World class cheese

Parr of our cheese feast!

Shaking Olive Trees

It's olive harvest time of year and the trees are getting stripped. The olive groves are full of people either hitting trees with sticks - or shaking them with branch shaking machines, which are the sort of size of strimmers, but with a sort of clamp that clamps onto the tree and shakes. It must be quite uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time.

We walk through an olive grove in the mornings and noticed that one had been completely stripped in a day - so they certainly get a move on when they've started!

Drums!

My least favourite celebration has just started which is the night time drummers who walk round the village for two hours, starting at about 4.30.

There are some excellent traditions - and some that should be left to die out - and I am of the firm opinion that night time drumming should be one that is left to die out! It didn't happen when we first moved here because the drums were too old - but someone decided that it was a good idea to make new drums.

Two things happen, either I fall asleep well, only to wake up by the loud drumming which is exceedingly loud outside the house, thinking that we're at war or something - or I don't sleep at all, because I don't want that sort of shock.

Apparently, it's only me that thinks this way though, as there are whole hoards of people following the drummers around (in a good way - not in a 'when noone's looking we'll take the drums off them' sort of way).

It gets very noisy because all the dogs in the village join in - ours are actually quite good - they would rather stay snuggled up in front of the remnants of the fire than go out into the cold and bark. But there's a fair bit of howling and barking going on.

Hey ho - only another 7 days to go!

Millie goes for a walk

Here is millie coming back from her morning walk, she is in her special Millie bag. Ian is noe known as the dog wearer.

Adventure playground!

Just finished an adventure playground for Gary and Barry! That will keep them busy for a while, plenty for them to chew and nibble!

Celebrating the Extra Hour

We celebrated the extra hour this morning by going out for a walk, first time for a while as it still gets hot in the afternoon, but it's dark until so late in the morning. We took Tinkerbelle, Pixie and Millie and did a circular walk, which was nice. Millie was quite good, just being carried for a bit of it, she takes a bit of coaxing but she did walk on the lead for quite a long way, which is something she generally doesn't do very well.

We've lost their bells so I will have to look for some new ones. They are quite expensive, as they are proper sheep bells (but for baby lambs), but they are so worth getting compared with little decorative bells. It helps us make sure that Millie is keeping up, but also helps her as she can here Pixie and get her bearings from her.

I'll probably look at adjusting Horace's harness for Pixie or Millie, as I don't think he will ever wear it. It's a major feat for him to go from one side of the room to the other, so I don't think he'll ever enjoy the big scary world outside. He's just started to make his way over to Ian's side of the room in the morning. This morning he made his way across in one go, which is quite unusual, as sometimes it takes a few goes for him to make it across. He loves nothing more than to snuggle under a duvet, so my plan is to make him a little duvet nest that he can snuggle in and which we can move around. The challenge, however, is to keep all the others out, as Horace currently has two little baskets, which there are often other dogs and cats in and we find him laying on the floor.

Tinkerbelle has finished going back to the vet. She's pretty much her normal self. She's not eating well, but I think she is probably eating like she always has done. She's never really been one for tucking into every meal. She is supposed to be eating a low phosphorus diet to help her anemia, but happily pasta is apparently low in phosphorus so I think we're doing OK there.

Still very dry. We did have a couple of days of rain, but it was more April showers than 'proper' rain. I guess it won't be too far away now though...

Ian wearing his birthday headphones

Tinkerbelle goes back to the vets, cheese feast (and still no rain)

Sounds familiar?

Tinkerbelle went back for a checkup and she's got tablets to take for another week, but I have a horrible feeling that now she is becoming fussy with her eating.

She's never been a big eater, always convinced that all the others are having better food than her, so by the time she's checked them all out, she's gone off her own.

The problem is that I know she is a senior dog now, and I also know that she has the start of chronic anemia, so I don't want to 'starve' her back to normal food. As I mentioned before, the only thing that she will eat is pasta and frankfurter - and she'll quite happily eat the pasta without the frankfurter. I guess that pasta isn't the end of the world, and I could add some veggies in there for vitamins, but I wish she would eat proper dog food so I can monitor what she's eating.

