I was at home for the past two weeks and I got to do my favourite thing in the world - spend time with my dog! I am indeed a crazy dog lady. Everyone should be as enamoured with their pets as their pets are with them. This is a fact regardless of age.

I'm a bit of a pushover when it comes to my puppy. 

This wisdom-filled coaster appeared beneath my coconut hot chocolate last week and made me smile almost as much as Rani makes me smile.

As a result, I have decided to share some amazing Rani moments.

Young Rani proving that wrinkles are cute and beautiful - take that cosmetics companies!

My kryptonite - the puppy head tilt.

Sorry Hugh Jackman, this arse is definitely cuter than yours.

Watch out Serena Williams!

Rani is a feminist - she refuses to let patriarchy dictate how women should dress. Don't even think of referring to her as a "bitch".

Everyone's in agreement that bulldogs make the worst guard dogs; they're simply too friendly. Rani guards only one thing - the kitchen (she peers down from the top of the stairs to make sure that there actually is food involved before she makes her way down).

I think this is my mother's way of telling me that she misses me - she dressed Rani up in my school jersey and basher. 

And, in conclusion, a quote that anyone who's been covered in more dog hair and slobber than any actual dogs will wholeheartedly agree with:

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face." ~ Ben Williams

This is not the post that I initially intended to put up as my first ever blog post. You see, after a pep talk that allayed my fears of sharing my life of almost accidents with the World Wide Web, I was hell bent on publishing the post that has been sitting on my desktop since Monday night.

On my way back home to begin with that post, while driving towards a four-way stop at a swift 40km/h, I got distracted by a doggy. By the time the handsome hound left my sight, my head had turned a full 90 degrees and when it had turned back to the recommended driving position of looking straight ahead, the front of my car had almost embraced the pretty little Prius ahead of it. Oops.

There's a lesson in that: I shouldn't be allowed to drive. The lesson is definitely not “do not be distracted by dogs while driving”, because that is just impossible. How could anyone drive past a face like this?



This is not the aforementioned doggy. This butterball lives in my house, attempts to eat all of my food and on most occasions answers to Rani.

As much as I would have liked to provide a photo of the dashing doggy, my survival instinct thought otherwise. On a side note, I'd like to share a little piece of inside information: it is perfectly acceptable for an adult to say "doggy", or "piggy" or anything of that sort. I know this for a fact. This vital piece of information presented itself to me at a schoolboy cricket game late last year. A man well into his fifties sat next to my dad on a bench discussing things involving "wide legs", "slips" and "balls" (clearly an "adult" chat), but abruptly left the conversation to look over at the adjacent racing course and exclaim, "Ooh, look at the horsies!" This fact was then genuinely established when I noticed that he was wearing chinos, a collared shirt and crocs - basically the weekend uniform of the bourgeois male adult.