Exhausting Hound

We’ve spent the afternoon up at Wells-next-the-Sea, taking Hound out onto the beach, and doing lots of throwing of tennis balls for the idiot creature.

As with November 5th, we don’t yet know what the new place will be like for fireworks at midnight, so it’s best to exhaust Her Ladyship so she sleeps through whatever does happen. Last year we took her to Caister-on-sea, which was incredibly windy, but this year it was Wells.

She’s still active at the moment, but the plan is that she’ll pretty much collapse and sleep soon, and through the rest of the night.

Fingers crossed, anyway.

Obsessive

Sometimes, Hound is truly bizarre.

Today, we’ve put up a new clock in the living room – Herself bought it a while back, but today’s when we got round to putting it up on the wall.

This evening, while lying on the sofa, Hound noticed the new addition, and started growling at it, then barking at it. She didn’t stop until I’d got up, taken the clock down, let her sniff it, and now all’s well.

But all in, it took her about ten minutes to notice the damn thing, once she was looking in that direction. Not bad, when it comes to an idiot hound, although when you take into account her borderline autism, I suppose it’s not overly surprising that she’s sensitive to changes in her environment.

Quietus

Sanity has returned to the house – guests have gone, the place is tidy again, and Hound is calm. She’s been fairly stressed with people around, not knowing what’s going on, so she’s been a barky pain in the arse since Saturday.

But now today she’s fast asleep (well, except when we get deliveries of either post, or parcels) and a lot quieter than she has been. She’s also eaten a whole bundle of food – again, with being stressed, she hasn’t eaten a lot all week without coughing it all back up again – and is generally back to being more settled.

So yes, all told, sanity has returned. For a while, anyway.

Second Layer

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, on Christmas Day Gladys started laying eggs.

So that’s two out of three now, and all’s good with the world.

Jabtastic

Today I’m working from home – and the first task of the day is getting Hound and Psycho Cat to the vets for their annual jabs. So that’ll be fun.

Still, at least it’ll mean that the job’s out the way. We’ve already had to put it off twice, so it’s now something we don’t have to remember again ’til next year. Yay.

Bird ‘Flu

In a fit of fantastic timing, within a fortnight of us buying The Girls, a farm was found to hae the H5N1 strain of bird ‘flu. Luckily it was about 20 miles away, so we fall well outside the 10km ‘surveillance zone’ that was put in place – and so also was the place that we’d bought The Girls from, which also made life a lot easier.

As it is, they’re settling in well in their new home. I still need to put up a bit of shelter over their food and water trays – we could leave them inside the coop, but for the moment haven’t done so. I’ll probably sort out some cover/shelter for them on Wednesday when I’m working from home.

Of course, if we’d been in this surveillance zone, the birds would have been supposed to be kept inside their coop (or outside so long as it was covered, and wild birds couldn’t get any access) along with their food and water, which isn’t a situation I’d be overly happy about. The coop we bought is actually suitable (apparently) for up to four birds, so it’s big enough, but still not something I’d have been happy about. As it is, we bought the chickens because we want them to trot about, even if “only” within the limits of their run, and had/have no desire to keep them confined further. Fortunately, we haven’t had to do this, but if we had I would’ve put up some tarpaulin (something we seem to have loads of) as cover, and still let them get on with their daily business.

We still haven’t decided whether to put ourselves on the DEFRA register of poultry owners – we don’t need to, as we’re nowhere near being commercial bird owners/dealers, nor do we have more than 50 birds (Bloody hell fifty birds in our place? That’d be a nightmare) but we could sign up voluntarily. It would mean that we get rapid and up-to-date information aout bird flu, but at the same time it means that DEFRA would know where to come in order to go through with a cull…

Still we’ll see. For the moment I think we’ll be sticking with how we’re currently doing it, as it all seems to be running smoothly so far. We moved the coop over the weekend as they’d covered their area of run during the two weeks we’ve had them – and there’s a lot more garden and veg patch for them to cover before we have to go back to the place they’ve already dealt with so I think they’ll be good for a fair while yet.

Bird Progress

We’ve had the chickens for a week now (and it looks like our timing may have been as piss-poor as ever – of which I’ll write more later. Turns out that for the moment we’re OK, well outside the 10km ‘surveillance zone’) and they seem to be settling in fairly well. They’re slowly learning to use their perch to sleep overnight, rather than the bloody nesting box, and we’ve (probably) still got a week before they start laying – that’s according to the people we bought them from, who should know rather more than we do on this subject at the moment.

