Too busy too blog!

I haven’t blogged for a while now, because life has been somewhat busy.

Principally, my time and mind has been occupied with a very unwell little puppy. Coco is a typical Labrador – always grubbing in the hedgerows and digging stuff up, then eating what she finds. Most often it is something totally unsuitable such as cat poo or her particular favourite, horse poo. But she’s not overly fussy and by and large will pick up and eat anything.

This time she clearly ingested something which disagreed in the most violent fashion with her insides. Normally a ravenous eater, she wouldn’t touch food nor, more worryingly, water, for two whole days. We came down one morning to find the carpet covered in vomit and bloody faeces, and throughout the day she was listless and sick even when she sipped water or had a few grains of rice. Desperately worried, we took her to the vet, who didn’t seem worried at all (presumably sees it all the time) and gave us some anti biotics and sent us on our way.

Things didn’t improve and the next day we took her back to the vets where she was kept in and put onto a drip, by this time fairly severely dehydrated. The nasty specimens we had scraped up from the rug have been sent off for analysis, and we don’t yet know what she ate although I’m sure we will soon. It could be anything, on walks we are always taking things out of her mouth that shouldn’t be in there and goodness knows what she digs up when she’s mooching round the garden. And there are definitely toadstools out there somewhere – no matter how many times you try to get rid of them they spring back up.

The vet, an infinitely patient man, checked her over for anything and everything including various canine ailments I rang up to suggest having looked them up on Google (which must be the bane of his life) and after 24 hours when she had stopped emitting foul fluids and seemed more herself and we had had enough time to steam clean the carpets, she came home. Apart from a raspy sore throat caused we think by the pipe put down her throat while she was sedated, she seems absolutely fine. It is an incredible relief, and I don’t think I have been so worried even when my children were ill.

The cost of all this of course, has been astronomic. X-rays, drugs, diagnostics and veterinary time are ridiculously expensive. Thank goodness we took out pet insurance, for which we pay a measly £12 a month and which we are just about to claim against for almost £600. It has made us think that perhaps we better investigate taking out insurance for the moggies, who fortunately have never been really ill or cost me much beyond their annual jabs.

On top of everything else it snowed the other day, and you will know if you read this blog last winter how much I hate the snow, hate being cold and hate being wet. It actually made people on the train speak to one another, mostly in horror, at whether they were going to get home and asking “this wasn’t forecast was it?” looking out of the window with worried eyes.

I’m supposed to be avoiding stress to bring the old blood pressure down. Recent events can’t have done it any good, and it had gone up to treatable levels when I last saw the doc before all this happened so I am now taking tablets every day (someone asked me what drug it was and not remembering exactly, I said "Ritalin" which made them snort with laughter. It isn't, of course). I have had to resort to buying one of those old people’s pill boxes with the days of the week on it so I remember whether I’ve taken them or not – of everything that is going on, that is the one thing which has made me feel oldest!

To finish it all off nicely, my own work has gone crazily busy and The Hubby has been job hunting like mad. On that front at least we have some good news in that he has some temporary work for a few months, which will keep the wolf (or at any rate the debt collectors) away for a little longer.

It seems like it was time someone gave us a break, it’s been a pretty tough year whichever way you look at it.

An awful thing happened - poor Coco!

Perhaps the most scary thing ever happened yesterday.

The Hubby and his youngest son were taking the little Labrador pup, Coco for her early evening walk, taking a route we have taken with her several times before.

This walk takes us past our neighbour’s house on the corner, where a Staffordshire Bull Terrier lives. In the past the gate has been closed and he has been sitting quite calmly behind it just watching the world go by. Yesterday, The Hubby and Son walked past the neighbour's house just as they came home and as I understand it, four things happened at pretty much the same time:-

1.    Their front gate opened to allow their car in

2.    Their front door opened as their son saw them come home

3.    Coco, The Hubby and Son walked past on the other side of the road.  

4.    This Staffie that has sat so calmly in the past few weeks caught sight of Coco from the hallway of the house, and in the space of about three seconds covered the 20 yards gap, leapt up and grabbed Coco by the neck, then…..

