For the second time in six months I am gifted with an invitation to dog sit. On both occasions the canine hosts have been so entertaining and ‘their’ home locations so stunning that really it is I who should be paying their hapless owners for these opportunities to be left in charge.

At this point I should note that I do love dogs and really miss having my own. I should also note that technically no money has changed hands for my bespoke canine companion service (let us not unleash the Inland Revenue to bark up the wrong tree when they too should be taking a well-deserved Summer break). While I am no stranger to a dog poop bag and a twice daily constitutional, I am surprised to learn that during the intervening years since I last owned a dog it has become really really hard – and expensive – to get either a sitter or a kennel place. This is a such a shame because in my doggy day care experience, dogs are not overly excited about Air Miles.

As we have already established, teachers get very long holidays (totally deserved, there will be no guilt-tripping in this blog) and therefore, unless your dog takes a dislike to me, I declare that I am now available for hire. Sorry, not for ‘hire’, I am available if you live somewhere nice.

It also transpires that not only are dog sitters/kennels like hens’ teeth to get hold of at peak times (i.e. school holidays), but that all the dog owners I know seem to live in the loveliest of houses. Their houses do not even smell of dog. Dog sitting is like Airbnb with no bill to pay and a free exercise class thrown in. I am a convert.

I post this blog after a week of coastal sojourn with the most delightful elderly terrier who requires little exercise but likes a snuggle of an evening (we have much in common). For full disclosure, gorgeous hound belongs to my Oldest Friend (not my most elderly friend – we go through this every time reader – but the friend I have known the longest) and her husband. They have had the sense to stay living on the coast where we all grew up and where we once went to school, so dog sitting for them facilitated an indulgent trip down memory lane for me …oh, and occasional fulfilment of my canine duties.

It soon becomes clear that I should be paying my friends to be allowed to stay in their gorgeous coastal residence. When I arrive on the Friday night I try and appear professional and ask for a full staff briefing and a copy of my charge’s daily schedule; they want only to give me the WiFi code and take my out for dinner before they jet off in the early hours. I put my note pad away. ‘Help yourself to anything,’ friends slur across the table in my favourite Italian restaurant and then even say it again when they carry me across the road for the best glass of red wine I have ever been introduced to – in my new favourite wine bar. ‘Oh, and the dog is so old, she probably won’t want to walk every day. Thank you so much for doing this, you are a life saver’.

Next morning my friends leave me snoring and head off to Gatwick. I eventually awake to discover three envelopes on my bedside table (I did not notice them the night before on account of that seriously gorgeous red wine). One envelope contains a voucher for a coffee van conveniently situated en route to the sea front, another covers the cost of lunch at the coastal cafe in the local village where I grew up, and the third contains a voucher for my ‘other’ favourite restaurant . My friends could have had me at coffee but, as they are now in the air it seems churlish to leave this envelopes unused; I have a lot to learn about the going rate for ‘bespoke’ (I will wag my own tail on this) dog sitting services.

On my initial morning dog walk I go to flex my first voucher and the barista knows my name and my coffee of choice. I realise that I have been waiting all my life to say, ‘could you put this on my tab?’. As the week goes on, he and his business partner boost my confidence by saying how well Mrs Hound is looking and even suggest I get some dog sitting business cards printed. ‘We will do you a decent deal for promoting your canine expertise to our clientele.’

Himself cannot take the whole week off work (not a teacher), so can only join me in my coastal bliss for the weekend. He looks a little peeved as he leaves on the Sunday night , but is also relieved to break away from my nostalgic stories. I tell him that I am grafting my socks off and that he would do well to put away his little green eye. I hunker down to my pet duties and await the arrival of my Favourite Daughter (on account of her also having the good sense to work in Education). I know FD will delight in some of my prehistoric stories for the price (I am not paying but she does not know this) of an iced latte.