All three seem to be OK though, and have been trotting about the run throughout the day, eating and drinking with no problem. I’ve got some odds and ends to do with them tomorrow when I’m actually at home during daylight hours (for the first time in nearly two weeks) including putting a cover over at least part of the run, so that food doesn’t get wet. And yes, take some photos of them as well.

Oh, and the names? Gladys, Flo, and Elsie. Or collectively “The Girls”. No particular reason – other than that all three are the names of our grandmothers. (One of mine shares the same name as Herself, so we’re not using that one, for obvious reasons) It seemed somehow apt.

Dry

Just in case anybody cares, No, we’re not in the areas of East Anglia expected to be hit by heavy flooding this morning.

We’re well inland, actually, and all should be fine. Mind you, it was feckin’ windy last night and this morning, although again no harm has been done to the place. We’d probably have lost the tarpaulin covering the front of the wood-store if I hadn’t had to go and check the chickens this morning, but other than that all’s well.

Mind you, I also think that I’ve left Psycho Cat outside this morning – I’m pretty sure he went outside, and I didn’t see him come back in – so we’ll have a very grumpy/cold cat when I get home this evening. Hey Ho, it’s his choice to go outside and not come back when called.

KFC

Well, so far the chickens seem to be settling in OK. It took a while for them to come out and explore the new run, but they’ve now done so, so I’m actually a lot happier. Yes, I’m sad like that (among many many other ways as well, of course)

Because of their reluctance to come out, I didn’t get the chance to get any photos of them yesterday, so that’ll have to wait a few days now, which is the downside of leaving before sun-up and not being home ’til sun’s gone down in the evening. The weekend’s looking pretty busy at the moment too, but I’m sure I’ll get the opportunity to take a couple of photos. That’s the plan, anyway.

So yes, new additions to the household, and so far all’s looking good. We’ll see how things work out.

Peace and Quiet

Yes, we can finally say that the house we bought was the right decision.

There’s been one or two firework displays that were audible, but nothing close by, and it’s been lovely. Hound’s been quiet, non-stressed, and hasn’t needed her usual (for Bonfire Night) tranquilisers at all. First time in five years that she hasn’t needed them, and that’s worthy of note in itself.

We’ve been out to Holkham beach today, which was lovely as well, but we haven’t needed to do the full Hound-exhaustion programme of previous years, which is another bonus.

Instead, she’s just laid around the house, asleep, and hardly reacting at all to fireworks. I think we had one or two barky fits, but that was it. And really, that makes this place ideal for us. Happy Day.

Snoozy Pooch

For whatever reasons, it’s obviously been a busy (and tiring) weekend for Hound. She’s currently fast asleep in her basket, with just the occasional wake-up and look-round thing going on.

It’s very sweet – and gives us both an excuse to do Not Much, so that Hound can snooze on. Not that we needed much of an excuse, to be honest.

Routine

I’ve commented many times before about the fact that Hound is distinctly autistic, and has what amounts to a very set routine to get her through the day. This has eased up slightly since we started her on the homeopathic pills (known colloquially round Chez Lyle as ‘Happy Pills’- it’s a pretty descriptive name, really) but she is still highly driven by her routines and patterns. A lot of the time it’s a pain in the arse, but at the same time it also gives us a good indicator when something’s wrong, because the pattern changes to her “not feeling well” one.

Anyway, she’s happier when everything is routine, and she knows what’s going on, and (I think most importantly) what’s likely to happen next. At the moment mornings, in particular, are a case in point for this. She still doesn’t actually like me leaving the house – despite plenty of knowledge that I will be coming back later – but so long as the morning follows her timetable pretty well, she’s OK with it.

The knock-on effect of this, though, is that it means I’ve also developed a kind of routine for the morning. In fairness, it’s probably no bad thing to be working on auto-pilot when it’s 5.30 in the morning. But I do find it interesting how easily I slip into a routine of my own – I’ve written before about the fact that despite the fact I like to think I’m pretty random, I do have a lot of bits of my life that fall into their own patterns, which I still find weird, but there we go.

