TED TERRIER’S Trip to the RAINBOW BRIDGE

 It was the day before ten years ago today on earth, which means that it was 12^th January 2015 if you need to know that – and on earth cos time isn't time where I am now and it doesn't go in straight lines or any lines and we don’t need to know what time it is - and Emma was driving in her Clio car - which was my taxi many times – which just means I sat or lay or jumped around in it a lot to go places – and Emma was on her way to my home, and somewhere – it doesn’t matter where – on the way she felt like her hip was taking itself out, but thankfully it didn’t then… So, Emma was coming to my home cos I was very not well, and she wanted to take me to my vet to see if Vet Nicky could make me better, though Emma said she knew what would happen, but she didn’t tell me, but she was not very happy about it, but she had had to leave her human companion who was also very not well, but I had to have priority, which just means that my not well was worse than his not well. And Emma had a not well too, cos she had just had yet another metal hip put in and it had not fixed itself properly yet, but we’ll come to that later, even though I’ve said it earlier too. So, Emma arrived at my home, and I tried to greet her with my whirly dance, but nothing would whirl cos my back legs had stopped working, so I got myself as close to the door as I could and thought my whirly dance, and she knew that was what it was, and somehow, even though she had to stand on long metal poles cos of her hip, she managed to pick me up into her arms and we had the longest cuddle, which was our last longest cuddle in the fur and flesh.

Then that night we went to bed – well, Emma went to her bed, and Peter carried me to his bed – and, I can feel Emma getting upset now and I want to tell her it’s all ok, but we are getting to the very difficult bit of this story, but we’ve never told it, and I think maybe it’s time to, even though time doesn’t matter, and I want to tell it cos there is a happy ending that Emma can only imagine, but doesn’t know about, and she needs to know about it. So, I will keep thinking to her and she’ll keep typing what I think. So, I know she had plans for the day we would have together the next day – she’s crying again – and though she doesn’t know I know, she is right that it would have been really lovely and really special, full of cosy cuddles and ‘I love yous’, but it’s all ok cos we had done that many, many, and many again times together, and those times and those feelings don’t go away. So, what happened was that Peter got up and went out, and then it was me and Jane – she was in her bedroom – so we were all in different bedrooms – and then, Emma you have to tell them this bit. ‘Oh no, I can’t. I can’t see the screen, Teddy! Right, so what you need me to say is that I had recently had my hip re-replaced. As others who have had the same operation will know there were precautions you need to take to prevent dislocation. Yet, my mind was totally on you and our day together, dear Teddy, so I forgot all about that and lifted my left leg over my right to put my slipper on… so CRUNCH and OUCH! Hip out of socket, and as I later discovered, I’d also broken my femur… Back to you, Teddy?’ Yes, that part I couldn’t tell cos I didn’t see it. You shouted and I barked, but Jane couldn’t hear, so she didn’t know either and even if she did she couldn’t do anything cos her legs didn’t work too. The next I did see and hear was humans I didn’t know coming into the house, and I couldn’t do my whirly dance to greet them cos I couldn’t even get off Peter’s bed, and I barked to say ‘Hello’, but they didn’t come and see me. ‘No, they came to see me and try to put my hip back in, but they couldn’t, so they had to take me to hospital’. And they didn’t bring you to me. ‘No, they didn’t bring me to you, and I didn’t know I wouldn’t be back to be able to see you again before…’ And, I was barking cos I wanted to be with you and I didn’t want them to take you away. ‘Oh, Teddy, this is so painful, I can’t bear it.’ But, no, it’s ok, cos I’m ok, and I was ok in the end and that’s what I am trying to tell you, it was all ok, in the end. Can I say it? ‘Ok, say it.’ So, I didn’t know you wouldn’t come back and I didn’t know when Peter took me for a ride in his car, that I wouldn’t come back either. But, I didn’t need to come back cos I haven’t really gone anywhere cos I am still here with you, as you know, cos I can say it to you and you can hear me and feel me. ‘Did it hurt, Teddy?’ Nothing hurt. Peter carried me in and Nicky wasn’t there. ‘She had a cold’. I didn’t know that. ‘She felt so bad not to be there for you.’ Just like you did too, but it’s ok, I know you both loved me, and Peter was very good with me stroking me and telling me I was a ‘Good Boy’, and man vet gave me warm feelings and then I fell asleep…. And I didn’t wake up…. And then I felt lifted up by a large red round thing. ‘Mum was right, your Babybel balloon!’ And I taste Babybel always but not need to eat them…  And then I saw a bridge with many colours… and ever so many dogs and humans were there… and I could do my whirly dance again, and I could fly here, there and everywhere, and be ready for when Mummy Jane joined me here. ‘You were and are her guide.’ Yes, and now we are The Clio’s guides… but that’s a story to come another earth time. ‘Even though it’s already happened that the Clio’s gone. Are you all ok? Mum?’ Yes, we’re all fine and feel good and free and I can’t stop whirling. ‘Like your puppy-self!’ And ready for different kinds of adventures…

