Dogs and fancy dress

So today's Thursday. A dry but chilly one in fact; where do the days keep flying off to? Short days, long dark nights. Dank, dark & damp. Amazingly, we have had no rain for the past couple of days. It had been raining solidly since the weekend, water once more falling to the lowest point of resistance & accumulating in the boggy bottoms & field depressions. Not exactly the floods of june, more our typical winter weather pattern.

So on to the updates on the dog.

Well, she is still with us and has returned to her usual bouncy self, putting weight back on after her second close shave with the grim reaper. She is, l must hasten to add, not 100% fighting fit. The problem when she eats is still with us. Well l think in my last blog l briefly ran through the symptoms? The initial diagnosis based on these symptoms was a post operative esophageal stricture,however during the routine vet visit to the farm yesterday, & by observing L-P actually eating, [bar a definite diagnosis at a serious vet center], the problem could be damage to nerves that induce swallowing? On a more positive note, there is no urgency in getting a definite diagnosis. Will keep the blog updated as to any updates in this department & can report that at this moment the mutt in question is sitting at my feet burping! Delightful!

So we turn to things more frivolous. Relief you think, there is only so much of 'crook' dog that one can take!

Last friday saw the BBC Children in Need Appeal, which involves lots of people doing strange & wonderful things in order to raise money for the charity. So it was that this year we too have joined in the fun, serving our customers in a wacky selection of fancy dress! We had Noggin the Nog [or could it have been Brünnhilde] & superman, hippies & Ali G, Lady Pirates & Micky Mouse. All in all we raised a respectable sum of approximately £100. Now next year we will do a sponsored ice cream eating session!

reflection.

l had no idea it was so long ago that l wrote my last blog. It isn't that l have been avoiding the blank screen, but stuff just seems to come at you from all angles...........

The dog, L=P is still not back to normal. She is having a major problem eating in bites. Food has to be pureed or else she behaves like a cat with a large fur ball rammed down her throat. the vets have taken x-rays, but have no idea the cause of her frothy vomiting each & every time she eats in a normal fashion. I always thought that horses were trouble, now it looks like dear old L-P is the cause of yet more wrinkles. hey ho!

So here we are November, Remembrance Sunday is out of the way so we seem to be in the count down to christmas, the mad rush to buy all things twinkly & tacky. The shops are playing, to gets us in the mood, carols & Christmas 'icky' pop. Out with the earplugs.

The shop is now quieter. We are closed Mondays & Tuesday from now on until easter, so that gives me a few days of normality. Lunch at lunch time for example, plus catching up with friends who feel that they have been deserted over the summer months. It's really hard to do nothing or very little after months of non-stop adrenaline overloads!

Don't get me wrong, there is still plenty to do. Meeting buyers, planning for next year, removing dust from the skirting. It's just so nice to be able to do what l want, within reason, without watching the clock or having to be smiley at all times.

'So here it is Merry Christmas everybody's having fun...................'

this was the week that was.......

Oh hell, thank the gods that that one is OVER. FINI..... Dog dog dog... In my diminished world of sick dog, even the school half term dimmed by comparison to thrusting tablets down doggy throats & rushing sick doggy into vets! I am mentally devoid of coherent speech & recognized thought patterns. Give Me Strength........

Well, Lucy-Piglet has made a Full Recovery after what you just might call a 'close shave', well a very close one in fact! The stitches have come out this morning, so all l can say is thanks to the team at Garth Vets in Beeford and rabbits beware - she's back - be afraid, be very afraid!

Other things did happen last week, for example we were busy over half term week. Children seem to crawl out of the woodwork & take over the place, obviously enjoying the late summer weather [joke], scampering around having great fun! Just discovered today that the west yorkshire schools are on half term this week, 'nought like bein' prepared like'.

Other fun things, included our summer chap from Nova Scotia, leaving, returning home before a round the world trip which will no doubt include him indulging in any number of extreme sports. This guy does in real life what all the gameboy / xbox /nintendo surfing - snowboarding - skateboarding games allow the couch potato to do in the comfort of their living rooms! Awesome dude! Well, to celebrate his return or weep at his leaving, we held a party. A fancy dress party in fact. Boy were there some good costumes! There were zombies, fairies, cavemen, pirates plus the Vicar of Dibley thrown in for good measure!

Hopefully now, things WILL return to normal? Autumn mists, falling leaving and parties. I seem to be doing quite well on the party front at the moment. Three in a week no less. Two fancy dress & one black tie. Saturday night's effort involved loads of white make-up, absinthe, zombie's drool & something else made from red bull & black vodka? Hmm can't remember exactly.... not bad really it was quite an experience drinking absinthe in the company of one's son!! Hazza's excuse was The Green Fairy, so what was mine?

sick dog

No blog for over a week, what's up then? Lucy-Piglet. Last Thursday she was off. Dull, listless depressed AND off her food. Sure sign that all is not well in Lucy-Piglet world. The vet felt sure that she was suffering from the non-puppyitis, having been on heat / season the previous week. So off we toddle home with what we thought was the non-pregnant dog fatigue syndrome.

Friday, she was ill, dull, listless, temperature of 104'. Back to the vets. OK, what do non-spayed bitches suffer from? Pyometra. Why have we not had her spayed? well she was booked in, was placed under anesthesia and reacted very badly indeed. This could have been that at 6 months old she broke her pelvis in 6 places which required pining? Well, to cut to the sharp end of the story, L-P had her hysterectomy there and then after first checking with the animal hospital in Doncaster who had done the Big Opp as to which anesthetic had been used there.

Last week's surgery went as well as can be expected, she reacted badly once again to the analgesic, but, the pyometra wasn't ruptured but, & here is the critical bit, there was fluid in her abdomen. It is this that has caused her return to the vets today with a raised temperature & nausea.

