Actually, my name’s unpronounceable by you lot, but my mum and dad of the human variety call me Tosh, Tiddles, Poopie, Spud or if I’ve been really bad, Toschkar, which is almost as bad. Don’t get me wrong, I really love my mum and dad–especially dad.

He’s the one who saved me from my first mummy. She only wanted me and my brother because we are Rottweillers and look good, so when we weren’t being shown to her friends and making her look good, we were kept in small cages, only just big enough for us and not very comfortable.

I think my first mum was related to my dad in some way, because they smelt very similar, but dad was much friendlier. He took me everywhere and when he met mum, they took me everywhere. They would walk hand in hand and I could walk with them in the middle. It made people look and smile at us a lot.

I didn’t mind what we did together at all because I met lots of people and those who didn’t walk around with their hand up round their shoulders shouting “oh my God, it’s a Rottweiller!”–whatever that’s supposed to mean–like to buy me crisps and make a big fuss of me.

I don’t have a problem with that, but I don’t understand why they make such a big thing about me opening the packet–I mean I don’t have thumbs like you lot, so how am I supposed to open those silly plastic packets other than by stamping on them? It makes the crisps go all over the place and all the humans watching laugh, but I didn’t mind that.

They even took me on holiday once on what they called a boat. They seemed to think it was fun and I suppose it was, but dad had to lift me out most of the time–God that’s embarrassing, because the floor was higher than the boat most of the time and if getting out was bad, getting back in was worse. I had to jump–I don’t like jumping because my hips are bad and the smooth surface of the boat, meant I couldn’t get any grip. Once I jumped in one side and slid right across the boat to the other and bumped my nose on the gunwale. This is a technical term which my dad has put in because I didn’t know what it was other than I bashed my nose on it.

The river we were on smelt funny too–all fishy, but there were lots of places we explored with loads of interesting smells. Some of them were so new, I had to smell them for a long time, which made mum and dad shout at me a lot, but I needed to know what these strange smells were and I couldn’t tell just from a quick sniff.

Anyway, I didn’t really like the boat–all slippy and slidy and made sure my basket at home got a good welcome and remembered me by staying in it for three days straight. I really missed my basket.

When mum and dad were both out, I got bored.

They didn’t leave me alone much, but sometimes they did and well, I just had to find something to do, didn’t I?

They had this thing in the room called the kitchen, where all the food came from. It was called a bin. They have such strange names for things you know?

Anyway, sometimes what was inside this bin smelt really good and I just had to find out what all those interesting smells belonged to.

Getting in wasn’t much of a problem, but sifting through all those strange and wonderful things inside took some doing, I can tell you. Some of the things I ate straight away–yummy, but other things were more difficult to find. I had to spread all the stuff out so that I could see what was there and nearly got all the way up the hall to the bathroom when daddy came home.

He wasn’t pleased.

He shouted at me and looked all flustered and got that noisy thing out that he pushed around the carpet, before grumbling at me some more. He told mum when she got home that it looked like a bomb had gone off. Don’t know what that is I’m sure, I mean, I did it all myself, but for some reason, neither dad nor mum were particularly pleased with my efforts. The tea bags were nice though,

Dad does this thing with me called bath.

I didn’t like it at first, but after a while I got to know what it meant–lots of lovin’s with nice smelly bubbles that made my fur taste good. I loved shaking afterwards because it made dad wet too.

He would rub me for a while afterwards with something called a towel–well two of them actually and that all made me feel great. I would show my appreciation by running up and down the hall, stopping every now and again for a bit of a shake and to shout out how good it felt. I don’t know how you spell it, but it went something like “Roooooo-roooo-roooo”.

I apparently do this thing called ‘farting’.

This is something over which, I have no control, but the humans seem to think it’s bad. Every time I do it, they send me out of the room holding their noses. It’s just a smell and anyway, they were the ones who gave me the stuff in the first place.

You humans are strange, but nice–most of the time.