I am a good dog owner

Owning dogs is a rewarding experience. For relatively little effort they remain loyal, loving and endlessly amusing. Food, water, training, play and a couple of walks a day is not much to give for this adoration.

Until winter arrives. Then the routine morning dog walk becomes a kind of daily torture. The alarm goes off at some ungodly hour and I grope blindly in the dark to turn it off. I then spend ten minutes sat on the edge of the bed almost in tears brought on by tiredness, before trying to find the dog walking clothes that I threw haphazardly about the bedroom the day before.
Once these have been found, I half-walk half-fall down the stairs before realising I've put two legs through one leg of my trousers. Hopping into the front room, I can finally put a light on without risking waking Husband up. Doing so, I'm met with the unimpressed, squinting eyes of Tangent, and the back of Willow who has turned around in her bed to better ignore me.

Eventually, after much chaos and confusion that involves falling over the dogs, trying without success to put gloves on my head and somehow clipping a dog lead onto the fish tank, we make it out of the door and to the park. A slight pang of depression hits when I notice the moon is still out because it's so damn early, and there are no footprints aside from mine in the snow because everyone else is  much smarter than me and still asleep lazy.

This pattern repeats itself until Spring, when the weather begins to improve and the fair weather dog walkers come out of hibernation and join me in the early morning dog walks. Much to my chagrin as over winter (short of laying a urinary claim) the park had become my territory.

And I do all this because I am a good dog owner, and I love my dogs. At least this is the mantra I tell myself when I am out in the snow, rain or frogs. Well, maybe not frogs. But it can rain frogs, I know this because it was on Wikipedia.