Merry Christmas

When we first met Bimbo, she was part of this Border Collie community (OK, there's a Shelty in there, too) which lives in Langton Matravers, Dorset. We saw her running on a hillside near the English Channel and she looked so much like Cammie from a distance that our hearts missed a beat and we had to get to know her.
Zoe, her mistress, said that she was a little standoffish, so we shouldn't be surprised if she didn't bond with us; she wasn't even likely to go for walks with Peggy, Zoe's mother, or other family members. But Bimbo took to us. She chose us. She bonded immediately and came to our camper and went on tour with us to pubs all over England that summer of 1996. At the end of the season we said our tearful farewells.
Next summer we were back in England and our first act was to go and get Bimbo so she could travel with us again. At the end of that summer, Zoe gave us this gift, this dog which became the third member of our traveling show. We never took her back to England: there were quarantine rules which later relaxed somewhat for continental travelers, and there were doggie passports, but Bimbo really didn't take well to air travel, so we never put her into a plane again. Zoe and Peggy never got to see her, but we kept them abreast of her life and when Bimbo passed away in October, they wept along with us.
Anyway, these are Zoe's dogs now: none of them knew Bimbo personally, but they are all members of Zoe's group and they do agility training and live with a cat and a bird and some other creatures. When we visit Langton Matravers we take them for walks on the hills and go for drinks at the Square and Compass in Worth Matravers (see the scene with the Morris dancers in our film, "La Manche: The English Channel" and the the border collies' scene in "It's Great! Britain.")
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!