 

Love and licks, Ted XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

To read more stories like this one please visit my blog http://tedterrier.blogspot.co.uk/ or you can get my book The Journal of Ted Terrier from any amazon website: http://tinyurl.com/q6a49tx at .com or http://tinyurl.com/o3pjra8 at .co.uk. I am also at www.wooftasticbooks.com

The Blog of Ted Terrier © 2025 by Emma Knight

TED TERRIER TRIATHLETE

 

My human mum, Jane and my human sister, Emma both love watching the Olympics, which is something that happens every four years, and the humans from different countries all over the world go to one place in the world and do games against each other to see which of them can do the game the best, and the one who is best gets a gold medal, and the one after that gets a silver medal, and then the one after that a bronze medal, but anyone who comes after that gets nothing, but hopefully has had fun doing the game anyway, and they all are proud to do the game for their country.

In a legend – which means a story from some time ago that may or may not be true – a man called Heracles – who had a dad who was a god (not a dog) called Zeus, and a mum who was a human called Alcmene, started the games in Ancient Greece, which was still the country Greece, but when it was in ancient times, which means a very long time ago. Emma says she thought it first happened, when someone had to run from one place to another that was a marathon run away – which means a bit over 42,000 metres – to give someone else a message, which then may have been on a scroll or maybe even a piece of stone if it was very long ago – and that’s why humans now do marathon runs and that was the first game, when it wasn’t a game, but was important, cos something serious had to be told to someone. But that may be true, though it’s not a legend, cos as far as I know, Emma is the only one who has said it, and she didn’t start saying it a very long time ago, which would make it a legend. Emma might be getting her stories mixed up cos she is a human and all humans have muddled thinking and there is a true story that says a human cook, called Coroebus, did a ‘footrace’, which means a race on his feet, which may mean a race that’s fast cos you are running, or slower cos you are walking, but has been reported by humans who may have forgotten to say what it means in ancient times, who may or may not have been ancient in age humans, but he did 192 metres and was the first and only person to win a game at the Olympics in 776BC, which is the first time humans wrote down what happened, and when there was only one game. It was called the Olympics cos it happened in a place called Olympia. And since that time humans have made a lot of different games to try against each other to see who is the best at each of them. I wonder if Coroebus had to do the footrace cos he had made someone some dinner and that person was waiting for it, so he ran to give it to them, and that’s when the humans thought that has to be the first game we play. A game that involves giving someone their dinner sounds a lot of fun.

