I'd like more than just memories, mum.

This could have been me as a pup - but it isn't. Mum's not camera friendly. I’ve been trying to persuade her to get a digital camera so that I can occasionally post some photos on my blog. It’s difficult trying to persuade someone to do something without being able to speak to them. So I’ve been doing it surreptitiously – I keep striking cute, funny and appealing poses, I leave newspapers opened up at adverts or articles to do with cameras – ditto with websites on mum’s computer. My campaign has failed up to now. Perhaps Uncle Hugh will get her one for Christmas, I do hope so.

This could have been me too, mum says I looked just like that. Isn't it amazing how cameras can freeze time? You see, due to mum’s aversion to cameras there is no record of my early years with her and Uncle Hugh, and mum says I was seriously cute. It didn’t bother me when I was younger, but as I’ve grown older I’ve started to feel more nostalgic about my youth. I would like more than just memories now. I want something to look back on when I get very old.

Mum says she got me due to what she calls a ‘Mid Life Crisis’. She’d had a dog, Sam, in LBM (Life Before Me) but it died and upset her so much she swore never, ever to get another dog. Then one day she found a lump in her boob and being the type of worrier that she is, she was convinced it was a nasty lump that would kill her like the nasty lumps that killed her parents. Anyway, it turned out not to be a nasty lump but she said the experience turned her life upside down and made her start to think. So she thought, and she decided to get me. Mum said that was also when Uncle Hugh and she started to work towards leaving the UK.

A digression - I did some research on the Internet about this ‘mid-life crisis’ thing and found out that it can happen to men too. In fact, it seems to happen to men a lot. But they tend to do slightly different things than women do. When in ‘mid-life crisis’ mode the things men tend to do are i) buy a new sporty or similarly impractical type of car, ii) have hair implants, iii) join a gym, iv) buy a whole new wardrobe of clothes that would look better worn by their son, v) run off with a teenage girl (well nobody else in their right mind is going to it) or v) do all five of the above.

I’ve got lots of memories of my early years but my most vivid is when I was just 11 months old and mum and me were driving to our first new home, in Switzerland.

I remember she’d been worried about leaving me in the car when she got on this really big boat, but I was fine. I’m not easily fazed. I made friends with a nice man in a bright yellow jacket who kept coming to check up on me. Anyway, when the big boat stopped, mum and me drove off it and mum told me we were in a place called France where they drive on the wrong side of the road (to me it’s now the right side – in both ways).

It was a bit of a problem for mum ‘cause she was in an English car at the time and on the motorways there were a few toll booths which were on the left of mums car, and mum was sitting on the right. So she couldn’t just wind her window down, she had to get out and walk round the front of her car to pay at the booth. Well, one time she did that I noticed she had left her door ajar so decided to sneak out too, ‘cause I was bored. So there I am having a sniff at mum’s back wheel and was just thinking about having a pee on it when mum drove off.

I’ll never forget seeing mum’s little silver car driving into the distance on that big motorway in that strange land. I was, literally, gobsmacked. I remember looking desperately at the lady in the booth, then she looked at me in a rather shocked fashion - mouth open, eyes wide, and then we both looked at mum’s disappearing car.

I thought my heart was going to break. I started howling, the lady started shouting in a strange gobbledegook, the car behind me was honking it’s horn for dear life. It seemed that the entire world knew what had happened except mum. I watched her car turn into a pinprick as it left me behind and totally alone in a strange, scary place.

Then the pinprick suddenly started getting bigger again, there was lots & lots of honking in the distance, I could see cars swerving, there was a strange screeching sound – like an engine that was at it’s absolute limits – and mum’s car was once again becoming visible as she reversed at great speed back up the motorway – back to the booth where she’d left me. It made lots of other drivers a bit mad that mum was reversing up a motorway, and I’m sure she shouldn’t have done it. When she finally reached me she dove out of the car - her face all red and hot looking - she was screeching and crying, and she grabbed me and hugged me so hard I thought she’d squashed my insides to a pulp. THEN she had the cheek to scream
“WHY THE FOOK DID YOU DO THAT YOU STUPID LITTLE ANIMAL?”

EXCUSE ME!

Well, it’s all water under the bridge now, I wasn’t mentally scarred or anything. But it would have been nice to have some photos of those early days – perhaps not of that particular one though.

I found the clip below on YouTube about a little fella who mum says looks very much how I used to, in fact she says of all the Schnauzers she’s seen, he could be my brother, except that he’s much better groomed than I am and is a bit blacker. She says we share the same expressions. Personally, I think I look more like Bagel his friend in the last shot:) At least it will give you an idea as to what I was like when I was young. (You need to have the sound on FFancy - it's a nice tune and is sent to everyone with ......:)