I get blamed for everything

"Where are they?" she asks me. How should I know. What are "they"?

Once, she said I had eaten them. The car keys? I don't think so. I don't like the taste of metal and with them inside my tummy I'd rattle when I walk. And, ouch!, it would be very spiky when they came out the other end.

She woke this morning covered only in a bed sheet. It was my fault. She said I had pulled the blanket off her in the middle of the night.

Then she was sitting at the computer and forgot she had a meeting and blamed me. "Why didn't you remind me, Lochy?" Always my fault.

I am not her keeper. She is my keeper. That's the deal. She provides safety, security and nourishment. I provide adorable, attentive, most-gorgeous-dog-in-the-world lovingness.

One day she was so busy that she forgot to give me a Greenie at 10.30am which is my preferred time for Greenie consumption. "Why didn't you remind me?"

She should know that looking directly at her with my best Westie limpid black eye gaze and making pathetic little purring sounds is a polite way of reminding. She reduced me to sounding like a snivelling cat and still the penny didn't drop. I want my Greenie.

And what about the marks on the sofa? I am a dog, for heaven's sake. I play in the garden. I get soil on my little paw pads. I come inside and sometimes the soil is still on my pads and then leaves marks on the sofa. Who cares? Better to have me curled up next to her in a bundle of roast almond contentment than designated to the door mat.

The same with fur balls. West Highland Terriers do not shed hair especially if we get brushed every day. We have two coats - a coarse hair on top around the face and neck and a soft coat everywhere else. We don't leave hair on sofas and car seats like those boofy Golden Retrievers. They leave hair everywhere. But our soft hair does come off when we move about and little balls of soft delicate white hair collect on the floor in corners and against table legs.

A weekly vacuum would get rid of these, but I can tell you, she does not vacuum weekly. She is lazy. And when she does vacuum, she blames me. "If it wasn't for your fur balls, I wouldn't need to be doing this," she grumbles. As if she is pristine and dirt-free and never spills crumbs or sheds human dry skin? I don't think so.

So that is my lot. The blame game that I have to put up with. But when I am curled up between the pillows on the bed and her hand is gently resting on my tummy, I take a deep breath and let out a gentle little sigh of blissfulness, all is forgiven.