I've Got A Big Black Dog

Mark called me on Messenger. I was drinking my first coffee and waking up. He's renovating the small cottage on his property, he was just taking a break from it. I was just pissing around, my first day off, off the two days I have off, for the week, reading the news online, or as I like to call it, the daily misery tale.

"Hello," he said. His smiling face coming into focus.

"Hello," I said. My eyes dropping to the small picture in the bottom of the screen of my face looking back at me, to see how I looked. I hadn’t looked in the mirror as yet today and I was checking my appearance.

"How are you?" asked Mark.

"I've got a big black dog," I said.

"Oh, really," said Mark. "Why are you feeling so down?"

I laughed, the sympathetic tone in his voice was sweet. "No, really, I have a big black dog."

"What?" said Mark. “I don’t…”

I am dog-sitting Rachel's Portuguese Water Dog, Coby.

I stood up and got Coby to stand up so she was visible on Mark's screen.

"See," I said. "A big black dog." I chuckled.

"She's beautiful," said Mark.

And she is.

Rachel is away for a month, travelling to South America, Antarctica and then New Zealand. She's always going somewhere. She loves to travel. This is the first time we have looked after Coby.

It is interesting having a big dog again. Buddy might be a muscly guy, but he’s not big. I like having a big dog again, there is something nice about a dog being as big as you when you are both sitting on the floor together.