I use my dog sitting time wisely. Apart from drinking my own body weight in freshly ground coffee each morning (I am now on my second loyalty card with the coffee wagon but they still will not take a bean from me on account of their regard for my most excellent friend), I also spend the week doing a lot of running – this is a faint nod to address the food vouchers and full fridge I have also been bequeathed. FD will not join me, but she is happy to stay ‘at home’ with the dog.

A year on from mum’s death, this week of arduous dog sitting has been a timely opportunity to reminisce about the three family members who are no longer here to correct my version of the ‘truth’. As I plod around the locality I am amazed how many memories come flooding back and realise there is some truth in the saying that Nostalgia = Memories – Pain. I now also realise that my love of the great outdoors goes back to childhood (see below) and it was not the mid life epiphany I always believed it to be. Although my school photos have me pegged as a shy and sullen teenager, my excursions this week, indicate otherwise. I think I may have been an early Queen of Wellness. Get me.

I realise that:

• I lived much further away from my secondary school than I remember and recognise that I once did cycle. I cycled a lot. I must have powered my 1970’s Raleigh 20 Shopper bike on a six mile round trip to and from school each day. I hope that Himself is not reading this week’s blog, on account of his being a keen cyclist and my dogged reluctance to ditch running for cycling. Admittedly at the age of 11 I did have a school bus pass, but later my parents must have decided that I needed toughening up because they expected me to cycle on a busy dual carriageway each morning, rain or shine. If there had been any social media back then, I would certainly have shamed my parents for this – now I can use social media to credit them for introducing exercise by stealth. As a teenager, my mother used to herd her father’s sheep to market before school so I now believe that she may have bent dad’s ear to purchase a bike pannier big enough to hold my school bag. Impressive and sneaky parenting skills, fair play mum.
  
• Running through my old village I see that Pinkerton’s Newsagent is still going strong and this provokes another revelation that, not only did I cycle to school, but I also completed a coastal paper round each morning before I was old enough to – gratefully – accept an indoor Saturday job at Boots. I imagine that Mr Pinkerton and his wife are now long gone, but back in the day, ‘Pinky’ would bark out his orders and mark up each round from the comfort of his outside ‘lav’ while his long suffering wife bagged up each batch of newspapers and kept a beady eye on the confectionary temptations displayed on the shop counter. Credit where credit is due, as I jog around the multiple paper routes that were once on ‘my turf’, I realise that old Pinky was the one person who was able to provide me with directions that I could actually understand. This week, running along Clover Lane, Floral Court and Beehive Lane, I can even remember which houses I used to deliver to and their respective daily oracle of choice.
  
• Mid way through my dog sitting week, I veer away from the coast and find myself running besides The Rife – a small waterway with very few crossing points, hence gifting myself a much longer run than I intend. Although I have an appalling sense of direction these fields seem strangely familiar and miraculously I navigate some well-remembered short cuts; I must have spent the whole summer of 1975 cycling in this area. I would have been out all day with my friends and my parents would have thoroughly approved. Bitter sweet now to realise the freedom my parents gifted to a thankless child. I might skip this memory when I report back to Favourite Daughter later.

I digress. You will be wanting to know about my canine charge, after all I have been dog sitting not swanning around on a free holiday with my daughter (I hope my friends are reassured by reading this). I think Twigs and I are still on good terms (Twigs is the dog, not my daughter, but I think she and I also parted on good terms). We only had one stand off when I tried to watch TV from her favourite sofa – I made the mistake of believing a 3-person sofa could accommodate us both. Twigs was walked daily, but since she was too old to join me on my nostalgic cross country jogs, she made it very clear that she would have first dibs on the whole sofa of an evening. She also held the remote control.

On their return I hope that my friends will find everything as they left it – particularly the dog and the coast. I hope that they do not expect to find their well stocked fridge exactly as they left it. I wonder if I should have left some vouchers inviting them to come and stay in Bristol even if I do not have a dog to sit. I would be happy for them to bring the hound for I hear you cannot get a good dog sitter for love nor money and I think Twigs would approve of my local coffee stop. I will send them one of my new business cards. Perhaps they can be tempted to bring a bottle of that excellent red wine in recognition of my bespoke status.