And this is causing problems with Pixie as well. I feed Tinkerbelle and Horace at the same time. Although I have Horace pretty much under control now with holding the food to his nose when he eats, he still manages to scatter food around if he can. And Tinkerbelle drops food when she is eating, so where I feed them is often librally scattered with Horace and Tinkerbelle's food. Pixie now comes in to hoover up, and then won't eat her own food! So it's difficult to keep an eye on her too - we'll need to come up with a better plan if this continues.

We've just finished Ian's birthday cheese feast! I must admit that when we go to the cheese shop and exchange a wad of money for a wedge of cheese, I always think 'we spent THAT much on cheese' - but it does last and last! This time it seemed to have lasted longer because one of the cheese kept growing. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing.

The pickle I made with our own produce and that of our scrumping trip I think was one of the best I made. Shame it is unrepeatable - as it's simply a case of chopping everything I have to hand into pieces and stewing it all up in vinegar and sugar! So it depends on our scrumping trip as to what this year's pickle contains!

And still no rain! It's the big Feria in Zafra this last weekend and this week - so they will be glad that there isn't any rain - but the weather's surely got to break soon...

Shingles, Tinkerbelle and Rain (or lack of)

Ian has been suffering from the shingles for the past week or so. He actually spent the afternoon of his birthday at the hospital as the pain was so bad, and at that time the rash hadn't really started so it wasn't clear what it was. But the rash started so he popped down to the doctor and the doctor confirmed it was shingles and sent him home with some tablets to help stop the shingle process and to relieve the pain. Ian suffered a lot from the pain in his back to start, but has found that by moving around during the day and changing chairs, the pain is less at night.

Tinkerbelle has still not been eating well so we went back to the vet yesterday. It is possible that she has become fussy - but I can't help thinking this is unlikely. She will eat pasta, but nothing else, so I think if she was fussy it would be for more exciting food than pasta! Also, I've noticed the food falls from her mouth. So I wondered if she has problems biting - it's sort of similar to Horace and the tendons aren't properly formed in his jaw which is why he doesn't eat well - which is what made me think of whether there was something that was stopping her eating well. She can sort of hoover up pasta, in a way she can't other food.

But they didn't find anything and checked to make sure that there were no other problems with her teeth. She does have a lump under her eye, so that might make things uncomfortable. So there's not a lot really that we can do other than try to encourage her to eat more than just pasta. She is eating quite a lot of pasta, so she's not getting underweight - but it's plain pasta so she'd not getting a lot of vitamins or other nutrients. If there's no physical reason then I guess we'll have to get strict about moving her back onto balanced food, but I'll wait until this lump under her eye has gone. It's pea sized and moves around, the vet called it a ganglion.

And still no rain! My predictions of the rain arriving at the fiesta were unfounded, and it's the big Feria in Zafra this week and next, and it looks like there's no rain coming then. I haven't seen the resevoir at Llerena, but I imagine that's pretty empty now, as it was low last year and we didn't have a very wet winter. Of course, when we do get rain, it will be about 10 minutes in before we start moaning about how wet and cold it is!

Tinkerbelle goes to the dentist

Tinkerbelle wasn't eating well so we took her to the vet. She had a tooth infection and had to have her teeth cleaned and a tooth remove. She had to stay in over night as they also found that she had anemia and wanted to give her a treatment. Her anemia is chronic, not related to her not eating, and she has special food. But she isn't really up top eating much as I think the tooth removal and cleaning was quite painful.

Hopefully she'll be back up to speed soon. I was quite relieved that it was a tooth thing that was stopping her eating and not something worse.

It's the fiesta this weekend and my fine predictions about rain starting now are unfounded. Still no rain on the horizon....

Scrumping!

We celebrate Ian's birthday by scrumping figs. I guess we could say we foraged for them, except for the fact we are in someone's olive grove. BUT we do know that they don't pick the figs so we don't feel too bad!

This year, we celebrated early and scrumped some almonds too. Again, we know that these don't get picked because we see them still on the tree when we pick asparagus in the spring.

So we filled a bag with figs, a small bag with almonds, picked our own harvest of the smallest apples in the world (we will be picking the smallest pomogranates in the world soon too - they are so tiny I might make them into earrings) and our grapes which had started turning into saltanas and I made up a batch of chutney with it all (except the almonds). So we are ready for the cheese feast that we are looking forward to for Ian's birthday!