I made up games to play with my humans, and I taught them how to do them. We all had a lot of fun playing them. The humans had to do one thing and I did another thing, and it only worked if they did their thing right – I always did my thing right for me, but may have changed it to make them think more about it, which may have got them even more into muddled thinking. One of the games, I went out of one door, ran around, and barked at another door to be let in. That made my humans laugh once they worked out where I had gone, and so I laughed too, cos it’s a lot of fun laughing together. In another game, they put up a gate at the bottom of the stairs, making a high jump, that was much too high for me to jump over, but I made up the game in a different way, and waited til one of them was going up the stairs and ran past them to get to the top first, and arrive in Jane’s room with my tail wagging a lot, and usually Emma running up after me, cos I played it with her most, and then all three of us would laugh at what had happened. The prize for that game was a Babybel Cheese given to me by Jane, and I always won it. Sometimes I then had a rest on Jane’s bed, but other times Emma would carry me back down again, and then I waited til it was time to play the game again. One time it went wrong, cos Emma forgot about the game, and I was overexcited and Jane wasn’t upstairs in her room with my Babybel. It started as it usually did with Emma heading to the gate, and me following, and then I did my thing to run past her, and she missed the first stair and tripped over me and dislocated and broke her ankle. Nobody laughed, and I felt very sad, so when Emma got back from having her ankle fixed, I lay on it to heal it, and we both felt very good again. As Emma has just said, sometimes things go wrong, and it’s nobody’s fault, and then those playing the games get hurt, and that often happens in the Olympic games too. When Emma couldn’t play, I’d play with other humans. I used to do it too when I was a cat. One of my games then was to get my human dad Peter to give me food. It was quite a challenging game for me, as he just wanted to get his coffee. Really, I was supposed to wait for Emma to come to give me food, but I liked the challenge of getting Peter to do it, so I’d lift my front paws up to the top of his pyjamas and pull them down! He then fed me very fast! I also learned to open Emma’s bedroom door, to wake her up, so she could give me a strokes or food or play games.

I think food is the best reward rather than a metal medal, but when I told Emma I was thinking of entering the Dogolympics cos I know Jane and Emma would enjoy watching me, and it’s the same as the human one, but dogs play it instead, she said ‘Are you going for gold, Ted?’, I said, ‘No, I’m going for a Babybel’, and she said, ‘Well, what colour is a Babybel, Ted, on the inside’, and I grinned cos I understood what she meant, and so I decided to go for a Golden Babybel.

The Dogolympics happens when it isn’t so hot in the place that everydog has to go to play the games in. That is because we are all wearing fur coats, so it would be very difficult for us to play a lot with all our energy so that we could win, which would be too dangerous for us with a lot of heat too. The games we play are mostly the same as human ones, so not the dog games played at dog shows. But, like the paralympics where humans who have parts of their bodies missing or not working as well as for someone who is fully able, there are adaptations – which just means equipment we need to use is changed so we can do the game with it. Next thing was to choose which game to do. As I was thinking about it, I watched Emma and Jane watching the Olympics on TV. The game started with humans jumping into the river and swimming. There was a lot of water splashing around, and I could see Jane’s lips moving around and she looked as though she was trying to stop them. The same thing was happening to Emma, then as soon as the first person tried running out of the water to their bicycle, she couldn’t stop herself, and she started laughing, and then so did Jane, and then so did I, and then I thought that’s the game I have to play, cos laughing is the most important part of playing a game, unless you win, when the Babybel Cheese is the most important part. The last thing the people playing had to do was run, and I’m very good at that. So, I did a lot of practising and became a Tridoglete, which means a dog who does swimming, then cycling, then running. The swimming bit is fine, and so is the running, but the adaptation for me was a tricycle, instead of a bicycle, so my cycle has three wheels instead of two. The part of it that humans would hold with their hands is low so my front paws can reach, and the things that move the wheels around, also near the ground so my back paws can reach. This year the Olympics, Paralympics and Dogolympics are all in Paris. We dogletes had to wait til it was cooler and both tridogletes and triathletes had to wait til there weren’t lots of things in the river that would make us unwell if we swallowed them, which can happen when you’re splashing around, especially if you are doing doggy paddle which makes water splash around even more.

