We have two dogs. One is very bright and the other isn't. Neither are allowed on the settee. The dim one never gets on the settee but the bright one waits until we have left the room and then climbs on, usually when we are both upstairs doing something.
But here's the funny bit. Because he knows that he shouldn't be on the settee, when he hears one of us coming down stairs he gets off and greets us at the bottom of the stairs wagging his tail as if nothing has happened. He hasn't yet figured out that I can tell where he's been by simply feeling if there is a warm spot on the cushion.
When he figures that one out then we have a major problem.
I suppose that we're fortunate but in all his nine plus years we have never 'lost' Max. Of our two dogs he tends to 'shepherd' us and stays fairly close by and usually in line of sight. They are, after all, sheep dogs, Berger de Beauce.
Anyway, we had a bit of a scare recently. For their walks we take them into the 'woods' next door and let them loose to exercise It's not unusual for them to shoot off when they scent or see a rabbit. This is what Max did the other day so we weren't too worried. Min came to join us after a short time so we expected Max to join us quite quickly. Not so. We waited and waited and then hatched a search plan to go find him.
His disappearance was so unusual that we feared that something had happened to him. To cut a long story short our next door neighbours came to find us as we searched in the woods to say that they'd found him wandering outside the front of the house. How we'd passed each other is anyone's guess but we breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Nice neighbours, naughty dog.
Just when you thought that there isn't much news, I'm pleased to say that it's Max's birthday today.
He's eight years old, but how does he celebrate it? By waking us at 4.00 in the morning for absolutely no reason that we could fathom. He seemed a bit agitated but as Max is usually very 'cool', nothing seems to bother him, we sat with him for half an hour, until he settled, and then we all went back to bed.
A great start to the day, thanks Max.
Poor old Max. For over a month now he has had a nasty cyst on his foot that was very angry, swollen and from which he would lose blood. We had been trying, for about a month, to treat it with antibiotics to no avail but we bit the bullet yesterday and had a surgical procedure to cut it out.
It was even worse than anyone had thought and he is now stitched and bandaged and hobbling about. Frankly the vets are unsure of the cause and have prepared us for further problems.
At least it now means he spends Christmas at home instead of in kennels. Bless.
The vet very kindly gave us some tranquilisers for the dogs, before we left Languedoc, with dosage instructions.
We decided to give them each half the maximum amount and see what happened. Frankly I’m not sure that it made the slightest bit of difference. Max, who’s the more hyper of the two, sat upright for several hours at the start of the journey, whilst Min, the more chilled, lay down straight away.
Anyway, this morning as we were leaving the hotel we put the same dosage for each of them in two lumps of cheese. Neither of them would eat but they always eat cheese and hiding pills in it is quite an effective way of giving medicine.
So there they were both sitting in the back of the car and I gave them the cheese. Max immediately spat his out, he won’t eat when he’s upset and sitting in the car is, for Max, a major upset.
Min, who eats anything without hesitation or question, immediately pounced on Max’s cheese and scoffed that as well.
We were about to have one very chilled dog. She was taking chillin' to a whole new level!
I envisaged that when we got to our next stop, Elvey Farm, we’d have to pour her out of the car. We’ll see.
I couldn’t stop laughing and of course Jan blamed me for incompetence.
