It’s asking for trouble, a title like that really. But then, so was I.

And you can’t call Ani an old dog… but the Bambi thing is definitely a new trick.

Madam is moulting, shedding the thin summer coat and bulking it up for winter… and as moulters go she is extravagant.

For the past couple of weeks she has been ecstatically rubbing herself on anything static… but will she let me and the brush anywhere near? Not a cat in Hades chance. Which means only one thing. Bathtime.

I thought I’d be sneaky and tire her out first with an hour of fetch…. Not your ordinary fetch, but a roll around on the floor, tussle with bed and rope, multiple tennis ball kind of fetch.

And this is after the run.

Having stripped to my underwear… we’ve played this game before… lured her into the bathroom, duly prepared with a small mountain of towels… all breakables moved and the rug lifted, I launch into the attack. She starts with dodging, but the bathroom is too small. She then tries the guilt trip, curling in a quaking bundle of puppyhood at my feet complete with imploring, piteous whimpers and pathos writ large in the big brown eyes.

Being the hard-hearted sort I use this moment to pounce.

Next comes the tussle… I try and lift a small dog who is only small in comparison to, say, an elephant at this moment. She pretends to be an eel. I get the hind legs in the bath while she scrabbles with the front ones. I let go with one hand to grab the jug of diluted shampoo… she escapes under the other.

Then we start again. Only, by this time, I am dripping while her paws are barely damp.

Then she starts with the new trick. The Bambi. All four legs splayed, bracing herself against the rim of the bath. A bit of an impasse as my arms are full of dog by this point.

Round two to me.  I get in there with her.

That surprised her.

Ten minutes later a black bullet streaks out of the bathroom and shoots downstairs. I am on my knees mopping the sodden floor in equally sodden underwear. The bath needs scrubbing, the walls wiping down, the whole thing reeks of wet dog. And then I will need a shower.

In a spirit of forgiveness a tennis ball rolls across the bathroom floor and a grinning face with crimped fur peers round the bathroom door…

A couple of hours later and Ani is curled up on the sofa. Barricaded against the onslaught of the evil one with the brush beneath a pile of cushions. Watching my every move through half opened eyes. Me, I’m exhausted.

She’s good, though, you know. Every time she manages to come up with a new strategy. The sleek, porcelain learning curve of the bathtub of necessity.

I was thinking as I wrestled with the soggy floor about what I have learned these past few months. So many new skills …from fairly big ones to the smallest… You may know all about embedding fonts, me, I hadn’t a clue till today. I never needed to know before.

And we do that all the time, noticing gaps in knowledge and filling them. We really do never stop learning. That’s a pretty wonderful thing all on its own, you know. The world is simply bursting at the seams with fabulous facts, strange wonders and knowledge about everything under the sun… individually we know so little really, yet our capacity for absorbing new skills and concepts is boundless as the sky. Everything knowable is already out there waiting for us to notice. It is an odd kind of feeling to really realise that. A whole universe, infinite possibility, is waiting like a dog with a tennis ball for us to put down the humdrum daily round and come and play…

P.S. For the cat lovers out there… it was the signature on the joke at the head of the page that tickled me.