My little dog seemed to
take a long time to recover from his ordeal at the vet’s yesterday evening. He
was very subdued until "er indoors TM" came home and started
ordering him around. He was his old self then, but as soon as she sat down and
started watching telly he sidled up to me and snuggled all evening without
moving. Mind you he did eat all of his dinner.
This morning I came down to
find our house guest Rolo full of beans but Fudge sitting quietly by the back
door. He slowly heaved himself up (clearly
with great effort) and was slowly struggling toward the door when next door
made a noise when they dropped their dustbin. Suddenly he flew down the garden
barking like a thing possessed. And he was fine for fifteen minutes until I
fussed him when he went back to being quiet and moody.
I *thought* he was still sulking. However he wouldn’t move. I went to
pick him up and he cried when I touched his belly. It was rock hard. We went
straight to the vets.
We got there over half an
hour before they opened so I sat on the floor outside with my dog on my lap. He
sat feeling sorry for himself and I sat blubbing like a baby. After a while the
vet arrived for work and came over to see us. I pulled myself together enough
to explain what was going on and they took us inside. We went straight into the
examination room and they gave me the option of pain killers and waiting, or
doing a proper investigation. Apparently they have to offer pain killers and
waiting as a lot of people can’t afford vet bills. I asked the vet to do
whatever she would do with her own dog, and Fudge was immediately admitted to
dog hospital. I took a deep breath and managed to pay the bills and get out of
the surgery before I started crying again.
Once home I realized I could
either sit about fretting or I could do something. So I prepared “Hannah” with the co-ordinates for my new
geo-series around Challock on which I’ve been working recently. Then I spent
even longer getting the pots and stuff ready. I had intended to do all that
last night but I had been fussing my dog instead. And with all the pots and
stuff organized I took Rolo on the walk that I had been planning to take Fudge
on. We walked for about four miles around Challock and hid twenty geocaches as
we went. It was a rather pleasant walk; when we walked it two months ago the
crops had made a couple of footpaths all but impassable, but the crops had
since been harvested. Hopefully everyone should like it next weekend.
As we went my phone
didn’t stop beeping with people sending messages of support and concern about
my dog. Many publicly, and many privately. As we walked I blubbed a few times;
not so much with worry for my dog but for the kind thoughts of so many people.
With our walk done we
came home. I was in the kitchen just giving Rolo some water when I heard a
rumbling crashing sound from above. I went to the back bedroom to find a huge
area of plaster had fallen from the wall.
I took all the DVDs
from the shelves which were above the affected area (in case the weight made more of the wall collapse) and piled them
up. And left them there. I then tried to contact the insurance people. “Tried” being the operative word. I was
passed between seven different people before I finally got to someone who took
every conceivable detail. After what seemed like an age she “processed and validated” what I’d told
her and she said that we weren’t covered. So I shall have to pay to have it
fixed myself.
Do any of my loyal
readers know any plasterers? Failing that how hard is it to plaster a wall?
I then made the final
changes to the geo-series following this morning’s walk, then sent the entire
lot in for review. It took a few seconds to write that sentence, and about an
hour to actually do.
I immediately got the
thumbs-down from the geo-feds on one of the caches I’d hidden as I’d mistakenly
said it was in Yorkshire. Whoops!
Soon enough
it was time to collect "Furry Face TM" from the
vet. I was there early, and I did blub a little when the vet brought him out.
When I left him there he was as meek as a lamb, when they brought him out to me
he was pulling like a train.
They’d
had him on fluids, done blood tests and X-rays. The blood tests hadn’t shown anything,
but if anyone says that was money down the drain they have picked the wrong
biomedical scientist with whom to argue. A negative result rules things out; a
negative result is a useful result. The vet felt the fluids had perked him up.
But the most helpful thing was the X-rays. They showed his entire alimentary
canal was bloated. He’d got bunged up and had an awful lot of wind.
Five
hundred pounds to be told my dog needed a good fart. Have I ever mentioned I
never wanted a dog?
I had
been planning to go down to be with the astro club for the Perseid meteor
shower this evening, but I felt I couldn’t leave my dog. As he sat on my lap
this evening he would periodically whimper and cry. I was on the verge of
calling out the emergency vet when I realised that his whimpers and cries coincided
with when I stopped petting him. Like any poorly toddler he was seeking
attention.
I should
really have done some ironing this evening; I just sat with my dog…
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