As it is, though, it just makes life easier in the mornings to have that pattern – it means Hound still gets stressy when (for example) I put my bag by the front door, as it means I’m going to be leaving soon, but so long as I keep things fairly standard, she’s then fine when it comes time for me to lock up the back door, and go out the front.

It has to be said, sometimes I don’t know who’s more insane – us or Hound.

What’s that coming over the hill?

Last night, we got another reminder of just what a total fanny Hound can be.

The garden has a large number of frogs in it – no bad thing at all – and last night, a tiny one had made its way into the kitchen. When I say tiny, I mean one that’s a maximum of 2 or 3cm in size. That’s it.

Not that you’d believe it, if you’d seen Hound’s reaction. Total meltdown, panic, faffing about, whining, just not knowing what to do at all. If she’d have been able to speak, the conversation would’ve been something along the lines of “Look, look, there, I don’t know what it is, it’s a monster! Run! Run! Hide! It’s a monster!”

She is such a fanny.

Weekend

For what seems to be the first time in ages, we actually had a consistently good weekend.

It’s all been fairly domestic, getting a lot of stuff done in the garden and so on, but it’s been productive. On a practical basis, I even managed to put together a self-assembly Workmate-type bench without (too much) swearing. Always a good start.

Alongside that, I’ve sawed up one hell of a lot of wood to go into the wood-store for use over the autumn/winter, the garden’s been tidied up in general, (as have the veg-patch and greenhouse) yet more crap went to the local tip/recycling centre, we picked all the broad-bean crop (should be enough for four or five meals, all told) and yes, we just got a lot of stuff done.

Then yesterday evening we topped it off by taking Hound out to Wells-next-the-Sea, and letting her run round like a loon on the beach. The tide was all the way out, so there were huge expanses for her to run in – although obviously lots of other people had similar ideas about going to the beach once things had cooled down a bit, so it was still pretty busy. But it kept Hound happy, and it was a good way to round off the weekend.

Demanding

There are times when I truly want to strangle both our animals. This morning was a case in point.

Having been repeatedly kept awake by Hound drinking from her bottle during the night, I got up at my normal time of 5.30. Oh, lucky me. Stumble into the kitchen, where there’s Hound wanting to be let out, and Psycho Cat wanting to be let in. He must finally be settling in – that’s twice in the last few days where he’s gone out at night. But normally the window’s open, so he comes back in as and when he wants during the night – except last night Herself closed it. So Psycho Cat is pissed off.

Straight away, he starts yowling away, wanting food. It won’t stop ’til the food’s down, so that’s the first job. All the while accompanied by yowls. He literally won’t shut up ’til the food is placed in front of him, even when the mouthy little shit can see that I’m doing it.

And then as soon as the cat’s been done, the fucking dog starts up. It’s not fair, the cat’s been fed and I haven’t. Wah wah wah. So she gets her happy pills next (homeopathic pills that stop her from being quite such an irritating fuckbag most of the time) before I can even begin to think about my own breakfast.

When I’ve done my toast, I get tracked into the living room by Hound, who sits waiting for me to finish each slice of toast so she can have her last little corner of each slice. (Yeah, yeah, I know, we should wait ’til we’ve completely finished before giving her anything. Hey ho. Rod for our own backs, although it was put in place way before I came on the scene, although admittedly I’ve continued the tradition) Then she’s still hungry, so I feed her the half-bowl of dog biscuits that weren’t eaten last night.

Finally, when that’s done, Hound’s still hungry. So I get up to top up the bowl, during which the irritating little ballbag barks incessantly until told to sit down and shut up. Which, in fairness, she does.

Only then, because I’ve told her off, she decides she’s no longer hungry, and wanders off into the garden, with that look of “Ha! That’ll teach you, human.” in her face.

Bastards.

Nervous Wreck

I just got this message from Herself, who’s at home today, decorating…

“Just had thunder and huge flash of lightning. Things went fizz, and we now have a powercut. Hound is beside herself. I’m now sitting on the bed. Dog dived underneath, and the bed is almost shaking.”

Hound is such a big fanny it’s unreal.

Exterior

This morning, thankfully, it’s a nice day. The living room is in chaos, as we’re midway through doing the floor tiling, and then today Herself is working on doing some of the initial decorating work in there.