When I did my tridogleting, my thinking was going all round about making sure I don’t drink too much of the water, but paddle fast through it, do my shaking off the water quick as I get onto my bike, and get my helmet on so if I fall off I don’t hurt my head, then make sure I run so fast I fly along, and all that time my humans laughing as they watch, and other humans clapping and cheering ‘Let’s go, Teddy, Let’s go!’ and being given a gold medal at the end that would be a Babybel Cheese. I was just thinking about that all along and not looking at other tridogletes. Emma was there as my trainer, and I was thinking about Jane’s lips trembling watching me on TV as I did the swimming, and laughing as I did the shaking, and the biking, and then me bounding along my legs going as fast as I could make them, and I closed my eyes and imagined my human mum’s biggest smile and my tail wagging ‘nineteen to the dozen’ as she would say, and as I crossed the line, I opened my eyes and there was Mummy Jane, laughing and presenting me with my Golden Babybel Cheese! And then I saw all the other tridogletes were behind me and I had got there first, and so I got to stand on the highest podium and get given another Gold Medal with a Babybel inside it by one of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Corgis. And my humans kept smiling and laughing and saying it was very funny how my ‘little legs went like mad’, and I was so happy I had made them so happy, and they’d watched me right there in person and dog!

 

Love and licks, Ted XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

To read more stories like this one please visit my blog http://tedterrier.blogspot.co.uk/ or you can get my book The Journal of Ted Terrier from any amazon website: http://tinyurl.com/q6a49tx at .com or http://tinyurl.com/o3pjra8 at .co.uk. I am also at www.wooftasticbooks.com

The Blog of Ted Terrier © 2024 by Emma Knight

TED TERRIER AND THE KING’S SHOES

Queen Elizabeth The Second – she’s the second one cos there was another Elizabeth before her who was Queen, (Queen Elizabeth The First) – sat on the thrown for seventy years – that doesn’t mean she had to sit on a chair for seventy years without moving, which would be difficult for anyone, especially me cos I like to run around a lot, and I think she could do it better than me cos she was good at being still for a long time with a heavy, sparkly, jewelled hat (called a crown) on her head – but what it really means is she was ‘Head of State’ – not in a state but being the person who was reigning – not horses though she loved horses a lot, oh and dogs too – over everybody else in the united kingdom (which isn’t very united at the moment), and some other countries, and she did that for over seventy years.

And everybody celebrated with dancing and singing, and other things which did include horses and dogs – cos she loved them so much which meant she was a very sensible human being with not much muddled thinking – oh and she had tea with Paddington Bear too for the celebrating and he told her, ‘Thank you for everything’ – which we all agree with – and offered her a marmalade sandwich, though she already had one in her handbag, so they ate them together while they watched her Platinum concert. I also had an audience with her – which just means being together – one of you doesn’t have to perform for the other one, though I did and she was very happy about it and then we had a hug.

Queen Elizabeth II (which means second) must have loved hugging with Prince Philip cos he was her husband, the father of her four children and her ‘strength and stay’, so he helped her do her Queening with his strength to hold her up and stayed with her for the seventy-three years they were married and then he stopped cos he died. Though it’s much easier to stay if you’ve died, cos your spirit is with the people you love wherever they are cos you are everywhere. I used to tun everywhere and all over the place, and had a lot of trouble staying, even if I was asked to stay, but I did always go back again to the people I loved more than anyone else, cos I loved all humans.

Queen Elizabeth II lived for eighteen months after Prince Philip died and then she stopped living too on 8^th September 2022. Emma – and many other people – was very sad when she died cos she thought of her as her fourth Granny, or should I say Granny The Fourth after Granny The First and Second, who were mums of her parents, Peter and Jane, and then Granny The Third, who was such a kind, lovely person, who treated Emma like family, so Emma adopted her and adopted Elizabeth as Granny The Fourth.

