Rantings

I bet you were wondering where I'd got to, weren't you?!

[fx: tumbleweed blows across the desert]

Ok, so perhaps not, but I'll post a quick update anyway, whether you like it or not.

After the awful incident with the neighbour, I took a serious downhill decline. Some of you may know I've been battling depression for some years, and this sent me into one hell of a nose-dive. I considered killing myself on more than one occasion, which, when I think back now sounds so silly, but it was far from it at the time. I was so deeply saddened and shocked that my dog had gone for someone in the first place, but then to be treated not like someone who had made a mistake but like a hardened criminal who deserved the worst the law could hand out was just beyond me. We sought the opinions of two independent animal behaviourists who both said that he was not a dangerous dog, and indeed one of them suggested that he had in fact exhibited typical herding behaviour and not out and out aggression, and suggested that we attend formal training classes with him so that we are always in control of that behaviour. The court hearing was on 8th December. The magistrate saw sense and fined us the minimum that the court can and sent us away. That's it. It's over with and finished. The idiot can't take it further and have our dog destroyed no matter how much he wants to. He will get a piddly £50 compensation out of it, which he'll probably be really insulted by because, to be honest I thought that money is what he was after all along. I mean, nobody goes on the way he did unless he had an ulterior motive.

On a lighter note, we spent New Year in Whitby. This is the first year that there has been a gothic weekend organised for New Year in Whitby, and it seemed to go down very well indeed. On New Year's Eve we were given a tour of the cellars below the Metropole and shown the old smuggler's tunnel which leads out to the cliffs. New Year's Day we had a very nice meal followed by party games, and of course every night there was partying and dancing till the wee hours. We came home yesterday and I felt like I could sleep for a week.

Right, I need a cuppa and I'm still washing clothes from the weekend, so I'll finish here for now and post another update in a while.

Catch you later.