My dogs are bossy creatures.  I suppose all dogs and cats are, but I only live with my three, and the legacy of my first two dogs, and so I am ignoring the fact that most other dog and cat owners will have had experiences in common.

One of my dogs is extra needy, turning up and putting one paw on your arm, all the while not quite looking at you, as if to impress upon you that his pain and angst is so strong that he can barely go on and he just needs a hug.  Right now!  And he goes to sleep on my legs and gets hissy when I have to move.  Just try sleeping on him, though.  Oh, no.  Not having that, is he?  I don't see why he can't put up with being a pillow every now and then.  He gets free room and board.  I wouldn't mind so much, but he sits around demanding wine and port and JD and being catty about the other dogs.

My youngest dog is also needy, in that as soon as he detects a hug going on with the other two, he spreads himself in between you and the dog getting the hug.  He is a stealth hugger.  You start off hugging one dog and end up with a black-and-white collie turning his big brown eyes on you from an inch away, all whilst not realising you have switched dogs.

I am sure most of this is fairly standard fair, though.

What is less standard is my primary dog.  (Yes, she insists on this designation.)  She is the only girl.  We got her after my last girl died, but before my boy went, so she is the bridging dog.  We got her from a rescue center (same place we got the boys we have), but we are not entirely sure that the rescue place knew they had her to rehome.  You see, she is an escape artist of the kind which no use to anyone.

She once got out of her harness whilst sitting next to my chair in a beer garden, and was commando crawling away across the courtyard when one of the people I was with asked if that was my dog.  If let off the lead, she vanishes after birds.  You just see a little black dot with strong back legs powering away over the horizon.

At first, we thought this would be ok.  She's a dog.  They know their way back, right?

Wrong.

After a trip to the park meant not seeing her for 36 hours, because she walked around a bush and could not find her way back to us, we have learnt that she is the only collie type in the history of anything with no sense of direction.  She wouldn't mean to lose us.  She is actually very good with recall - as long as she can see us.  We have found her sitting mournfully behind a fence post, though, right next to the total lack of actual fence through which she had run two minutes before, clearly at a loss as to how to return to us.

The rescue place told us that she came from a farm, but we think it might not be the farm she started off on.  The farmer probably just got up one morning and found an extra dog running in circles on his land.  She likes circles.  I suspect her ancestors and wild relatives are to blame for crop circles.  Most likely in fields belonging to farms they do not live on.

This all means that we treat her warily, making sure we know where she is at all times, but she does not make it easy.  You see, my little collie-cross has a secret life.  Sometimes, we just can't find her.  We have come to the only sensible conclusion about this:

She must be an assassin.

I can say no more now for fear that she will read this blog and add me to her hit list.

Still, it means that when she decides to be all cuddly and share my pillow at 2am, I let her.  Last night, I gave up on sleeping and went to try the reboot known to all insomniacs - try a different place in the house to sleep in.

Only a few minutes after I settled into the spare bed, a small shadowed head appeared, ears perked and tail wagging.  I could practically hear her thinking 'Ah, here you are, human.  Yes, this looks like a good bed.  I see there are two pillows, so one of them must be mine,' before snuggling up and putting her paw in my hand.  It was sweet.  It really was.  But I daren't move.  You never know what might get you put on the list.

Right now, she is chewing on a bone.  I am choosing to believe it is one belonging to an animal.  And I am not going to go and check out the basement which seems to have added itself to our house, just in case...