He arrived, delivered to the very battlements of the castle, on a Friday accompanied by the green dragon. Poor boy was tired, confused and didn’t smell very nice. As indication of how exhausted he was, he actually allowed me to give him a bath, right there in the courtyard.
He was a needy fellow that first week. He didn’t much care for being left alone, he stuck close and slept a lot. By the next weekend though he was finding his feet, all four of them. He had inspected and approved his yard, especially the perpetually open door that let him roam at will. That Sunday he held court for the first time, making himself available for his first visitors. He was, as always, the ultimate in hospitality and entertainment, sharing his toys and demonstrating his repertoire of tricks. Company stayed for dinner and left, through the garden gate
which I presumed to be closed. I was of course wrong.
The following day was Monday, I returned from work and opened the garden door so the Brindle could do his daily inspection. I went off to do other things, still unpacking and organizing and it was probably an hour or so before I realized that he hadn’t been back to check up on me, unusual for him. Just as that thought crossed my mind I heard him pounding through the house. He loped into the room and flopped on his blanket, a baguette in his mouth.
The Brindle is a grain free gentleman and I would prefer that he not be feasting on loaves of bread so I removed it from his drooling jowls and headed off to the kitchen to dispose of it. While I was walking a light bulb came on and I realized, I had never bought a baguette since moving to the Castle. This led me to the garden where I found the gate standing open.
This means that the Brindle had gone out through the gate, into the village and absconded with his snack from one of my neighbours. I spent the remainder of the evening waiting for the doorbell to ring, someone come to complain about the ill mannered galoot I had imported to the country. It never came.
To this day I have never found out where he got that baguette from but his addiction to all forms of bread remains. Most recently I had picked up a fresh loaf of multi grain from the local bakery and when I came back to the house I had put it on the dryer with my purse, lunch bag and a bottle of vanilla cognac. Some time later when I went to retrieve it while the other items remained where they were the bread was gone. The only conclusion to be drawn was that it came to reside in a particular brindle belly.
Funny guy!
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