Well today I drove for the first time in France… in a behemoth mother of a Mercedes SUV. I took the kids to Puget Théniers for a walk and some supplies. I got to feeling rather cocky and there was a good song on the radio so I cranked it and kept going to Citadelle d’Entrevaux.

Well things went a tad sideways when we tried to park. Between the teensie parking spots and me not understanding French (I was sure all the signs in the lot were telling me not to park there) I cut my loses, apologized to the kids and hightailed it back to Puget and parked in the grocery store parking lot. The poor dears had their back legs crossed LOL

We wandered around town very very slowly. Bogart is the funniest lad. Most male dogs just lift their legs and mark with you ending up hauling on their necks. Not our Bogart. He literally puts on all 4 brakes and looks at you. Once he sees you are paying attention, he then gently guides you to the specific spot on which is an odor crying out to his wee-wee. Only then can we proceed. Pud is endlessly patient with him and she is much more energetic in her walks… or tries to be. But I must admit when I finally started getting worried about someone towing the car they got on board pretty darn quick and we were able to motor.

Since I don’t have a dog of my own the whole pick-up-pooping thing is new and I am discovering not all poop bags are equal. Gross, really gross. The only ones I could find in the car wasn’t really a bag as much as 2 small pieces of plastic delicately attached every so often. Bogart shits almost as much as he piddles and during one particularly clumsy effort it got on my hands. %G(&*&^&$$#))(_ I have been scrubbing my hands ever since.

Speaking of poo, yesterday A. and I took them into Antibes for de-worming and since we were late we really pushed them hard walking to the vet. Suddenly this gorgeous young French female doused in french attitude comes running up behind yelling at me. I looked at her blankly (I haven’t even got the wits to say No Francis yet). With expressive hand gestures that flirted dangerously with rude she communicated that my dog had shit on the sidewalk and I was to go back and clean it up. I am sure my mouth was gaping for a couple of reasons. A) That a French person would make that much effort when most of them refuse to lower themselves (literally & figuratively) to clean up after their dogs and B) That poor little Bogart had been made to shit on the go so to speak. Needless to say we returned to the scene of the crime and did the deed. Of course it was runny, just to make it more fun for the humans. So that was why Bogart got to dictate how fast/slow we went today, the guilt dictated that I owed him big time.

Here are some pics of our day.