Blob Thing And Winefride Complete The North East Snowdog Trail

Blob was meant to be talking about the second half of his Bradford adventure tonight but he's had such an exciting day today that he just wouldn't stop talking about it.

Blob Thing says:

I'm exhausted.  I truly am.  It's been such a busy time.  I've never known myself to be so busy or to travel so much.  Nearly every day we seem to be going places and my person always seems to have another photographic challenge to complete.

And then there are the Snowdogs.  Today I did something amazing.  I completed the Great North-East Snowdog Trail.  Almost.  In order to raise money for our local hospice lots of dogs came to visit Tyne and Wear and this month I've been trying to see them all.  It's been hard work but I've enjoyed it.  Winefride has come too and she's had great fun meeting all the dogs.  And my person has come along to help us and she has taken hundreds of pictures of us with the dogs.  I've been allowed to start a second blog too so I can share all of our adventures and all of our pictures.  You can find it at http://blobandthesnowdogs.blogspot.co.uk/  I am looking forward to remembering all our adventures and it's going to take me quite a long time because there were lots of dogs.

We saw all of them.  Almost.  There's one we haven't seen because it was much too far away for people who don't have a car.  But we will see that one.  The Snowdogs are going to have a big going away party in a few weeks and we've been invited to attend.  My person will take Winefride and me and we'll see the other dog.  Hooray.

In total we have seen sixty-one Snowdogs out of sixty-two.  The official trail had sixty-one dogs not sixty-two but we bumped into a very special stray dog who wasn't on the list.  The other sixty-one dogs had gone to live in places all over the county.  There were also ninety-seven smaller Snowdogs and we have seen every one of those.  They were living in eighteen different places and we had to visit all of them.  They included an out of the way business park, two shopping centres we had never wanted to visit before, and an arts centre that we could only get to by taking lots of buses.

But we managed it.  And we finished today and Winefride was so upset or sad or something or other for a moment because she learned that we were standing on our very last big Snowdog.  She jumped off the dog and my person couldn't stop her because my person wasn't holding Winefride's reins.  She can't hold the reins and take a picture of us sitting between the ears of a Snowdog.  So Winefride was falling off and I reached out to try to grab her and save her.  And then I lost my balance and I fell off.  We both landed with a crash on the floor.

Fortunately we were both okay.  I've got to admit that the final dog wasn't the only one we fell from.  Those dogs are very slippery.  We haven't been hurt thankfully and haven't fallen from any of the ones sitting in the middle of muddy places.  We always got back on again after falling.  Here we are on that dog, which is called The Snowdog.

So we have seen one hundred and fifty-eight dogs.  And today we went to pick up our certificates for completing the Snowdog trail.  One certificate for me.  One certificate for Winefride.  And there's even a certificate for my person because she saw all the dogs too.  People have accused my person of being quite obsessive about the whole thing.  But you can't blame her too much.  She wouldn't have gone on the mad quest had it not been for me telling her I wanted to see the dogs.

There was one day on which it all went wrong.  My person went out finding dogs for me and Winefride that day.  In the rain.  She caught a bus to a place close to the first dog, intending to walk and see six dogs and some little dogs.  When she got off the bus it was hailing.  Hailing.  She decided to go home again.  And then changed her mind because the hail stopped.  She got very wet that day.  And what made it worse was that when she got to the first dog of the day she realised that she had completely forgotten to take me and my sister with her.  She.  Had.  Forgotten.  Us.  Can you imagine that?

Here's that first dog.  Photographed.  Without Winefride.  And without me.

Well she walked on and saw all the dogs - apart from a couple of little dogs she didn't know about and which were hiding.  And when she got home there I was waiting for her.  Can you imagine how cross I was with my person?  It was a horrible day for me.  I think Winefride didn't mind so much that we had been left in the dry and in a warm house.  She got on with playing for most of the day and laughed a lot at her games.

I made my person promise that if it was possible in any way she would take us out on another day and we would be able to see those six dogs too.  And that's what happened today.  Our last Snowdog - but not my person's last of course - was found outside the Seven Stories museum, a place devoted to children's books.  I wonder if there will ever be books about me.  I could write them and we have lots of pictures already on my blog.

And that's the dog we fell from.  The Snowdog.

The day wasn't over though.  After leaving the museum we visited a farm where we saw lots of animals.  We especially enjoyed watching a cockerel crowing.  That was fun.

