Puppy Love

"Not every person knows how to love a dog but every dog knows how to love a person."

Yes, well - that's the least soppy of all those doggy quotes I've just been reading, and mainly true I would think.....

I suspected when I named this blog that there was a risk it would be heavily weighted towards dog stories. On the contrary, they’ve barely had a mention. However a few recent instances in our doggy household I think give me licence to write about them again at last.

Our dear Archie, love-on-legs spaniel who would probably be on Ritalin if he were a child, hurt himself on the beach last weekend and frightened the daylights out of us with his whimpering and his obvious pain.

The vet diagnosed only ‘soft tissue damage’ to the hip, prescribing Rimadyl and ............ rest!

REST?

Archie is 8 and still doesn’t know about rest as something you might have to do on a long term basis. He was 'surrendered' in Bairnsdale at 11 months of age for 'persistent puppy-like behaviour' and that's how he's continued to live his life. (They don't know what they've missed out on, those surrenderers).

So how to walk the other two and ‘rest’ Archie is a problem we’ve not solved as yet.

Meanwhile our Stella, part whippet, part 'brown dog', feels the cold quite severely. Lucky for her there are no such things as kennels on this property – well, not to sleep in anyway – but even inside with her hand-made puffy sleeping bag she still wakes me up several times a night to cover her up. So far a search for coats has not been very successful but a huge warehouse of doggy necessities caught my attention on the way up High St. Northcote yesterday and lo – an appropriate piece of sleepware was found for our Stella.

(Does she look as if she loves it yet? No?)

Many garments showed serious design flaws but this one is free of nasty lumpy seams and hard pieces of Velcro, so fingers crossed for us all sleeping the night through tonight. (This girl came via the RSPCA after being picked up as a puppy on the roadside in Ballarat so how she turned into a Princess-and-the-Pea-type gal is anyone’s guess.)

Our latest and oldest waif, Barney, (left) is unfazed by either of his housemates’ issues and still just wants to play. Every night. Dignity doesn't come into it. He was eight when we were given him by a neglectful but well-intentioned owner so Barney is on a determined mission to make up for lost time. He's thirteen now and shows no signs of flagging just yet.

Like many of our friends we suffer from the foolish belief that if we are excessively kind to our own animals it might somehow seep across to all those others who aren’t so lucky.

So if the words ‘kennel’, ‘chain’ or ‘no walk today’ are part of your household vocabulary – we need to talk.

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