Which means that it’s currently 6am, and I’m sat out in the garden, connected on a wireless network, with birds singing, a cock crowing, a Poxy Hound barking at anything that moves (and wanting me to play with her), and bright sunlight, in a garden packed with trees and rose bushes.

It’s a massive change from even the previous place, let alone the places I lived in in Manchester.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

Comeuppance pt. 2

Following on from Psycho Cat’s fun events on Monday night, he didn’t go out at all after dark last night. He’s OK going out in daylight, but whatever happened on Monday has definitely shaken the little git up a bit.

I don’t know if another cat has already marked our garden as it’s territory – in two months of being up at the place on a regular basis, I’ve never even seen another cat- but if so then we’re going to have battle royal at some point. As it is, though, it could equally have been something non-cat that had a go at him – whatever it was, it certainly scared the little sod. Which, in my opinion, is no bad thing – the psychotic bugger needed some humility battered into him at some point.

Comeuppance

Conventional wisdom dictates that when you move, if you have a cat you should spend at least a week, and preferably a fortnight with the cat confined to the house, so that it learns its new environment before being let out into the world, so that it knows where to come back to.

In our house, conventional wisdom takes a back-seat to sanity.

Last night, following two nights of continuous whining and yowling from Psycho Cat wanting to go out, we let him out. Well, I opened a window for him. He’s already been out for a couple of short forays into the garden (again, due to perpetual whining/yowling about wanting to be OUT.) – the forays were cut short due to huge dollops of rain/wind, which he wasn’t keen on.

Anyway, within minutes, there came the most godawful yowling from outside. My first thought was that Psycho Cat had jumped from the window onto the patio below, done something stupid, and broken a leg. That’s how bad the yowling was. Definite ‘cat in pain’. (The second thought was ‘shit, it’s half eleven on a Bank Holiday Monday, where the fuck are we going to find a vet’ and the third was ‘If he’s broken his leg, how the hell are we going to get him into his cage when he’s in pain? I’m not carrying the psychotic little shit in a blanket’) The noise continued while I got dressed to go outside and see what the hell was going on. (“got dressed” in this instance meant ‘put on trousers, t-shirt and boots’- which is probably more of a mental image than you needed.)

I got outside- still with the yowls- and hunted around. Turned out, Psycho Cat was hiding under the oil tank. When he decided it was ‘safe’, he dashed out, across the patio, and up through the still-open window. Filthy, of course. Herself closed up the windows and doors so he couldn’t get out again, and I had a look round the garden to see if anything else was visible. There were a couple of significant clumps of white fur around the place, but nothing else visible.

Going back inside, Psycho Cat was OK, but most definitely nervous and shaken up. Something had had a go at him, though, for sure. He’s had a couple of bites on his sides, and both front legs/paws have some damage to them – one was bleeding a bit, and he’s being delicate around the other. He’s OK in general, and we’ll keep an eye on the bites over the next few days.

As yet, we still don’t know what happened. We didn’t hear the noise of another cat at all, so it may have been something non-feline that had him. We’ve seen stoats in the vicinity (who could, I suppose, have seen him as a big white rabbit) and I’m quite certain there are foxes about, but I would have thought that a fox would’ve done more damage. And of course, it still could’ve been another cat- just one we didn’t hear. (Although usually you hear cats doing the territorial yowly thing before conflict actually happens) Whatever it was, though, it was bloody fierce. It kicked the crap out of a cat not known for being frightened of anything, and left him cowering under the oil tank.

Oh, and he didn’t leave the bed for the rest of the night, slept safe and warm between Herself and I.

Conspiracy Revisited

Thankfully, last night both animals slept through. No hassles at all.

Of course, if only one of them had been a pain in the arse, I’d perhaps be less convinced that they’re acting together to deprive me of sleep. Now it just looks planned…

Conspiracy

There are times when I absolutely hate our animals. This weekend has been one of those times.

During the day, we’ve been up at the house working – Hound was with us for half of Saturday before coming home, and all of Sunday. Yet still at 5am each morning she’s started barking and being a pain in the arse until I’ve had to get up to find out what her problem is. Each time, it’s nothing. In fact, the only thing I can think of is that because of the conservatory on the house, the dawn chorus sounds really loud when I go into the living room, and maybe she’s barking at that.

