actually lasted until his death fourteen and a half year later. Full speed to the last moment! That’s why it was so hard to get any decent photos of him, I had to actually order him to sit or lay down to keep him still and when I did that, the lively “glow” he had just disappeared so the photos never showed his true energy.

He loved all man kind and they seemed to love him back, probably because of his happiness, it was so contagious. You couldn’t help laughing at him, when he was so playful and creative in his ways to get your attention. Sometimes he looked almost human in his face expressions. You could talk to him as he was a human, he understood so much of the words, voice and body signals. Sometimes too much, so you had to camouflage your sentences, so he didn’t get too excited for things we mentioned… But he seemed to learn that too so we had to shift the expressions used all the time.

He really kept me in a good shape, as it were on my responsibility to activate him. He could easily be running around for three hours or more and still have a lot of energy left when we came home! Then just before we went inside, he had this really crazy “running around like a maniac outburst” just to make sure that the last drop of energy were coming out.

He always was shining black, people always asked me what I was giving the dog because he had such a shiny fur. A lot of them asked if I was giving him raw eggs, they should only know that the once time I did, he was farting so heavily that we had needed gas masks! And the dog was the first one to stick his head outside the window to get some fresh air!

He was a smart dog when it came to certain things - he could tell the difference in the recipes of freshly baked bread, if they changed the amount of butter in it and so on. Then he just spitted it out… Of course I made him ate it anyway, but still, it was fun seeing his expression when he noticed the difference!

He was a good guardian dog too, I could feel safe around him. He defended me above all - even when we, my ex-man and me, was pretending (testing the dog) that we’re having some kind of fight, he always protected me before the ex-man. When I were out walking he never reacted about normal behaving people, just the strange ones or if I told him to. He never barked at the door - unless it was some strange noises there after we had gone to bed.

Actually it was hard to get him to bark, but we trained him to by giving him a pankake as a reward. It only took 2 pancakes for him to learn that, he was a fast learner. He always tried to cheat because he didn’t like to bark. He had a lot of other funny noises he did instead, he was talking with us that way and he was actually screaming sometimes when he tought that we were treating him unfair. Like the times we went swimming without him… He just loved to play in the water, making bubbles with his nose below the surface.

I remember that he always came with his toys to cheer me up the times I was ill and laying in bed. Sometimes when having a fever or something more bad, he could wait really long times before he was drawing my attention to that he has go out and do his business. That’s the big respect he showed me.

When he was about 12 years old, he got deaf, but it took me a while before I could tell. He was so smart so he read my body signals and figured out what I wanted from him, so how could I tell that he didn’t hear anything? I did noticed a slightly insubordination when we were out walking and he didn’t listen to me when I called him. That was of course because he had his back turned to me so he couldn’t read my lips or see my body signals. So he got some scolding reminders from me until I figured it out and oh boy, was I ashamed then….

Well, I shall not bore you with all the details, there is a lot of stuff to tell about his lifetime.

Just let me finished with:

For me a pet is a family member and just as important. They are extremely lojal to you an gives you their love without any hesitation. The lost of a pet is a great sorrow and I miss them for a very long time.

Billy Boy at work (or farting?)

This is an event that happened when I was a dog owner a while ago, but it’s still in my memory.

I was visiting my mothers home and she were having guest from abroad. When she started to prepare the dinner, I was heading out with my dog to be able to rest in piece and quiet after the dinner. Two of the guests wanted to come with me for the walk to see a bit of the surroundings, so off we went. This was two elderly women which almost didn’t speak any english at all. I couldn’t speak their language and they couldn’t speak swedish.

I took them to see a small castle nearby, it has really beutiful surroundings too. After we had been out for a while I let my dog loose on a more appropriate place so he could do what he was supposed to do… He was running around a lot and at last he sat down and made his poo duty, but this was at a distance from us of course. My dog was very well behaved.

When he was ready I picked up my plastic bag because I’m very well behaved too and went forward to the poo pile. I put the bag on my hand, bent down to pick it up and realize that I have some one right at my side, very close. There was one of the ladys, leaning down really close to see the poo pile better, probably thinking that it must be something really interesting because I was picking it up…..

