I may have mentioned in the past that one of Penny’s great virtues was that she wasn’t a wanderer?

Scratch that.

She has discovered the joys of the outside world.

It started when dogs started breaking in to canoodle with her.  She’s neutered so it must be her personality?

It was quite a frequent thing to see the neighbours dogs playing with her on the lawn.  I didn’t mind as they are friendly dogs and it certainly kept Penny amused.

The problem started though when she started following them home through the holes in the fence they had made.

One of our Sandy’s greatest faults was a tendency to explore the neighbourhood, and I used to spend my time blocking holes she had made in the fence.  It was a joy to find that Penny apparently was quite happy to potter around the garden or just sit on the doorstep admiring the view.  Now I am back to hunting for holes again.  And Penny has two enormous differences with Sandy – she is smaller and can therefore get through smaller holes, and she is short-haired so doesn’t leave tell-tails of tufts of hair around the bolt-hole, as Sandy used to.

I have just spent the afternoon re-fencing the front hedge.  The hedge was heavily overgrown so I had to hack that back first and the whole enterprise took several hours.

For those of you who have never worked with wire netting, it is a massive pain in the arse.  It keeps trying to coil up on itself and its edges are nothing but needle sharp wire.  As a result, I am covered in scratches and as usual am bleeding profusely.    Herself is out with The Coven at the moment and doubtless when she comes back she’ll start nagging me about bleeding all over the furniture.

Sod that.

I’ll just quote the old proverb at her.

You can’t mend fences without cracking eggs?