Basket.

Question: What does one do when an intransigent canine barks and growls and refuses to stop?

Answer: Bark/growl back at it.

Which is indeed what has been happening in this household for the past week. And my dear old mother beats the dogs hands down any day. Of course, she has had far more practice dealing with intransigency. The dogs, admittedly small and largely inoffensive in appearance and character, usually shut it after being faced with superior firepower, and that is all the better for the health of my ears.

Well, they go home tommorrow, and normal business in this house can finally resume. No more getting barked at very loudly when I return at 11pm and they are supposed to be asleep. No more mistaking my mother with all her flawed enunciation calling me when she is actually calling the dogs. No more barking, growling and scratching at the door when I am trying to read.

I would admit though, there have been times in the past week when I have looked at the pair of them snuggled up to each other and thought, "Awww... how darling". They certainly are extremely adorable animals, furry little short-legged creatures, and sometimes is is fun to just sit there and observe them.

Nonetheless, I am off pets and I have been since I went on to secondary school. Time constraints coupled with laziness and heavier schoolwork prompted me to give them up, and there is no chance, for a few decades more at least, I'll ever get another pet. Maybe to accompany me in lonely old age.