Another person who was very unhappy when Emma’s Granny The Fourth died, was Granny The Fourth’s eldest son, Charles. He was upset cos she was his real mum – not one he’d adopted like Emma – and also cos her dying meant he had to ‘fill her very big shoes’. Emma says that doesn’t mean she had very big feet – yay feet the bigger the better cos they’re my favourite part of a person’s body – and in fact Emma thinks she had small feet – which I know she did cos I licked them in my audience with her – and I did that after chewing her shoes off, which she pretended to be cross about, but she wasn’t really cos she was laughing, and so was I cos I was enjoying myself and she’s a very funny woman and when she smiles, you smile too cos you can’t help it, and when she laugh, you laugh too too.

I think Charles’ feet are bigger than his mum’s, so if she had big shoes, he would do better than her at filling them, but Emma says people say she had big shoes to fill cos Elizabeth did Queening very well, and so to fill her shoes, he has to do Kinging very well. The job of Queening (if you’re a girl) and Kinging (if you’re a boy) means you have to do a lot of going to see people, wave at them, talk to them or have them talk to you, and you have to make them think you’re very interested in what they are saying, but you can’t tell them what you really think – which would be a good thing if you have very muddled thinking – but I think might be a bad thing for Charles cos he does a lot of very sensible thinking, which he used to tell people about sometimes cos he could say it when he was just a Prince. What he said made some people think about what they could do to help stop the earth getting too hot and so make it ok for lots of humans, animals and plants to live on. He had his Trust which supported young people to do amazing things that were good for them and other people. He also said some buildings look like carbuncles, which is not a very pretty thing to look like and so he upset the people who made them – which is not a good thing to upset them, but better if they stop making building looking like carbuncles. Charles thinks alternative medicine is helpful, which I know it is cos I gave Emma alternative medicine for her hip by sitting on it cos it hurt and then it didn’t hurt so much. The King is no longer supposed to do his ’Black Spider Memos’, cos they would show he is political, which he is not allowed to be when he is Kinging, but I don’t know what makes black spiders political, except that Emma is scared of them. Charles talks to plants, which is also very sensible, so I hope he won’t have to stop doing that.

I thought I’d try walking in the shoes cos if you walk in someone’s shoes it means you have empathy for them, and I’m a very empathic dog. Maybe if I also eat them, then he won’t have to do Kinging and so he’ll be happy cos he never really wanted to do Kinging anyway, and I’ll be happy cos then I can lick his feet! I would do that with ‘loyalty, respect and love' just like he has promised to do his Kinging for everybody.

 

Love and licks, Ted XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

To read more stories like this one please visit my blog http://tedterrier.blogspot.co.uk/ or you can get my book The Journal of Ted Terrier from any amazon website: http://tinyurl.com/q6a49tx at .com or http://tinyurl.com/o3pjra8 at .co.uk. I am also at www.wooftasticbooks.com

The Blog of Ted Terrier © 2022 by Emma Knight

Art by Sue Mynall

Blog Hop: My Next Book – Another Journal of Ted Terrier by Ted Terrier (Dog) and Emma Knight (Human)

Many thanks to Michelle Goode for tagging me in this Blog Hop, which consists of ten questions about my current project/s and then tagging other authors/writers. Here goes!

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Ted: It will probably be Another Journal of Ted Terrier as The Journal of Ted Terrier was my first book and that is already published on Kindle and will be out very soon as a normal paper book too. And if a lot of people (or anyone else who isn’t human) like it and want more then I will do another one. In fact the first one isn’t all my writings that I’ve already done – it is only some of them, which I chose with my human sister, Emma – whom I rely on for mind-reading, so that she collects my thoughts, and then writing or typing to put them down – and then a friend of ours – Sue Mynall - did the drawings for those bits of writing we had selected. And also while I am about it Gejo Canovas did the cover for us too and is a very good friend, whose best friend I fancy!

2. Where did the idea come from for your book?

Ted: It came from me! It’s all my ideas and about my life and what I think and feel about the things that the humans in my life do.