However, with Psycho Cat it’s just that he’s a pain in the arse. He’s decided that he now needs to go back outside at about 4am, and because this place doesn’t have a cat-flap (and oh, man is that high on the purchase list for the new place!) he just sits and yells until I wake up to let him out. At 4am. Without fail.

About the only positive side is that if I simply strangle either of them, the odds are I won’t go to jail for it…

Shaved

Psycho Cat went in to the vets today – over the last couple of weeks his fur had been getting increasingly matted and his normally white fur was rapidly going grey. So yes, it was time for him to get his annual shave.

Even with a new vet, they still wouldn’t do what I really want, which is to shave the mucky little sod like a poodle – but he’s definitely been tidied up by them.

However, because he’s also such a psychotic little shit, he has to have a general anaesthetic, and now he’s home he’s like a bear with a sore head. Well, a very violent and grumpy bear with a sore head. He’s emphatically unhappy, and Hound is treading very carefully.

He’s come out of it all OK, though – it’s just he’s now very patchy…

Dog O’Clock

I mentiioned a couple of days ago that Hound usually sends us to bed in the evenings. She’s a bizarrely time-driven animal, although I’ve no idea how she does it. Maybe we could donate her to medical science… No, maybe not.
Anyway, she has a pretty good routine sorted out in her own mind – roughly 7.30-8am is Walk Time, She usually eats at about 6, 6.15 in the evening, once we’re both home, and it used to be that there was another walk in the evenings, approximately 8.30pm, but over the winter we’ve slacked off a bit (OK, a lot) on that one, partly through the fact that it’s bloody cold, amd partly because Attleborough is crap when it comes to dog-walking areas, so it’s not currently in her head too much. Once we move, the odds are it’ll be back on the agenda. Joy.
Finally, at about half ten in the evening, she’ll start standing and staring at us, both ears pointing straight up. That means she’s decided it’s bedtime. No messing about, half ten = “Go To Bed”. If we ignore her – say, if there’s something we want to see on TV – she’ll just start barking at us. And barking. And barking. It’s no use arguing, Hound has decided it’s bedtime, and she won’t shut up until we agree.
Bloody sheep, that’s all we are to her. Not surprising really, as she’s a collie, but all the same, I’m sure that’s how she sees us sometimes. Things to be herded around, to do Hounds bidding.
She’s a pain in the arse, it has to be said. But the fact that she’s so time-driven is also a kind of fascinating thing. We don’t do anything to give her hints about what time it is, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. In fact, you can wait until she’s started giving you the ‘time for bed stare’, then check your watch. It’ll be half ten.
Hell, she even manages to handle the clocks going forward. And that is really impressive…

Pissing Down

It looks like I actually got home just in time. Since getting back, it’s been pissing down, and we’ve now had thunder and so on too.

Which means that Hound is fairly stressed, and is currently laying on my feet, so I can’t go anywhere. All very domestic, but not great when you really need a piss…

Bullying in Action

Last night, Psycho Cat came in out of the rain, to be faced by Hound, renowned for trying to bully Cat whenever possible.

However, Psycho Cat was not in the mood – so he sauntered past Hound, and on the way past, bashed Hound on the nose, and stalked off, with Hound running after him, utterly shocked at being battered by the Cat.

It was enormously bloody funny.

Fencing

When we moved into the current place, we realised that the landlords had a rather different idea of what a “dog-friendly” or “enclosed” garden was than we did. By which I mean that we discovered that the fence and hedges had a number of holes in them that would allow Hound to explore the gardens of our neighbours.

She’s had a great time exploring, as you can imagine. About a month ago, we bought some wire fencing and posts, and put them up in the places where she was getting through to the neighbours.

So she found other places. Cowbag.

Over the last two weekends, we’ve bought more bloody wire fencing and fenceposts. The entire side and bottom of the garden is now pooch-proofed, and the other side is a stream, so she’s not going to escape that way. Well, she’d fucking better not, anyway.

So we’ve spent about £100 on extra fencing and posts. Of course, we can take it with us when we move to the new place, but it’s still a pain in the arse at the moment.

Still, it’ll be interesting to see where Hound escapes to next.

Cat Fun

Ah yes. another tale of the Psycho Cat.