How do you explain to an old lady what you’re doing, when you don’t even speaking the same language? Yeah, you’re right, you don’t!

She was asking something about it before she realized what it was that I’ve done, but for a moment there I thought that she should ask to be allowed to see the so very interesting content in the bag…. Pheeewww! When she realized what I’ve just done, she turned a little bit red - you should have seen her face expression -and there was an awful silent moment. I couldn’t even say to her that it didn’t matter because she wouldn’t understand and she was too embarressed.

I tried to laugh away the awkward in the situation, but the two ladys never did laugh… I even tried to explain the situation to the others when we came back, but no one thought it was any funny.

I have a very strange humor, obviously!

Now I remember another interesting shitty story….

- Nah, I think I save that one for some other time!

We have introduced a lot of our other pets, but not our first special ones.

This is how it all started:

We packed up a lot of Mr Lifecruisers things he have had stored before he moved in with me and among all that stuff there was a cute porcelain dog. I liked him at the spot and we named him to a classic dog name: Napoleon, shortened as Nappe. He is a Basset hound and rather old.

Immediatly we started to joke about it, that we had get a dog, who should go out with him and so on. Then the first relative phoned us and Mr Lifecruiser said as a joke, that we had get ourselves a dog. The relative didn’t get that it was a joke, as she has a dog herself and just got happy for us. She started to ask a lot of questions about the dog, which he tried to answer as good as he could with out any direct lies.

Then she spread the word to the others on his side of the family too, so without we were saying anything, they all thought that we was proud puppy owners and asked a lot of questions about him. And Mr Lifecruiser answered as good as he could again. Of course they thought it was strange (or probably cruel) of us to get a dog when we were out travelling so much as we did at the time…. We just said that: “Oh, there is so many that wants to puppy-sit for us…”

We mentioned it to the other side of the family, when we were at one of my sisters home, but she instantly said: “No, that’s not true because my sister would never ever leave the dog alone at home…” So that side of the family didn’t buy our lie at all.

Then we went for a trip to London and spotted a wonderful Jack Russel that I just MUST buy, I fell in love at first sight of him. Yoy know me, I’m a petoholic. He is brother to Kurt Russel, that’s how he got his name…. (Yes, I know it’s crazy but that’s how we are). He is so cute and have such a soft fur. So when we came home we just announced that now we had two dogs.

They believed us, but asked even more questions. They thought it was a little bit strange to get two dogs in such a short time, but we just said that Nappe needed some company. From time to time, we mentioned something about the dog, that they were playing, that Jack had his own chair in the livingroom (he is actually sitting in that chair yes) and other small things.

Coming home from our trip to Fuerteventura, Spain, we hold a Tapas party for both sides of family and that was the first time they should come to our home and meet our new dogs…

So just before that we went to the pet store and got a food bowl, a dog collar, lead, bed and a bone for the dogs. We placed the food bowl in the kitchen, the collar around Jack Russels neck, Nappe on the bed with a bone in front of him and the lead in the hallway to make it more authentic.

You should have seen the face of them when they arrived and realized that they were’nt real dogs! Aaahh, prizeless moments! For us anyway, I’m not so sure about what they thought…. *lol*

Well, yes, at least they smiled, so I guess they did forgive us…

* If you want to read about our other pets, they are placed under the category Pets.

Oh my, such a naughty net pet he is, our dear Basil!

He was drunk last night and wobbled around in the ceiling in our bedroom, seemed all dizzy. A real party animal he is. He always want to be where we are, so he sleeps in our bedroom too.

Today he has kept him self in the darkness in the wardrobe , so probably he has a hang-over and can’t stand the lights.

We’re just waiting for him to introduce us to a girlfriend - but this I say: They will not be allowed to sleep in our bedroom then…

We strongly suspect that he maybe is sneak filming in our bedroom too, so we’re not going to let him have a cellphone with built in camera, just to be on the safe side!

Oooops, I do hope that he isn’t going to put out the naughty film on the net….

Basil whispering: Click here to see the naughty film