Emma says I have to let her say something about it too. You might find we argue during this Q&A, but don’t worry that’s normal for a brother and sister – even though different species – and also for those who collaborate and it’s called creative tension – when it’s about creating something, which is what we have done.

Emma: Hi Everyone, Emma Knight is my pen-name; appropriate as I am the one holding the pen because Ted cannot. (Though Ted is also not his real name: We’re a pair of pseudonyms ;))

In real life I, Emma, - though as Ted is keen to remind you I’m not really called Emma - am a writer of screenplays and a psychotherapist. When the idea for this came – and to be fair it wasn’t really even an idea, it just simply popped out! – I was suffering a severe case of writer’s block, and feeling quite miserable about it. Writing makes me feel good! I was sitting on the sofa next to our Jack Russell Terrier and, fortunately, with a little journal in my hand and a pen. I spontaneously started writing from his point of view. And out poured a great deal of ideas, thoughts, concepts, observations in and around the life of a dog; how they may see the world, and adventures that go on around them. Of course, real Ted’s own character had a massive influence on how it all came out.

Ted: So, just as I said, it came from me!

Emma: Yes it all came from you, Ted J

3. What genre does the book fall under?

Ted: It doesn’t fall under any genre – nothing fell on top of it – and anyway I don’t know what a genre is but it sounds a bit like it might be painful?! ;)

Emma: No, Ted, it’s not painful – it just means what sort of a book is it. What is a bit painful though is trying to fit it into a genre. It’s a bit like instalments in a diary – as in The Diary of Adrian Mole – though the order is a bit random because Ted can’t focus on one thing for too long, and I am appalling with dates. So it’s disorganized but linked because the people in it are all Ted’s humans. Some readers have likened it to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, though we hasten to add that no dogs get murdered in this book. It was also not planned with any particular readers in mind, though it seems to appeal to older children and adults.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movies rendition?

Ted: If you read my book then you’ll find out ;)

5. What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Ted: I find it impossible to write just a single sentence, and if I did, it would be very long cos my sentences always are, and in fact they should be several sentences really.

Emma: Anecdotes in the Life of a Jack Russell Terrier.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Ted: It’s been self-published cos no publisher will accept the way I write. They say you have to send the first three chapters and have to have a plan for a story, but as we said above, I don’t write in a straight-line order and I don’t think in chapters or for long enough to plan a story, and also my sentences are too long - so I’ve just got the human I love best to publish it for me! You can find it on the amazon dot websites on the internet J

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Ted: I don’t know. It just took however long it took and is still taking.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Ted: It’s just a book of all its own type and can’t be compared to anything, and also cos it doesn’t have a story, or at least it has lots of stories, but we already answered this in the wrong question, or this is the wrong answer to this question and the answer to it is above!

9. Who or what inspired you write this book?

Ted: Me! Me and Emma together. Me and my other humans. Watching how they behave and how different we are and yet the same and how we relate to each other. And cos dogs and humans are best friends.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Ted: My theory that human beings are too intelligent for their own, and others, goods – even though I love them more than any other species including my own - and so they have muddled thinking and that’s why it’s interesting to study them. But they are brilliant too! Please read and let me know if you agree with me…

E-book on amazon.com

Paperback on amazon.com

E-book on amazon.co.uk

Paperback on amazon.co.uk

Tagging for the next blog hop:

Ray Noble is a scientist, musician, singer, writer and song-writer, who also writes a blog on ethics.

Esame Okwoche is a mother and prolific insightful writer. You can find some of her work at her blog Esame's Rants.

Mike Howarth-Baker is the author of What If? He writes poems and quotes based upon his life experiences and thoughts and feelings on everyday life. His facebook page.

Bit of a late entry and extra addition just in case ;):

Murna Safford-Kuaea is a ‘moderately conservative writer, poet, inventor of really cool stuff, novelist and closet idealist.’ She has seven titles available on amazon and can tell you what she is working on in her blog hop J Her facebook: NovelIdealist SK and Twitter: Novelidealistmsk.