Skip to main content

Dougal Gets His Rat

Dougal the dog sometimes gives the impression of being friendly but a bit thick. Throw a biscuit to Sampras and she can pluck it out of the air from just about any direction. Throw a biscuit to Dougal and he opens his mouth in the hope that it will just land in there. Since I am as bad at throwing as he is at catching it usually just bounces off his head.

Give Dougal a rat to chase though, and he is a different dog. Catching rats requires a very impressive level of paw to eye co-ordination and tooth to eye co-ordination, but Dougal manages it regularly.

Sometime in the last twenty four hours another rat was foolish enough to enter our yard where it met its doom. I found its stiffening corpse this evening lying in the grass. It was not the biggest he has ever caught, but I was impressed nonetheless.

I feel it is only right to acknowledge Dougal's efforts with a picture, so here he is again.

Comments

bryan-in-greece said…
Dougal is indeed a handsome dog, Alwyn.

A happy-ending dog story from here in Kilkis - some time back a woman who lives in Athens but who is from this area came visiting relatives, with her dog Ozi. She had to go into hospital at one point so she left Ozi in the care of a neighbour in the village near here where she has a house. Said neighbour then proceeds to dump her dog on the outskirts of Kilkis. When the woman comes out of hospital the dog is not to be found, and she leaves distraught for Athens, obliged to return to work. She gets in contact with us (Kilkis Animal Friendly Society) and we start looking for Ozi, using a photo she has sent us. Adverts with the photo are placed in the local papers, but result in nothing more than a few "I have seen this dog somewhere recently" calls... Weeks later we found him, emaciated, frightened and filthy, with a group of other strays which frequent a particular area of town, but by now he has become unapproachable. The woman returns to Kilkis and manages to approach Ozi, and they are reunited.

It warms the cockles of your heart to learn of the reunion of dog and owner, but what sort of person abandons someone else's dog to such a fate, especially in Greece, where animal mistreatment is legion? If I were that woman, I would now be pursuing that neighbour through the courts...
Dougal looks like an obviously 'serious' (and probably now well fed) dog that prefers a real challenge instead of the allurement of an easy catch of a biscuit...;-))
olli said…
Thanks for your comments. I will pass them on to Dougal and hope he doesn't get too big-headed.
Katja R. said…
A dog who is a good ratter is VERY valuable! I'll take a good ratter over a good fetcher ANY day! Good dog Dougal! :)
olli said…
We had our first enquiry tonight from someone with a rat problem. I wonder if I could turn Dougal into a business opportunity?

Popular posts from this blog

Dy Rame Per Tirane

I was watching Top Channel last night, first the news, then Fiks Fare. According to them Tirana's citizens now have a choice not only between Rama and Olldashi, but also between Rama and Rama. A minor right-wing faction, Parti 'Balli Kombetar' , submitted papers to the election authorities registering their candidate, Akile Rama. The people on Fiks Fare got hold of the papers and sent a reporter and camera team to the address listed for Mr A Rama. After much ringing of the bell the gate was reluctantly opened by a middle-aged woman who refused to speak to the reporter and tried to close the gate on her. Back in the studio Saimiri and Doctori - the two presenters of Fiks Fare - revealed that Mr Akile Rama was 73 years old, in hospital, and did not know he was now a candidate for mayor. They also compared two documents - the papers submitted on his behalf, and a genuine document he had signed. The signatures were not even remotely similar. There was an interview with the lea

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.

Guide Turistike

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council , the future is bright for Albania. The Council ranks Albania ninth out of 174 countries for tourism growth over the next ten years. A summary of the Council's report is available, as is the full report complete with many pages of graphs, charts and spreadsheets. This summer I have seen a number of tourists on the streets of Tirana. Some of them may well be Albanian expats, or people of Albanian descent returning home to visit family, but others are genuine 'foreigners'. Judging from their appearance, they are probably best described as 'independent travellers' - the kind of people who are not interested in luxury hotels or crowded beaches. This is a good start, but independent travellers are not the kind of big spenders that the tourist industry likes. In the longer term, if Albania wants to bring in the kind of free-spending tourists who currently holiday in Croatia or Slovenia, there will have to be a huge invest