Some out side work done, getting things ready for winter. Had two windows with broken seals replaced. Worked on Forks in the Trail  a bit. Todds arrived so visited rest of pm, supper etc. rained off and on.

The days, weeks and months rolled by.  By now I was quite grown up and often on the wind I could both hear and smell other dogs. There was a bay off in the distance and every day very small boats came from and went back to that bay. One day I was carrying out my duty as a greeter down at the float where these little boats always tied up; when I got a whiff of something that caused a vision of a beautiful girl dog to whirl around in my head.  I hung around that boat until the owner came back, I was hoping for a ride so I got in the boat but he pushed me back up onto the float. Not to be out done I struck out along the beach for a ways but came up to a sheer rock and as luck would have it when I went around that rock into the bush I found a trail and it was going in the right direction!  I soon arrived at a small cluster of houses but I made my way down to where the man was just tying up.  I never figured out why he laughed so hard when he saw me but he said “Well Blackie or what ever your name is, if you want to meet Dollie that bad you better come along with me.”

 So Dollie became my first lady friend and I visited her several times over the next few days.  I quickly learned that girl dogs are fickle and she soon made it plain she didn’t want to see me anymore. Oh well I was kind of losing interest anyway but I did sort of miss getting those rides back home in the little boat.

CHAPTER 6

L

ike I said, time rolled by, Colonel got to be a monstrous size about the same as Bernice except that he was as black as I am. Our relationship stayed about the same, there were a few times when he tried to take the lead, but he was kind of clumsy, definitely slower than me, could only understand a few human words and I was just plain smarter than he was.  I sometimes would deliberately pick a fight with another dog and let Colonel finish it just to prop up his ego a bit.

  One thing that didn’t stay the same was the bond that I had with John, it grew stronger and stronger and I soon learned that when we were apart for even a few hours he really got a kick out of my greeting routine. Our rough and tumble play was one of my favorite games. He would get down on the floor with me and we would growl and wrestle, I would grab his hands or arms with my bare teeth and make fierce noises as though I was going to chew him up. But I was always very careful that I didn’t hurt him and he did the same with me.

  There was only one thing that I didn’t like participating in and that was swimming. Apparently dogs of my breeding are supposed to like the water, well I didn’t. I would sit on shore and watch and I suppose if John had got into trouble I would have rescued him but thankfully we never had to cross that bridge.  Strange though even with my aversion to water I loved to catch those fish that swarmed into the beach every year, Senior called them black cod, I just called them fun to catch and every time I was successful in getting one out on the beach I was fussed over and got a special treat. We must have lived in that hotel for about three years (I’m not too good with time) then that word ‘moving’ was heard again. I had half forgotten what it was all about, but I knew it meant packing up and going in a boat or a truck or both. Well this time it was a little different and one day when things were being put into boxes I noticed that I was being ignored. I can’t say that worried me but I decided to do my part. I went out onto the verandah and grabbed the old coat that was my mattress and walking backwards I dragged it inside and put it beside a box that they were filling. Strangely they all started to laugh and Senior said, “That dog is so smart he has to be somebody’s Uncle.” They all laughed even more. I wasn’t sure what an‘Uncle’ was but I liked the ‘so smart’ part so I decided that being an Uncle must be OK. Odd but that name stuck with for the rest of my life.