Bye bye baby…

This Valentine’s Day is going to be a bit different for Eve Jones, who has an announcement to make to all her devoted readers

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I ONCE looked after a herd of alpacas. It wasn’t particularly pleasurable. I couldn’t catch them, I could barely herd them, they disliked me immensely and spat at me frequently. By far the worst bit about the job was having to hold the stud while it covered the females. I wouldn’t say watching any animal shag is my idea of fun but standing by while two cottonwool balls on pipe cleaners sit down and whimper, baa and grunt their way to ecstasy really takes the biscuit. Narrowly worse, was taking a terrier round to a friend’s house once to see if their labrador bitch was ready for the pedigree stud. The terrier heroically humped her back leg for the time it took to call for the dog but the stud was far less tenacious – a bit fat and lazy, in fact. We ended up guiding him in and held on while the magic happened; the bitch looked less than amused.

Given the tenacity shown by that terrier, during the Covid puppy boom I volunteered my Griff when another friend was in desperate want for a stud for his Border, assuming it would be a doddle. Bless him, all the ambition was there but the technique was less impressive. He definitely knew he was meant to be doing something, he just wasn’t sure quite where he was meant to be doing it. Several frenetic laps of the yard and some dubious doggy foreplay later, the bitch looked wholly bored, Griff had perfected his action but his geography was shot. After several goes at her ear they finally pieced it together under the table in the garden where we were eating dinner, although despite his efforts and her tolerance no puppies materialised.