A while back, the stupid little fluffy git fell off the kitchen worktop, and bashed his eye on a cupboard knob on the way down. It blew up like a football (well, a cat-sized football) immediately, and resulted in a feline black-eye that took about a week to recede. But after that all was well,

He came in earlier this week, and the same eye was all squinty and closed. It wasn’t causing him pain or anything, and in fact he didn’t even object to us touching the area around the eye. And that is how we knew he really wasn’t well. So Herself took him to meet the local vet.

He had damaged his eye, but it’d got better. Then he did something else to it – obviously no-one knows what – and now it’s ulcerated. Roughly the size of half a 5p piece. (probably about 5mm across, for non-UK readers) Nasty, in other words.

So we now have eyedrops for the fuzzy little fucker. He’s supposed to have them twice a day. This has led to some great fun, as you imagine. Psycho Cat is NOT a happy cat. And because of this, he’s stalking the bed at night, waiting for any sections of flesh to fall within range of his claws and/or teeth. My leg looks like a pin-cushion.

Animal Warfare

An email just received from Herself…

“Our stupid hound disturbed the cat having a number 2 in his litter tray. He runs out and promptly poos in her basket!!! Now that is what I call karma!! The cat is snickering, the dog is beside herself and the washing machine is busy!!!!”

Sometimes you just can’t make it up…

Audrey

We’ve spent the morning sorting the house out a bit more, the afternoon taking Hound over to Wels-next-the-Sea, we’re now back, it’s pissing it down with rain, and “Little Shop of Horrors” is on TV.

It’s been a good day.

Sleeping Positions

Sometimes I truly despair of Psycho Cat.

Every week or two, he changes the place where he’s sleeping – usually he ends up gravitating back to sleeping on the bed in the end, but he does change what he’s doing every so often, and he’s a complete pain in the arse when he does so. Recently, he started sleeping in the laundry basket – on clean laundry, rather than dirty (Of course, he’s a cat) – but has now changed location again, and Herself sent me a photo of it…

Welcome

Got home this evening, walked through the front door, and Hound was wanting me to go and chuck a ball round outside for her. Hardly even a chance to put my bag down before she’s there, wagging away, wanting me to play.

Then I took her out for a walk, and all was well with the world – in canine terms, anyway.

Nice to be welcomed home, and wanted, isn’t it?

Back to Normality 3

Oh yeah, and the other real sign of coming back to domestic life for the weekends is that Hound wants to be walked as soon as she hears sounds of movement from us. And of course she has no real concept of weekends – so 7am through the week equates with also being 7am on the weekend.

Urgh.

Footwarmer

One thing I’m discovering I quite like about being based at home is that I get to spend some more time with the idiot Hound.

Currently I’m at my desk, and she’s asleep on my feet. And has been for most of the day. I don’t quite know what we’ve done to knacker her out (or maybe it’s just normal Hound behaviour, but we don’t usually see it) but she’s been zonked for most of the day, with the exception of when we have had people delivering stuff to the door. (Which has been several times, due to Herself having gone bananas on EBay)

The only real downside of Hound sleeping on my feet is that she’s resting her head on my right foot, and it’s now completely numb. (As is her head, but we’ll gloss over that) And every time I try to move it, she growls in her sleep. Which, while very funny to watch, is still quite distracting.

Walking

Of course, with the house now on the market, and people coming round to view it, Hound thinks it’s Christmas.

Every time someone has come round for a viewing, she gets taken out for a walk. So far as she’s concerned, it’s Heaven.

Pets

You know, it’s funny – despite the fact that she can be an absolute Pain in the Arse, I do actually like having Hound around.

I never used to be a dog person really. My parents always preferred cats, so I grew up with Siamese cats, and never really entertained the idea of having a dog. It grew on me as an idea over the years, and then when I was in Manchester I got two pups, and loved having them around. In the end one got given away to a good home, and the other one had to be put to sleep. I was there when the vet did it, held her as her heart stopped, and it put me off having a pet again for a good while.

But since being down here with Herself, I’ve gotten very used to Hound, as well as her idiosyncracies. Most mornings now I take her out for a walk, and we also do another one later on, and that’s usually a good thing.

Yesterday I worked from home (and at the moment it looks like I might be doing a lot more of that in the near future) and one thing I’ve enjoyed is just having Hound asleep on my feet while working, or lying down beside the desk, fast asleep, dreaming, and yipping in her dream – very, very funny.

Yeah, sure, she can be a huge pain in the bum, but at the same time I wouldn’t give her up for anything.