5.    Mayhem ensued.

It took four adults to get this Staffie to let go, and only then by brute force. Despite the fact that The Hubby had acted quickly and picked Coco up, the Staffie locked its jaws on her neck, tasted blood then hung on for grim death. My neighbour was apparently screaming and crying in the road at what was happening, having just got out of the car to admire the puppy, while her husband was unsuccessfully trying to get his dog under control. Poor Coco has a fairly deep puncture wound on her shoulder where this dog was swinging round in mid air refusing to let go. She cried, emptied her bowels and presumably bladder too, and was understandably totally petrified as any baby of just over three months old would be in that situation. Clearly her wound is causing her a lot of discomfort and needless to say she is off to the vet today to be checked out, probably jabbed with antibiotics and generally cosseted. If there is a substantial bill, they can bloody well pay it.

Staffies do have a reputation of being aggressive fighting dogs and one glance at Battersea’s or the RSPCA’s web sites will show you plenty of unwanted Staffies looking for homes, presumably for this very reason. The Hubby says what scared him was firstly the speed with which it all took place, but also the unbridled aggression from a dog that has sat so peacefully previously and given no inkling that it would do anything like this.

The walk was, of course, abandoned and The Hubby and Son were much shaken. The Hubby has scratches on his arm and one or two quite deep wounds on the heel of his thumb, that fleshy bit which can be extremely painful and is now throbbing like mad. We’ll give it another day or so then he’ll be off to the docs – fortunately our tetanus jabs are up to date! Son wasn’t scratched but was clearly shocked not only at what happened but at the level of force that was required to get the Staffie to release. There used to be a theory that to get a dog to let go you shoved a finger up it's a**e (thank you Barbara Woodhouse!) but all this happened so quickly that even if they had thought of it, they probably wouldn't have had time to get the rubber glove on!

Fortunately (or perhaps not) the animal didn’t attempt to attack a human, because if it had we would have to report it to the police as a dangerous dog which wouldn’t do a great deal for neighbourly relations. As it is, we’re not sure what to do; provided Coco is alright and no real harm is done, we probably won’t do anything except take extra care when going past and be vigilant near other dogs. Poor little puppy has gone out for a walk this morning and wasn’t reluctant or frightened, but didn’t meet any other dogs so it remains to be seen whether she has any psychological scars by association.

Our neighbours have apologised profusely and were obviously profoundly shocked at what their animal had done. To say the (nice) lady who it belongs to was devastated would be understating it. But still she made excuses for her dog along the lines of “He doesn’t mean it / he’s a softie really” etc. Rubbish! Yes, this was an accident, but unpredictable animals bred for aggression shouldn’t be family pets.

Poor Coco – what a traumatic evening. For all of us!

Still boistrous!

Second puppy class last night, and Coco was as boisterous as ever.

The slightly older Labrador that was there last week has now finished her classes, so she is now one of the larger dogs there and by far the most confident.

Almost the minute she arrived, she mugged a gorgeous fluffy golden retriever puppy that looked like it had come straight out of the tumble dryer and is about 10 weeks old (so slightly younger than her) causing it to pee on the floor with nerves, then set about a lovely little cocker spaniel puppy called Norman (great name!) batting him around the head with her paws as she has experienced our cats do to her. Norman didn’t like it, but fortunately his owner was very understanding!

On the plus side, I think we’ve pretty much got the hang of ‘sit’ and ‘down’ now and are well on the way to ‘stay’ and ‘leave’. In fact I’d venture to say that Coco was probably the fastest to learn ‘leave’ of all the puppies there (God, don’t I sound like a proud parent). But we are way behind with ‘heel’ and ‘come’, and it is clear that she is too free spirited to think they apply to her!

‘Heel’ and ‘come’ are two exercises the puppies have to learn off the lead, which I knew from the minute the trainer said “Now take off their leads” would be a recipe for disaster. On the lead Coco was fine with the ‘heel’ thing, but the minute I took it off she was racing around like a dervish distracting all the other puppies and trying to nick the treats from the hands of the other owners whose dogs were doing what they were told.

“Hold her in the calm position” suggested the trainer. The calm position is when you hold your puppy on your lap with its back to you and your arms firmly round its tummy, with the idea that if they feel close to you, their pack leader, and therefore secure they will calm down and behave. It works for about five seconds, then Coco gets restless, wriggles, squirms and tried to turn round and either bite your ear or lick your face. She also gets very hot in your arms and starts panting at an alarming rate, trying to get away and reach the water bowl in the middle of the floor (which in her boisterousness she overturned three times last evening) so she can gulp down gallons of water and cool down (then have a full bladder and pee on the floor or in the car if you are unlucky).

