Again, I’m not very good at this updating thing – it’s been a month since my last post, and that isn’t very productive for an alleged blogger.

Oh well, I didn’t want this to become just another deadline and job that stresses me out, so I suppose it’s alright.

We’ve just come back from a brief few nights away in the rural countryside. It was very wet and quite cold, and our shoes and legs were practically caked in mud after every dog walk. But despite that, it was all terribly fun.

It’s become a tradition now, to take the dogs away from the chaos and World War II re-enactment that is Guy Fawkes night. Every 5th of November, we disappear into the rural countryside to make sure Sam and Merlin don’t suffer a heart attack from pure fright. They shake to such an extent you might think that they were cold, and their tails are tucked so tightly up against them in fright, that you might think they were being hunted. Both of them try and push themselves as deep into a corner as they can go, and it’s the most awful thing to watch. Sam is worse than Merlin. He’s always been terrified of fireworks and he’s thirteen now. With every loud and unexpected bang, his entire body quivers with tremors and it’s not impossible to think that, one of these days, his heart might just give out.

Dogs die from the deafening bangs and crashes caused by fireworks all of the time, and the older that Sam gets, the more that the overwhelming feeling of trepidation starts to overcome me the closer that Guy Fawkes night creeps. I find myself looking over at him closely when I hear that first bang.

Taking him away from the unexpected and booming fireworks set off in private back gardens does him good, and I think that he and Merlin both appreciate it too. And so, like how watching The Polar Express has become a Christmas Eve tradition in this family; taking the dogs away from Fireworks Night has become a tradition too…

I dare not think about the poor wildlife; the urban and suburban birds and mammals that live amongst humans, and how they deal with the unnatural bangs that crash all around them, being set off pretty much continuously from Halloween until New Years Eve.

Often, I feel that fireworks should maybe be a little more closely regulated…