My name is Blob Thing and I am a small pink soft toy. Together with my sister Winefride I have toured across Tyne and Wear over the course of two weeks and together we have attempted to complete the Great North Snowdog Trail. This consisted of us having to find sixty-two Snowdogs and ninety-seven little Snowdogs. That's one hundred and fifty-nine dogs in total.
And that's a lot of dogs.
We almost succeeded too. We managed to see one hundred and fifty-eight of the dogs in their locations. The only one we missed was called Patchwork who wasn't in Tyne and Wear at all. Seeing Patchwork was impossible for us. Never mind. We saw every other Snowdog and little Snowdog and we are very proud of ourselves for this achievement. We've also seen a lot of amazing sights along the way because Tyne and Wear is full of wonderful places.
And we've seen Patchwork too now, at the Snowdog farewell event. That was a very special day for me, being able to see all the dogs again. The streets of Tyne and Wear feel somehow empty without those dogs.
For more information about our amazing quest and the way we were helped by our person, please see my first post on this blog. It can be found at http://blobandthesnowdogs.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/blob-thing-and-winefride-welcome-you-to.html I confess that we all got more than a little obsessive about Snowdogs in the first half of November 2016. There are worse things to get obsessive about.
Please remember that the Great North Snowdogs existed not just as an enjoyable addition to the landscape of our wonderful county of Tyne and Wear but as a way to raise funds for St. Oswald's Hospice which is our local hospice and which does amazing work. To find out more about the hospice and see ways in which you can donate, should you wish to, please head over to their website. It can be found at http://www.stoswaldsuk.org/
I will include the above text in all my posts. It explains everything. If you get obsessive about Snowdogs too then don't feel you should read it every time. That would just be taking obsession a step too far.
Today's post contains pictures of the following Snowdog:
Dog Number 59
Photographed twice. The first time was on 2nd November. We then visited the dog again on 8th November 2016.
This dog is called Gizmo.
This dog lived, for the duration of the Snowdogs festival, in on the Pier Promenade, South Shields.
The dog was designed by Anonymous. There is more than one Gizmo. He's a clone dog. His brother clone appeared in the Snowdog trail in Brighton.
You might notice that I suddenly jumped. I went from dog 44 to dog 57. That's twelve whole dogs missed out. Don't worry. I'll be going back to them. I just thought I'd talk about all the dogs near the River Tyne before heading to the dogs near the River Wear. So I'm going to mention dogs 57 to 60 who all lived in South Shields. And then I'll talk about one very special dog who lived in Newcastle. So special that he didn't have a number at all. I'm considering talking about dog 61 too before delving into the riches of Sunderland's twelve dogs and five little Snowdog packs. Dog 61 was the only one we didn't see on the actual trail, because he lived too far away and it was completely impossible for us to go and see him.
We visited South Shields three times in the first half of November. Our first visit was at the end of a walk on the second. That was an amazing day and my person had a moment of total clarity and knew that she had to live a little differently. We weren't on the Snowdog trail then but happened to see a dog named Gizmo and we had our photos taken with him.
By November 8th we were seriously on the trail of the big dogs and returned to South Shields. On that day we had another amazing time, walking from Cullercoats along the promenade, round to North Shields. Then we caught the ferry to South Shields which Winefride found extremely exciting because she hadn't ever been on a ferry before. After seeing the South Shields dogs we returned to North Shields on the ferry because it was fun.
We didn't stop to argue with the Christian street evangelist we saw walking in the streets moaning that we are all doomed. We had seen him before, once in Newcastle and once in Sunderland. In Sunderland he had his friends with him and one of them stopped my person. She was in the mood to debate him and pretty soon had four evangelists crowding round her trying to convince her that people were intrinsically bad. She wasn't convinced because she looked around and saw that everyone passing on that shopping street in Sunderland was an amazing human being. It didn't matter whether they were struggling, in a mess, or even if they were doing bad things. They were all amazing. The evangelists called my person an antichrist abomination. She didn't mind, she expected it. We didn't stop for another argument in South Shields. She would have been told that seeing the man again wasn't a coincidence. It was a God-incidence! That's the sort of thing they say.
Unfortunately on the 8th something sad happened. There were four Snowdogs in South Shields but when we reached the fourth one, Rhino The Rescue, we were quite distraught. He was missing. Completely gone. Only his plinth remained. It was awful. Later we learned that he was going to be returning a few days later. And that meant we had to return to South Shields again to see him. I'm glad we did.
Here are our pictures of Gizmo.
You can see how excited and happy both Winefride and I were to be on the trail of Snowdogs. We have had an amazing time. And I think our person has enjoyed herself too.
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