I was greeted with ecstatic jumping and yelping from Molly and Daisy on my return home. It was great to see them again, I had missed them and looked forward to the next morning when we would embark on our usual furious journey to the park. We set off early in the morning as the park is free of people and police, and it quickly gets too hot for them in these summer months. People stared at us as we hurtled down the high street, me on the bike with M&D pulling me like Ben Hur in his chariot... the fastest dogs in Eastern Europe!
Polish law states that all dogs must be on a lead when outside, this includes all parks and forest. An absurd and cruel law and one which I break daily. As soon as we get to the huge park I let them off the lead and they sprint off into the distance. I follow as fast as I can on the bike and we race round the great periphery a few times before heading to the ponds where they dive in. Then follows a session of robust stick throwing into the water which they bring back together, pulling at either end. Signs say that swimming is prohibited (man or beast) but fishing is allowed and common, fishermen discarding their hooks and line which frequently kill the birds. Daisy recently had a hook embedded in her foot. I often have arguments with these men (why do women not fish?) who sit all day staring at the water while their dogs are stuck at home, and demand that I chain up my two small mongrels. Homeless cats and dogs are plentiful as people in Poland do not want to pay to have their pets neutered, most tiny flats in each block will often house at least 1 dog and 1 cat. Needless to say, the streets are strewn with crap.
We usually take a short break and I might read while M&D do a spot of frenzied digging, indulging their hobby of locate-the-mole. Mighty chasms are created, the crazed hounds surfacing now and then for air with blackened faces and broad smiles. They soon bore of this and disappear into the shubbery only to return dragging a huge branch which I am expected to launch into the air.
The final phase of our daily outing consists of more manic bike riding until they show slight signs of sluggishness. Every so often they will shoot off in another direction after a squirrel, then when they are finally flagging it's on the lead and back home... at a much slower pace!
