When you get a cute little puppy…
nobody warns you about the inconvenience. Well, perhaps they do but you are too in love with the soft bundle of sweetness to believe it could ever be anything but delightful. It’s a bit like having a baby really.
I was soon disabused of this view when Whizz went to South ‘Ifrica’ to work, and left me, in the snow and mud, to house train the above ‘bundle of sweetness’. I have already talked about this here, so I won’t go on about it.
Milo, now nearly 10, hasn’t become any less demanding. He follows me tirelessly around the kitchen waiting for dropped scraps and acting as a trip hazard. As an obsessive foodie (like me) he once nicked a lb of sausages that were waiting to be barbecued by a dog sitter (I have never done this despite being tempted), and on another occasion stole half of Mavis’s newly iced birthday cake from where it sat on the work top. He achieved this by taking flying leaps at it and carving it into a wedge shape with the side of his mouth.
A further inconvenience are the tumbleweed balls of moulted fur float all over the house, and then there are his demands for entertainment with tug of war toys and a laser pointer that sends him, literally, round and round the bend.
Being Labrador crossed with Border Collie he needs a considerable amount of walking and ball throwing and when he gets over heated, he wallows in mud to cool off, as you see here. Sorry about my voice!
Basically, I thought we had experienced every disadvantage possible until two days ago when he worked out how to open the food recycling bin and ate most of its contents including chicken bones and the best part of a buttercream covered chocolate cake.
Both chicken bones and chocolate are dangerous for dogs so Whizz ‘whizzed’ him off to the Vet’s. There Milo remained to be observed and have an X-ray, which revealed that his body was finding it difficult to digest what he had swallowed. Two injections and a course of tablets later and he came home with a copy of the bill.
He peed in the garden for maybe a minute, deposited a number of huge brown logs on the lawn and seemed to feel a lot better.
His final aberration was this afternoon at the beautiful chalk meadow where we often walk him. It was an unhappy coincidence that I had come out in a hurry without poo bags.
He began to give birth to the food bin liner: about a metre long rope of slimy green plastic that refused to part from his arse. He bowled towards me with 30 cm swinging behind, spraying brown globules from side to side. I got ready to run but this proved unnecessary as he was worried about the situation and every now and again squatted to relieve himself. But the damn thing wasn’t budging.
It was fortunate that I had a tissue stuffed into my ‘special pocket’ and was able to assist with the delivery.
If you find the horrible article among the flowers and mistake it for a snake, I apologise deeply. I really disapprove of anyone leaving ‘crap’ in the quarry and promise to return tomorrow with the proper dog walking equipment and put it in the poo bin where it belongs.
