I should explain the HEBE stretch:

H: Hebe-the-dog's

E: energetic

B: bodily

E: elevations

Mid-January and winter is stretching its icy grip; daylight hours are stretching too; Lockdown is str..(but let's not go there); my patience is stretching; and Hebe-the-dog is stretching boundaries!

Hebe is 10 months old now and has a good handle on the pattern of daily life. But stretching boundaries is always more fun, especially for a small dog that refuses to be height-challenged.

For example, if there's something interesting on the kitchen table then it can be easily accessed by first leaping onto a chair. From there it's just an effortless jump onto the table top where she can tap along under the suspended light, like a dancer in the spotlight. I thought she might try an arabesque, since she often stands on 3 legs with one extended. Why? you ask. Just because she can!

Once the table was scaled, she set her sights on the ironing board. This was regarded by her, and me, as a novelty item. I'm not keen on ironing.

I think it was the added height that tempted and teased her. She wondered about the efficacy of jumping onto it. But after a few unsuccessful practice leaps, she tried to gain my support to lift her onto it. Isn't it always the smallest acrobat who ends up highest?

But, alas, I have no desire to encourage circus tricks. I'd already put a stop to the trampolining on the beds!

Outside, she has inadvertently tried ice skating. On bitterly cold mornings, Hebe has found herself crossing a huge icy puddle on 4 legs, then immediately on 2 legs and her bum. Set to music, this might have looked majestic. But Hebe seemed startled, and then embarrassed by her unrehearsed performance, and began to bite chunks out of the ice. A bad workman always blames his tools!

Then the scientist in her took over, as she tried to crunch and swallow as many shards as she could before they turned into H2O in her mouth.

This month's permafrost has also scuppered another of Hebe's pastimes: digging. She had progressed rather well with a tunnel under my woodshed. She was investigating the whereabouts of small rodents - mice hopefully. I had given in to this. Digging is, after all, a terrier's Life Mission.

However, I called time on the excavation when I decided she would either get stuck under there, or bite through the foundation layer of wooden planks, and then a load of logs could drop on top of her and squish her. Luckily, Winter came to my rescue and froze the dig like concrete!

Winter should be a time of relaxing beside the cosy logburner. A time of nostalgia for the past. A time for the occasional 40 winks.

And Hebe IS asleep, stretched out her longest on the couch. But her toes are tapping out a morse code of impending adventures. I fancy I see a grin forming through that toothy smile. And her eyes are rolling in her head.

Oh dear! Beware the stretching dog!

: )