Benji and Charlie Labradors bring hockey dogs fandom to England
Dog O’Day continues our talk with Benji and Charlie Labradors about their life as hockey dogs living in England.
Dog O’Day – How do you like to spend your time most days?
Benji and Charlie Labradors – We start our day around 8 a.m., we help Mum to take care of her chickens and then after breakfast we settle in for some cuddles, massage, and living-room ball. Benji is 15, so can’t chase a ball outside like he used to. After walkies we generally have a nap until lunch time, followed by a further nap until tea time, and another until bed time. This is obviously interspersed with more cuddles, watching hockey on TV, and getting in Mum’s way as much as possible if she is busy. Mum is working from home at the moment, so we’re having to ‘help’ with that too!
What are some of your favorite things about living in England, and what might our American/Canadian readers not know about British dog life?
We live in a small village, so we are lucky to have lots of beautiful countryside right by our house. That means that we can enjoy our walks without our leads on. Of course, our American & Canadian friends will all face their own weather-based issues, but we Brits love to talk about weather, so we must mention it here! Where we live, on the East coast of England, we don’t get a lot of extreme weather in any direction, but we can get quite a variety of weather conditions in one day. It can be warm and sunny one minute and pouring with rain the next.
Last week we had an interesting discussion with an American Twitter pal about what we know as ‘prawn crackers’. In the UK these come, usually included, with a Chinese takeaway meal. We discovered that this is apparently not the case in the US. We did finally establish that they are known there as ‘shrimp chips’, but don’t get included as standard with your takeaway.
Our Canadian friends will also be used to outdoor hockey. We don’t have that here, because it’s rarely cold enough. Outdoor rinks here are limited to temporary installations in town centres around Christmas. Dogs are not allowed in ice rinks here, so we can’t attend any hockey in person.
What are the best parts of Dog Twitter, in your opinion? Why should humans look into it if they don’t know about it?
The nice thing about Dog Twitter (and Cat Twitter) is that it tends to be a lot kinder than human twitter. If a pet is poorly everyone else will send good wishes and pawcircles, and when a pet goes to the Rainbow Bridge people will often light a candle in memory of them. It’s just not controversial most of the time.