Undogly

The experience of being undogged has been strange, and of course we miss them terribly. Even Matilda. Nicole and Eloise both profess to wanting new dogs as soon as humanly possible though I don't think it will fall to them to keep any new companions exercised.

For me, I have wished to remain exercised myself, and this has meant going out from time to time on undog walks, where I have basically done the walks that we used to do with the dogs, only without them, what with them having shuffled off this mortal coil, and all.

It occurred to me the other day that I wasn't really taking advantage of my state of grace by still visiting places where dogs were at least tolerated, so the other day I thought we would go up into the mountains on a hot day and chill in the rainforest for our exercise.

Lyra does object these days to the sling and so we walked with her alternately in my arms and walking for herself, feeling the bark of the trees and the damp red earth, looking at the berries and the birds, jumping down the stone steps and climbing up the mossy banks.

When we finished we went to the Maiala cafe where they lent me some band-aids for her leech bite and we ate eggs on toast and drank babyccinos. Or is that babyccini.