First, today is master and misery's wedding anniversary, so I would like to wish them a happy anniversary.
They have been married for zillions of years so I don't know exactly how many but it is more than 20.
That's enough of them. Onto ME. My darling girlfriend Guinness gave me the BFF gold card. Thank you Guinness, I appreciate that very much, and I hope we will always be best Blogging Friends Furever.
Today, I thought I would do a different post and tell you a story about Murphy the Rotti (although I don't have any pictures of him, so sorry about that).
Once upon a time, master and misery decided they needed to get some rewiring done at my finca in Spain.
It was difficult to get an electrician to come and do the work and one day master met a British man who was walking past the house. The man was out of work and turned out to be an electrician, so master asked him if he wanted to do the work on my finca.
The man went to have a look and said yes he would do the work, so they agreed a daily price. A few days later the man started to do the work. He would go home for lunch, but a couple of times he didn't come back in the afternoon.
When mistress was preparing lunch one day, master asked if there was enough for the man to eat too, and she said yes. So they all sat down to pasta and tomato sauce with salad.
After that, the man ate lunch with master and mistress every day. He particularly liked spicy Thai curry, and some mashed potato dish that mistress cooked. The man was not vegetarian like master and misery, so she tried to make sure that the food she cooked was suitably interesting.
But after a while, it became clear that the man and his woman were having problems. The man loved his woman very much, but she wanted to go back to the UK with their two children. The man took a few days off work to say goodbye to her and take her to the airport. She took the children and all their money and left him with nothing but a tatty old car and - Murphy the Rottweiler.
Murphy was a very big and very beautiful dog with a heart of gold. He had a lovely temperament, and could eat for Spain. The man had bought him for his woman just after they arrived in Spain because the woman "always had to have a Rottweiler." Apparently when they were in the UK, they had two Rottweilers, but they did not bring them to Spain with them, unlike master and misery who brought Paddy (cross-setter, and very cross) and Prince (GSD).
Master and misery were not impressed with the idea of people who "loved" their Rottweilers, but left them behind when they became inconvenient, and thought this did not bode well for Murphy.
The man had nowhere to live and was sleeping in his car. He did not know what to do with Murphy during the day, so master and misery said he could spend the days on our terrace. So there was Murphy on the terrace, Paddy and Prince in the house and patio, and me in the corral. Paddy was a cantankerous grumpy old dog and did not want any other dogs in his house, hence the demarkation zones.
Paddy
Prince
On the first day that Murphy arrived, the man was moaning about the woman taking all his money and saying how poor they were. Mistress asked if Murphy had eaten and if he would like some breakfast. Of course he wanted some breakfast, so mistress gave him some food. Every day after that she always fed him, as well as the man. Mistress thought Murphy was adorable.
Towards the end of the job, the man was talking about going back to the UK to be with his woman. Master and misery were worried that he was hinting at leaving Murphy with them, and sadly they couldn't logistically manage another - huge - dog. Murphy was so big and powerful that when he had jumped up to hug mistress after his food, she had nearly fallen over. They also thought the man wanted to stay in their spare room, and they had visions of never getting rid of either the man or his dog.
On the last day, the man had his lunch as usual, master and mistress offered him a shower, paid him his money, and off he went. He had done a good job by the way, and M&M were very pleased. Master had helped of course, by doing a lot of the hacking out and plastering, so it had been cost-effective and pretty efficient.
A few weeks later on, the man told master and misery that he was going back to the UK to find his woman and children, and he was going to try and rehome the dog. Master and misery were very sad for Murphy, and thought the man was silly because it was clear to virtually everyone that the woman didn't care two hoots about him, whereas Murphy did.
Murphy was rehomed with a nice person and everyone was pleased about that. Master and misery knew some kind people who lived just outside our pueblo who had acquired a few dogs as you do in Spain - from cardboard boxes left outside supermarkets and other places where people dump unwanted dogs, and they had helped with the rehoming. They also let the man stay with them for a couple of nights before he left and they took him to the airport. They brought him to say goodbye to us, and collect a few things he had left with us for safe-keeping. And then he was gone.
The man and the woman rang the kind people a few times and asked about Murphy. They wanted to make sure they could have him back if they returned to Spain. Murphy was fine and happy with his new people.
Some time later the new people and Murphy moved. The kind people told master about this, and said we are not going to tell the man and the woman where they have gone because we think they are irresponsible and Murphy has been disturbed enough in his life. So master and misery and the kind people entered into a conspiracy of secrecy and the last we heard was that Murphy was still happily living with his new people.
If anyone is interested in what happened to the man and the woman - she left him of course - and he was very upset. She came back to Spain for a holiday with one of her (teenage) daughters, slept on the beach one night and with some gypsies the next.
I should say that this is not a post about Rottweiler owners - it just happened to be the breed concerned - but rather about people who buy dogs for status symbols.
The saying "Dogs are for life (and not just for Christmas)" is probably over-used, but it is still true. This couple bought and abandoned three dogs to our knowledge. Dogs that are large, often classified as "dangerous," expensive to keep, and because of all those factors, difficult to rehome.
The only ones who are dangerous in this story are the people who paid thousands of pounds for pedigree dogs and then ditched them when they didn't fit into their life.
Anyway, the story had a happy ending for Murphy which is all I care about, and we are going to have a fine party weekend for master and misery, and it is a Bank Holiday on Monday, so it will be an extra long party.
Take care pups.
