Ruby the Tiger leaps into action.....

I have found the perfect solution to getting teenage son up and out of bed in the morning. ‘Ruby the Tiger springs into action’.

Ruby gets up bright and early and ventures out of her kennel and into the farmhouse for an hour or so each morning where she takes delight in winding up youngest before school. Her antics involve a predictable routine of running off with the school shoes and hiding them, trying desperately to share breakfast with her, and if all else fails, pulling the pony tail out of youngest’s hair with those ever snapping little jaws of hers.

The girls packed off to school, the happy farmer and I went in search of Charlie hen’s nest. Feathers all rumpled Charlie flew onto the arm of the bench this morning and proceeded to squawk at high volume to announce to all and sundry the arrival of a new egg. I still am at a loss as to why hens like to alert everyone to the fact that they have just laid an egg; surely it cannot be a good thing when predators, such as Mist the sheep dog, are lurking close by. Anyhow her distress signals were a most welcome sound to us as sure enough we found, neatly stored in a snug nest of long grass behind the vegetable propagator, a nest of twenty or so eggs all waiting to be mixed into the next batch of fresh baking for the pottery tea room.

Not wanting to advertise Charlie’s nest to the pup, Ruby was left in the farmhouse to her own devices whilst we were retrieving our ‘treasures’. Teenage son, who is on study leave just now, was deep in the land of slumber when he was awoken by the howling and yowling of an anxious pup, who thought she had been left home alone. Now teenagers can be pretty grumpy when awoken abruptly like this and a quick bark of ‘RUBY’, hailed from the depths of his ‘pit’, I mean bedroom, alerted one excited pup to the fact that she was not  alone at all. She bounded up those stairs like a tornado, sprang at a rate of knots through the door, leapt several feet through the air, and landed with a clumsy splat on top of teenage son. Here she proceeded to cover his face in huge ‘slurpy’ big licks. Son was up, out of bed, and downstairs in an instant, with one smiling pair of jaws, belonging to a certain pup, clamped firmly to the leg of his jeans .

Luckily Ruby hadn’t been for her walk through sheep poo field this morning.

Until next time….