Despite all this, she is a sweetie and we are so glad we took the plunge and got her. She’ll learn, and part of the trouble with the classes is there are too many distractions and at 6.30pm it is right in the middle of her ‘frantic time’ when she has loads of energy that she wants to burn off because we have been busy or working all day. But there isn’t much choice if you work, as you have to do these things in the evening, so we’ll persevere.

So, this week’s homework is ‘stay’, ‘leave’ and ‘heel’. She clearly isn’t ready for ‘come’, which is when you let them go quite a distance away and then get them to return to you. Knowing my luck, she’d wander off to Godstone and be lost forever! We’ll work on all that over the next fortnight until the next class (nothing next week because of the bank holiday).

Then we’ll come home with a gold star! I hope!

Sit !!

On Monday evening (ie yesterday), we went to our first puppy training class.

I was prepared for an hour of humiliation, and it must be said that apart from another Labrador puppy that was slightly older than Coco she was the most confident and boisterous dog there, but actually it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought and I ended up thoroughly enjoying myself.

There were ten puppies there of varying ages between eight weeks and four months, so Coco was about middling. She was also middling size-wise, somewhere between the spaniels and one enormous Weimeramer (not sure if that is how you spell it, but anyway some bloody enormous Scandi hunting dog) that was only ten weeks old but already the size of a small pony.

There were three spaniels (two Cocker Spaniels and one King Charles), a Beagle, two Terriers, a Dalmatian, two Labs, this enormous thing and a few dogs which were either cross breed or something so pedigree I’d never heard of it, including one that looked like a teddy bear.

We learned ‘sit’, ‘down’ and had an attempt at ‘heel’. By and large, Coco didn’t do too badly although did get bored after a few attempts and when she discovered that once she got the hang of it all she was expected to do it without any meaty treats lost all interest and just rushed round the floor hoovering up the dropped bits of chicken breast that the other puppies had discarded.

The Hubby came along too, and if anything was a bit slower than the dog at learning, constantly forgetting all the verbal commands and being inconsistent with hand signals (he’s a bit like that when he’s driving the car, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised!). I think it was all a bit of a culture shock for him; after years of not having any animals at all and then in the last few acquiring a few cats through association with me, he suddenly has an energetic and strong minded, intelligent dog to deal with and has discovered a whole new world of things to do and buy.

All in all though, things went OK and at least Coco didn’t disgrace herself by peeing on the floor like a couple of the other, considerably more nervous puppies did. Considering she had never met another dog apart from her brothers and sisters (whom she has probably forgotten by now anyway) she was pretty well behaved and didn’t try to bite any other animal or person.

The lady running these classes has been recommended by the vets, and she is apparently an animal behaviourist as well as a puppy trainer. When she demonstrated the techniques on these infants, it all looked so easy but of course once the whole doggy class gets up and has a go there are so many distractions it makes it very difficult for the puppy to concentrate. So, we have homework! The exercises have to be repeated several times daily, firstly with treats then without. We have to take her out to meet other animals and get used to their presence so she is less easily distracted.

So there will be lots more trips out, which means, unfortunately for her, lots more trips in the car. Coco already dislikes the car and hates being shut behind her dog guard in the back and not able to join in with her human companions. It’s amazing how piercing a dog’s whine can be when you are enclosed with her inside four cubic metres of metal, but she has to get used to it because the car is a necessary evil of life today and what’s more, can take you to lots of good doggie places like the park. So somehow, she will have to at least learn to tolerate it, if not to like it.

We have plans to take her to the big agricultural show held locally over the August bank holiday weekend, so hopefully she will have learned to be in the car and to obey some basic commands by then. Otherwise it will be an interesting couple of days!

Coco has arrived!

Well, the puppy has arrived. After having been an exclusively feline household for many years, we have a chocolate labrador retriever. Called Coco.

This little brown bundle of feet and belly has come into the house and totally taken over. We have had to create a 'den' by fencing off part of the lounge, acquire masses of equipment I simply had no idea about and enrolled her in the local vet's puppy club for her vaccinations, microchipping and eventually, to be speyed.

I had no idea that puppies poo'd so much! At just shy of eight weeks old, she isn't yet house trained. She has a designated place within her den where she is supposed to do anything she needs to do, and sometimes she does. We try and take her out into the garden when she has eaten, had a sleep, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. She has treats when she performs appropriately, but so far she is having trouble getting the hang of it (particularly with where she should have a wee) and it is very difficult to identify the  signs that she needs to go. Apparently puppies do go frequently and when they are very small, as she is, they don't have any bladder control at all and when they need to go, they need to go NOW. So you don't get much warning to clip on the lead and take her out back. We have had several accidents, and I haven't cleared up so much poo in years.

