Went into town early, then to short mat. Stayed after to set up bingo game and get ready for the Friday supper. Ran the bingo got the pizza, home by 8. Watched a movie. Well it was different!

  Like the other time this came to an abrupt halt when one day this strange man in funny clothes and a hat stopped by our place. He gave my family a lecture about dogs running deer and I remember his words “dire consequences”. I didn’t know what that meant but it sounded pretty bad. That day I was tied up and kept tied up for several days. Now that was dire consequences! John would come and talk to me, a couple of times I thought he was blubbering and he said things about people would shoot me or that they would take me away. Shooting I wasn’t too sure about but I sure didn’t want to be taken away. That must have been in the fall, because shortly after that we had a lot of rain, then it got really cold and this white stuff settled on the ground. It dampened my desire to run through the bush and I found I kind of liked hanging close to the house and that nice warm stove. By spring I kind of forgot about deer and I did rationalize that chasing them was a lot of hard work and if I ever caught one, I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.

  One of my favorite things was to go on long walks with my family. There were many places to go, we frequently would have what they called a picnic, there was always much fun and often other people would join us. In the summer all the boys in the neighborhood spent half their days swimming. Like I said earlier I never liked to swim, not that I couldn’t (actually I was a very good swimmer) but I just didn’t like it.  Every once in a while John would pack me out into the water and then of course I had to swim back to shore. Strange every time that happened it made me really frisky and in spite of being a bit undignified I would race around in circles, roll in the grass or sand or what ever was handy.

  John had another friend (he was a Billy as well) he and his family lived right out over the beach. They had a dog living with them but I never got to know him too well as he was away most of the time with the Dad on his fish boat. But when he was home we got along ok, although he was kind of possessive about what he considered his territory. That seemed to end right at their gate so it was no problem – all the rest of Irvine’s Landing was mine.

  There was one dog though that I have to say I hated. I think they called his breed a Rat Terrier. It suited him. The first time I encountered him, it was boat day and I was just wandering about greeting people and inspecting any cargo that was unloaded. All of a sudden he came from nowhere! He jumped on my back and started biting and chewing me! He knocked me off balance and I went down but as I did I remembered one of Tippy’s tricks when we were play fighting. I rolled on my back and got my hind feet up and started working them like I was running; I scratched his stomach up pretty good, let me tell you.