Isn’t it strange how things work out sometimes?

Knackered

Ah, the joys of overnight thunderstorms. Three o’clock this morning, and Hound starts scratching the walls, going crackers – yep, it’s lightning. After half an hour of just the lightning flashes, then comes the thunder, and one high-strung dog goes orbital. She ends up sleeping – well, lying – under the bed, trying to burrow to Australia to get away from it.

Then came the rain. She was OK with that – and it was wonderful, feeling the way the air temperature just dropped like a stone as the rain fell. Absolutely fantastic.

By 5am Hound was calm(ish) again, and we managed to get back to sleep. For a while…

Grouchy

Don’t expect much out of me today. My brain is currently only responding to commands with “Urgh! Fuggoff!”, having had one of the shittiest nights in a while.

Herself was away last night, staying at her sisters before going to a course/ meeting thing today. All well and good. Except, of course, it meant that Hound was utterly disoriented and didn’t know what the shit was going on, with someone missing from the house. (Talk about autistic animals, I tell you) As a result, Hound was hyperactive all night, continually bouncing on the bed, wanting to know where Herself was, waking me up, barking uselessly, waking me up, scratching the floors and carpets, waking me up, being a pain, waking me up – I’m sure you’re spotting the pattern now.

So I had a shit night, and Hound will now sleep her way through the day, as normality has been restored. (i.e. we’re both out of the house all day) I’m half tempted to just keep ringing the house phone every hour – she hates it – and waking her up, so she can see how I feel. Bastard.

Altering Attitudes

This morning something quite special happened. Absolutely irrelevant to anyone else, but still, sod it, I’m going to write a little bit about it.

I’ve been with Herself now for heading towards 2 years, (about 21 months currently, if anyone cares about accuracy) and living with her now for just over a year (about 14 months, ditto). In all that time, Hound has been getting used to me, and allowing me to do more stuff with her – it started with walks, following commands, feeding her, playing with her (well, being the primary ball-thrower etc.) and that kind of thing.

Again I should point out, feeding her is actually quite a big issue – she suffers from a throat condition called Megaoesophagus, which means we have to feed her dry food by hand. The Megaoesophagus means she can’t swallow properly, all the nerves in her throat are knackered, so she chokes on normal food, has to have a water bottle (like the one on a hamster cage, only bigger), and so on.

All this time, though, she’s always gone back to Herself for affection. I don’t mind – because of the throat condition and a bundle of other things, trust is a big issue for Hound, and she’s also so routine-driven she might as well be autistic. So of course a “new” person was always going to be a bit of a shock to the system/routine, and these things take time to figure out. Particularly for dogs.

Anyway, and to get back to the point of this post, this morning – for the first time ever – Hound actually came over to me for a stroke, and a scratch behind the ears. She even rolled over and let me scratch her belly. And all this got witnessed by herself too.

So yes, I’m actually pretty chuffed. No good reason really, but all the same, I’m happy about it.

Tatty Cat

Way back in April last year, you may recall that Psycho Cat went to the vets to get the matted bits of fur shaved. As I said then, he’s a mucky little bastard – as yet I’ve still never seen him actually clean himself. I think he reckons that the dirty fur falls out, and that’s what keeps him *ahem* “clean”.

Come springtime, his fur gets all matted up into the feline equivalent of dreadlocks. It’s utterly revolting – if he’s deigned to let you stroke him (invariably at night, in bed, on dark sheets, so the white fur left afterwards looks as bad as possible) then you suddenly find your fingers caught in this lump of claggy fur. Utterly vile. And of course it makes it look like we don’t care for the crufty little git – other people on the street must be on the verge of calling the RSPCA half the time. (Mind you, if the RSPCA tried catching him, they’d need chainmail gloves, and faceshields)

Anyway, springtime has come, his fur’s disgusting, so today it was off to the vets for his de-matting. AKA “shaving the little git”. This involves a full anaesthetic for the cat, who is such a thug that when we make appointments for him at the vets, a bright red flashing warning comes up on their system about “teeth and claws” – the first time they tried it, the woman doing it needed stitches and a tetanus jab. Since then, the warning’s been in place. Can’t think why…

Of course, because of the general anaesthetic, we can’t feed him for 12 hours beforehand. So from 4am this morning he’s been starving, making as much noise as possible to get attention and get us to feed him. Not great on my first day back to work post-holiday. I could’ve throttled the little sod once he started running around under the bed and scratching the carpet to wake us up. But no, I was good.