We saw a beautiful snake too.  And some giraffes.  The scariest thing was when a tortoise tried to eat me.  I'm glad that I didn't get eaten by a tortoise today.

And after all that excitement my person took Winefride and me to the seaside.  We had some more little dogs to see.  We could have seen them already but when we visited the dog outside the Blue Reef Aquarium we didn't know that there was a pack of four dogs inside.  So we had to go back.

And then we walked all the way to Tynemouth and we sat eating our chips in a very quiet place.  There was nobody in sight and we spent our time in the quiet watching the mouth of the Tyne.  The tide was slowing coming in and we watched as different rocks got covered.  And we saw gulls.  And we saw lots of oystercatchers and turnstones too.  There was a heron.  And we even saw a curlew.  That's what my person said it was called.  It's a funny name.  I haven't ever seen a curlew before but Winefride and I have both seen herons.

It was lovely.  We then had to go back into Newcastle.  Because my person had realised that when taking photographs of the pack of dogs at the Central Library we had forgotten to take pictures of one of them.  That had been a hard time for us all.  One of the security guards told my person off lots and lots because I had wanted to have my picture taken with Winefride on top of all of the dogs.  Just like we've done everywhere except at Washington Galleries where it wasn't possible.  The security guard didn't like it at all and kept telling my person off.  She wasn't having a good day and she melted down a bit and ended up sitting on the floor between a dog and the window and just repeating a few words.  "Oh dear.  Oh dear.  We got it wrong.  Oh dear."   On and on.  Sometimes, for all three of us, being autistic can be very difficult indeed.

Nobody came to see what was the matter.  Eventually she calmed down a bit and looked up and saw on a screen a sign saying that Newcastle Central Library is an autism friendly environment.  That helped her a lot and she was able to get up.  She went and asked a woman whether she could take pictures of us.  The woman didn't know and she went to ask another security guard.  His name is Tony and he's very nice and he helped us a lot and we took our pictures.  My person says that she has talked with Tony before and that he's always very friendly.

But in all the fuss and the worry we forgot to take a picture of one of the dogs so today we had to go back into Newcastle just to see that one dog.

And that was the last little Snowdog.  All ninety-seven seen and photographed.  I think ninety-three of them have been photographed with either me or Winefride or both of us sitting on them.

We haven't hurt any of the dogs and we were very careful.  We also don't weigh very much so we weren't going to risk crushing them or denting their paint.  Some of the paint was beautiful.  One of the big dogs we saw today was very, very beautiful and it had lots of animals on it.

Have you ever seen such a beautiful dog leg?  That dog was called Wild North East and was living in the Pets Corner in Jesmond Dene.  There were lots of animals there too.  We especially liked seeing a really big white rabbit.

So there you are.  Winefride and me finished the Snowdog trail.  Just in time.  We're all going away tomorrow morning and by the time we get back the Snowdogs will be moving to a special place where they're going to have a good bath and see the Snowdog vets who will make them perfect and shiny ready for their big party.  We're going to the party right at the beginning and we are hoping it will be quieter then.  We don't like to be surrounded by lots of noise because we're quite sensitive to sensory things.  We were happy because near the giraffes there was a little sensory garden.  We tried eating a leaf from a plant called lemon balm because a sign said to taste.  It was a very strong taste but I think we all liked it.

We have finished the trail and I don't know what we'll be doing with our days when we come back home after our time away.  I'll have my Snowdog blog to complete of course and that's going to take me a while.  And my person will probably have photographic challenges to complete.  She also wants to write a lot more.  We haven't given her much time for writing because we've been making her come out and find all the dogs.

My person is considering trying to find all the blue plaques in Tyne and Wear and that will give her a big challenge and lots to write about because every blue plaque has a story to tell.  Did you know that there is a blue plaque for a man called Jimi Hendrix in Newcastle?  Well there is.  My person thinks finding all the plaques and taking pictures of them and their buildings would be a very difficult challenge.  But I think she might try it anyway.  I wouldn't mind.  It would mean that she would take Winefride and me to even more places and we'll become world famous experts in the geography and history of Tyne and Wear.

I will stop talking now because I was meant to be talking about something very different tonight - the second half of my adventures in Bradford when my person took us there recently.  And then I talked about Snowdogs instead.

Well, it has been a very exciting time finding them all and it ended with a brilliant day today.



[2017 words.  And I've given Blob permission to share what he's said in his Snowdog blog too]