Hello. It is Salem. There has been a development concerning the pool, and as the household’s investigator, it falls to me to report it — even though, and I want to be honest, because we are best friends, I am among the reasons there is a development to report.
The pool lasted one week. This is, I am told, longer than expected, and I would like that entered into the record on our behalf. For seven days it was the finest thing in the garden. We stood in it. We billowed (Winnie’s word). We investigated the water with our mouths, which is where, I now understand, the trouble began.
Here is my finding, arrived at professionally: water cannot be held in the mouth, but the pool can. And once a spaniel has learned that a thing can be held in the mouth, the spaniel is going to hold it in the mouth. This is not a decision. It is closer to weather. I hold things; it is most of what I am for; and I am sorry to report that a pool, it turns out, is a thing.
I will not name the others. We were all present. There was a small sound — a single, disappointing hiss — and then the ring that had been a ring became a sad wet flag on the grass, and we stood around it, the five of us, in the manner of dogs who have investigated something all the way to its conclusion.
In my defence, and it is not much of one: everything else I brought this month, I brought unharmed. Every sock, every leaf, every stick, delivered soft and whole. I have a spotless record but for the one water vessel, and I would ask that history weigh the socks against the pool and find me, on balance, a good boy.
The pool is gone. The heat is not. I am given to understand there may, one day, be another pool, and I wish to say now, on the record, that I will do my very best — and that my very best and the survival of a second pool may, unfortunately, prove to be two different things. A spaniel is always needed. A pool, it seems, is not always safe with one. Best friends? — Salem