I’m looking forward to seeing what they’ve done to him this time – I’ve asked again for a full poodle-esque trim, in the vain hope that he might be ashamed of the state he’s in, and maybe tidy himself up a bit, the dirty little fucker. I doubt they’ll do it though…

Paper Tiger

Recently, Hound has discovered that ripping paper (or cardboard, or plastic) to shreds is a very satisfying experience for a dog. It also helps that it normally gets some attention, but she tends to do it when she’s either bored, or feeling like being naughty. It’s one of those things where it’s also actually quite difficult to tell her off, because in general it’s quite funny to watch, and she doesn’t do it to anything useful, only to items that have been discarded.

Last night, however, all went quiet. We can only surmise she was bored. Anyway, we went upstairs to find the landing covered in shreds of paper. She’d found a brand-new roll of (unused) bog-roll, and had summarily shredded the lot. Everywhere.

*Sigh*

Chill-Factor

I must be abso-friggin’-lutely barmy.

That was my thought process at 7am this morning, walking Hound round the local park. She’d been a pain in the arse all night, primarily because Herself was out last night, so Hound didn’t get to see her. We also had Herself’s boss staying the night, which meant Hound was supposed to be on best behaviour.

Of course, that was never going to happen. She sodded about all day, and was her general pain-in-the-arse self. Mind you, so was Psycho Cat. He took every opportunity possible to wind up Hound, waggling his furry tangled backside in her face as he went out the door, and we had the full Mexican Standoff between them on the stairs, Cat glaring at Hound at the base of the stairs, and Hound hovering halfway down, not wanting to back off, but too scared to go down and run the gauntlet of Cat teeth and claws.

So this morning, rather than adding to the stress levels of all involved, I took Hound out before Herself’s Boss got up. And stayed out ’til she’d left for work. 50 minutes. In temperatures hovering around 0°C. Oh joy, oh lucky me.

Yes, I must be abso-stuffin’-lutely cracked. There’s no other explanation for it…

Moggy – Finalé

Well, the cat is shaved. (And please, no jokes about shaved pussies (hello Google) – they’ve all been done already)

Not entirely, which is most disappointing – but he’s decidedly patchy. And epically pissed off. Which is why I haven’t yet been able to get a photo of the little sod’s bald bits.

Personally, I think he’d have actually looked far better just done as a poodle instead of the “hacked to death by a YTS trainee hairdresser on her first day” look that the vet has opted for. Still, the cat’s mortified by this turn of events, so I suppose it might still all turn out for the best…

UPDATED : Got the photos…

Before : After :

Moggy

I don’t write much about Herself’s psychotic cat. Most of the time no-one would believe the stuff the little git does anyway.

However, one thing that is beyond dispute is that this cat is a dirty sod. I’ve never seen it in a cat before,but he just doesn’t clean himself up at all. Most of the time this isn’t too bad, but come spring he goes outside and sleeps under cars, and generally ends up oily, dirty, and – frankly – bloody manky. At the moment his fur is almost in dreadlocks in places – utterly matted.

We’d made an appointment for the little sod to go to the vets and get the matted bits removed. Yes, the vets need to do it. He’s a dangerous wee beastie – the people who read Mike Ripley’s “Angel” books will understand if I say that this thing would give Springsteen a run for his money. To get sorted out he needs to be anaesthetised, and then they can trim/shave the fur.

Of course, this means that the cat can’t have food for 12 hours or so before going in – and he wasn’t in in time to eat last night before 8pm. So he’s had no food all night, and thus keeps us awake by yowling for food, plucking carpet, attacking beds, anything to get attention and thus get food. But no, we were good, and didn’t feed the annoying little sod.

By morning though, I have to say I wasn’t awake. Residue from yesterday’s joys plus lack of sleep equated with twuntdom.

I let the bloody cat out. As Scary would say, “Oh spoons“.

So we’ve now got to go through it all again tonight. I may just nail the little sod’s feet to the floor, and superglue his lips together. Alternatively, I’m going to ask the vet to shave the cat in the style of a poodle. If everyone laughs at him for three months while the fur grows again, he may learn to clean himself up…