It really is just like having a new baby and having to teach it the basics. I always hated potty training then, too. I suspect it will be several weeks before she really gets her head round it and by then, I will be questioning my decision to get her.

Sunday night was her first night away from her mum and siblings (there were seven in the litter) and she cried all night. We gave her a hot water bottle and a towel which we had rubbed all over her mum's back so she had a familiar smell close to her, and a ticking clock which sounded like a heart beat, but it didn't make any difference. She really does have a very piercing whine, punctuated by little high pitched barks. I sleep wearing ear plugs, so I wasn't too bothered, but The Hubby tells me she started at about 11.30pm and continued until he got up in the morning, starting up again when he went out for work. I bet the neighbours loved that, but at least it gets them back for all the times they have woken us up by yelling at each other all the time or when their own dog used to cry outside the house all day while they were out at work and had locked him in the garden.

The vet has suggested that we leave the radio on low as sometimes that can soothe a lonely puppy, so we'll try that tonight. I wonder if she is a Radio Four or Radio Two girl? But what I will not do is bring her upstairs with me; she has to learn that she is not the leader of the pack and cannot go where she wants just because she makes a fuss. Of course I don't want her to be distressed, but rules have to be established from the beginning. Similarly, she will not be allowed on the chairs.

Today, she has been to the vet and had her first vaccinations, been microchipped and had a worming tablet. I have flea treatments to give her in the next few days, and she has to go back in two weeks time for her second jabs. It's all go!

I have a feeling that my life will be significantly different from now on. Coco will dictate our timetable and lifestyle if we let her, although while she is a baby it is very difficult to do anything which doesn't allow us to meet her needs. She will help get us fitter by having to be walked, and most likely, once we get over the first few weeks, bring us an amazing amount of joy.

I'll let you know.

Woof, woof!

For the first time ever, we are about to become dog owners.

A cute little puppy dog called Coco will be joining us on Sunday 22^nd July. She is a chocolate Labrador Retriever, and is part of the de-stressing and keep fit plan to ensure I reach my retirement years.

I’m not sure what the cats will think of her, having always lived in a canine free environment. Fortunately, Coco will not be phased by the cats as there are a few where she was born, which is a sort of stables cum farm cum shack in Hurst Green. But the moggies have had ten or more years of exclusively feline pampering and attention, and their noses may well and truly be put out of joint. I’m sure they’ll get over it, especially when the weather turns nasty and they want to be indoors next to the radiator.  

It has taken weeks of debate and heart searching before making the decision to get a puppy. Can we afford it? Are we at home enough? Will we walk it enough to stop it getting fat? Will we manage to teach it to be well behaved? Should we get a small dog which could fit in and out of a large cat flap and so have a bit of freedom during the day? All these questions and more have been debated ad nauseam and in the end we just decided to go for it (well, I did, and took the option of just going to see the litter and then telling The Hubby what was happening – it’s OK, he’s used to it!).

I must confess to being slightly apprehensive about it all. I have always been a bit of a couch potato and whilst The Hubby will take his turn at the walks (especially, I hope, at 6.30 in the morning) by and large it will be me doing quite a lot of it due to the number of hours he works. But in a way that’s a good thing, as it will force me to walk instead of slouch in front of the telly; there’s no way I want a barrel shaped dog and I need to get a bit fitter and lose more weight.

Coco is a cute little thing, and although I know she won’t stay a small, fluffy wriggling bundle of feet and belly for long she will still be a very pretty dog. And Labradors are such good family pets I’m sure she will fit in with the cats, grandchildren and our fairly hectic lifestyle. She will come to rehearsals, come shopping and go out with us at the weekends.

I am, of course, going into retail mode for said new pooch, and purchases have so far included a pale blue soft leather and diamante collar and a glittery puppy harness. She will look like a right woos walking down the street in them, but as she won’t know anything about that I don’t care – I like them! It is incredible how much stuff you can buy for puppies and dogs, some of it stuff I never dreamed I’d want or knew existed. Beds, fancy leads, vitamins, grooming tools and treats are just the tip of the ice berg. And the multitude of choice for food is quite overwhelming.

Coco joins us on 22^nd, and I can’t wait. She will be spoiled rotten by all of us, although the toilet training may tax our patience for a while and I’m sure she will cry at night. All the best puppy books tell you to ignore the crying, but if you see me with shadows under my eyes and a haggard look for a few weeks you will know why!