This evening, her temperature is back down, her tail is wagging and she has eaten a little, but, she is still feeling sick, apparently lots of lick lipping. She is on intravenous fluids & antibiotics to treat the pyometa & possible bacterial peritonitis.

Tomorrow, well that is another day isn't it? If she shows no sign of improvement, ie. she is worse then she will need to be transfered to an intensive animal hospital where she can be nursed round the clock.

I don't know how sick she really is. It's a case of wait and see isn't it? Hopefully she will respond to treatment and another positive is that she is a young dog, 4 years old. If not, well, lets look at that when it happens shall we...........

Have posted today's update in the comments section!

sneeezes & snow

Ok. l am now ready for winter. My wood pile is stacked up & the central heating is just waiting to be turned up. Come on winter, l am ready for you! Slight problem though. The temperature here is 15'C. It feels mild & muggy. Germs abound. l am busy dying from my first cold of the season. My intake of single malt to which is added copious amount of lemon, honey & a wee bit of hot water has done nothing as yet to alleviate the symptoms. So here l sit with a nose to equal or surpass Rudolph's!

On a more serious note, this mild air is a slug's idea of heaven. What more could you ask for than warm, damp air & fields of juicy rape seedings just sitting there waiting to be eaten with gusto! Hence me saying come on winter it's not that l am a kill joy wanting the mild autumn to end, but it's just that all these bugs & slugs need a knock on the head, so to speak.

Winter can't be far off though, l note that Christmas adverts are appearing on the TV, what ever happened to waiting till after Bonfire Night before deluging the box with adverts for the latest must have gift / drink / supermarket food eh? And another thing, what happened to the good old All Hallows Eve & bobbing apples, why is it now trick or treating & everyone dress up in pumpkin suits?

Oh my god, l believe l am turning into a 'grumpy Old Woman', surely not........... l'm not old enough yet?

of rabbits & the north west passage

It's October & it's mild. The last week has seen nothing but sunshine & blue skies, ok so it is a tadge over cast now, but cold it ain't. What is going on with the weather? Who's doing the messing about then? On this morning's Today program on radio 4, a chap was saying that in the arctic, the North West Passage had been clear of ice for the longest time in recorded history. Perhaps the fate of Franklin will be exposed, so to speak.

The un-typical weather has meant that during the weekends, people are out and about. The car park here was full for most of Sunday as people enjoyed that walk down to the sea. How many got down onto the beach l'm not sure as the sea has been over the cliff top once again at Withow Gap, scouring out all the pebbles from the dyke & bringing down a large chunk of peaty cliff-face.

We are starting to get large flocks of birds coming in now for the winter, yesterday a large skein of barnacle geese came swooping in over the hedge swearing violently at each other, or so it seem, as they jostled for final landing checks. last week, flows of human twitchers were out. A rare bird had been sighted so car loads of Bill Odies were to be seen scurrying about in search of this rare visitor!

Well, there is one animal that doesn't seem to have suffered at all this summer. The rabbit, or shall we say Oryctolagus cuniculus. We have been inundated by the pesky varmites. Hundred of those dear little fluffy bunnies EVERYWHERE.

Normally, we loose a good few through myxomatosis, but this year nothing bar the odd one. Even Gordon & Lucy-Piglet's efforts seem to be little more than a scraping across the surface. The amount of damage that they do is amazing. All our trees have the longest available plastic tubes around, even the hedge plants, in order to save them from those sharp teeth. To a rabbit nothing more delicious than a lovely, juicy, nibbleable sapling! We must have a breed of Super Rabbits, oh where are you the Anti Pesto Team?

apples and birthday parties

Time is a passing, me thinks, the friends that l have kept in regular contact with since leaving school are, well getting to the 1/2 way stage in life... well how else can l put it without being lynched on my next visit to Cheltenham? The only plus point is that l am not there yet!

So this friday, after a very quick sort out, we hit the wonderful UK motorway systems and headed south. M62, M18, M1, M42, M5. Bingo, 31/2 hours later, with no significant slows or stops we hit Gloucestershire. My god, were there some horrendous tail backs on the M1 on friday afternoon, north bound from Sheffield right down to east midlands. l think l can safely say that we were heading in the right direction for once! The 'old banger', which is hubby's pride & joy, positively purred down the motorway!

The weekend, spent in a small hamlet just to the north of Bishops Cleeve was a real hoot. saturday morning helping the 'birthday girl' with the preparations for the evening's party, then as the sun emerged for what might possiblely have been only the second time in September, headed via my old stomping ground, up to Much Marcle in order to stock up on perry, from Westons cider mill. We did, l must confess do a wee bit of sampling, which included a rather girlee mix of cider & raspberry!

One of the things that really hits you is how the area has changed. In and around Cheltenham, so much building, identikit housing estates, grid lock, traffic - traffic - traffic. However, once you clear the river Severn at Haw Bridge the pace of life seems to draw breath, the road becomes notably quieter, fields emerge with livestock & grassland as opposed to the good old pony paddock. Really, l could see little change over the years. The house with the crenelated wall just before the t junction to Corse was still there. That was meant to have been removed due to contravening the planning regs over 30 years ago!

The return drive back through the rolling green countryside dotted with the odd cultivated field exposing the red soils, took us to Castle Fruit Farm where we stocked up on apples, pears & freshly pressed juice. Mmm yummy.

So how did that party go? Well, the wind dropped & the temperature rose. The guests arrived, as did the hog roast, and we all had fun!! Wine, real ale, food added to which was an hilarious song charting my friend's life to date to the tune of 'wild rover'. Next morning? Owwwuurrgggh!! Where was the paracetamol.

For classic car fans, the motor is..... a jag XJS 4lt 1994.