My foraging is over for this year. Berries are either frozen, or bottled as jams and liqueurs. All labelled. All gift-ready with added festive sparkle.
But, alas, there is no time for relaxation and smug satisfaction for a job well done - I love to share - because Hebe-the-dog hasn't realised that the foraging season is actually over.
She continues to forage.
Frosty mornings make her nose even keener, I do believe. Along the pavement, she can snatch a selection of discarded preprandials, like half a pancake and crusts of bread. I used to blame tourists in campervans, but now it can only be school children who are the culprits.
Oh, I can sympathise - I've had the odd too bizzy (sizzly) pancake, heavy on the Baking Powder. And I've never liked crusts - hence my hair has never been curly, only a hint of a kink.
So those items I can turn a blind eye to. However, Hebe-the-dog has still been banned from the park. And, surprisingly, not because she's made off with the leg and innards of a dead rabbit, and not because she's also made off with the wing and attached rib bones of a dead oyster catcher. They were bad enough.
No, she hasn't been banned for those misdemeanours. Much worse than that, she ate at least two huge triangles from a 1kg bar of Toblerone.
I thought she had just picked up an empty wrapper. But it was the way she looked back at me as she ran off that made me suspicious. AND she was heading home. Direct route. This was obviously a top level prize! When I caught up with her, I saw that her expression was fixed and her jaw cemented. No amount of 'Hebe drop it', in a variety of tones, worked.
She listened, expressionless and apathetic, to all my reasoning. She endured the lecture on chocolate being poisonous to dogs, as she continued to munch. In the end I had to rugby tackle her. She finally relented and dropped the last triangle. But I don't think her intention was to share.
My dogwalking chum suggested an urgent phone call to the vet for advice. But I phoned my sis instead. Being a 5-dog household for over 12 years, there aren't many doggy issues she hasn't dealt with. Her advice was to keep an eye on her; that Toblerone didn't have a high cocoa content but that she might be hyper for a wee while.
In fact, she was hyper for a day and a half. She was like a toddler who'd drank too much orange squash. She couldn't keep still. She drank loads. She ran here, there and everywhere. She drove me up the wall. But we both survived.
But no lessons were learnt - only that my eyes have to be more alert than Hebe-the-dog's nose! After that, while ambling nonchalently through a patch of dead leaves, she attempted to snatch a half-eaten Caramac Bar.
Not everyone's bar of choice, or so I learnt from experience. Many moons ago, when I thought I'd fufil my childhood ambition to be a primary teacher, I had just finished Teaching Practice in Kincorth Academy in Aberdeen and presented my class of P4's with bars of Caramac. Only a handful of pupils were pleased, the remainder were extremely disappointed. 'Yeuck!' was one of the milder adjectives uttered.
I digress.
Hebe-the-dog's palate is varied and undiscerning.
For instance, you know how dogs hate citrus? Wrong. Hebe-the-dog eats segments of satsuma. And she'll run round the kitchen table with a lemon in her mouth. Sour does not scare her!
And more opportunities are bound to present themselves with Christmas just around the corner and, fingers crossed, family visits. Casually-laid-on-the-floor cups of tea and coffee will be surreptitiously drained. Not to mention any stray mincemeat pies or, God forbid, open boxes of chocolates left unattended on coffee tables.
True, Christmas is a time for sharing - but this does not apply to everyone. They say 'every dog has its day', but this won't be Christmas Day! Are you listening Hebe?