I can see the weather forecast through to the 14th, and still no rain, so imagine that it is going to come with a  force during the fiesta next weekend...                  

Back on the road again, but still no rain...

Well, the bit arrived for the car, the nice people at the garage fixed it and we went to the MOT centre yesterday to be retested - and the car passed for another year. Hooray!

The process was quite painless. You don't need an appointment for a retest. They do the appointments at half hour intervals and then do the retests when the appointments have been done. I suppose there might be a long wait if a load of people wanting their cars retested came at the same time, but we were in and out almost instantly.

The long awaited rain didn't come to anything. Well, I guess technically it did rain, but we say that if we can count the spots of rain on the patio, then it doesn't count! However, they did have heavy rain in Llerena, so it was obviously very localized.

I think that both Charlie and Horace have just had their one year birthdays. Charlie doesn't show much signs of slowing down, still spends most of her waking hours running round in circles. And Horace remains Horace. Yesterday he nearly made his way over to Ian's side of the living room, but then he came scurrying back. Horace has his own little area and sticks to it - which is fine.

Our grape harvest this year isn't as successful as last year. We seem to have a harvest of saltanas!

Still no car, but rain is on the horizon

So we still have no car! It's been four weeks. Ian could have bought the bits from the UK, but it would have been more expensive - and we still wouldn't have had the right tool to fit it. So while it's been frustrating, having the bits and not being able to fit them would probably have been more frustrating!!

The main concern has been the dog's medication, but now we've found we can buy it from the chemist that's actually a better solution.

But the good thing is that the MOT will start from when the car passes. So in effect we'll be getting a few weeks 'free'.

Rain is forecast for tomorrow - first time for absolutely ages. And it looks like a storm, so we will check drains etc first, to make sure we don't have any flooding.

Still no car and no rain :(

We're still waiting for a thing for the car. It's August and things are slow during this month - but it's a good job we've got two months to get it fixed!

It doesn't really effect us too badly as we don't really go anywhere other than to the vet, and while the animals are well, we're not making any vet trips. We know we can get their heart meds from the pharmacy, and I've taken Horace off of his medication, so hopefully we'll have the car back on the road by the time we need to go back to the vet with one of them.

Ian will have to cycle into Llerena next week to pay some money into the bank - but that's the first time we'll have really missed the car. Good job the weather's warm and the cold water is coming out hot as I don't think he'd like to carry a gas bottle back on his bike! Although we could get it delivered to the house - after nearly 13 years, you'd have thought that was something we'd got sorted by now!

I took Horace off his medication as I think that was what the vet was going to do anyway. We'd been reducing the dose bit by bit with a view to stopping. The medication didn't have any effect - but I wasn't expecting it to. Well, didn't have any positive effect, I do think it slowed him down a little. He's been very skippy and playful since he's been off the medication.

Horace will be a year old now, and we've had him for nine months. I think by now, if we didn't know there was something wrong with him, we'd have come to the conclusion there was something wrong with him - if you know what I mean! He is still like a puppy. He plays like a puppy, skips around like a puppy, eats his food like a messy puppy... Although I do have his eating under control now. I hold his bowl right up under his nose so he can't get distracted while eating. He still drops bits around because of the problem with his jaw, and seems to have problems finding his food in the bowl, but at least we're not stood there for hours while he skips in and out of his food, scattering it everywhere - and then skipping off because he's forgetten what he's supposed to be doing.

I've noticed the things that the vet was talking about with Horace. I don't think it's because it's got worse - but just that I am looking for them. He falls over on one side when he goes round in circles, I think it's his back left leg. The vet said that his little brain's signals don't get as far as his back left leg, which is why he falls over going in one direction

Horace is very sweet and we are the right house for him. But I can't help thinking how awful it would have been if he'd gone to a family or someone who wanted a dog that they could do things with. Even our blind dogs can go for walks and will happily run off the lead. But we could never do that with Horace. He knows his name or perhaps the sound of our voices, but he doesn't come to us. He wouldn't walk on a lead - not without traumatising him. He does play, but he plays Horace games which are games played to his rules which only he understands.

Charlie is a year old too - and is the most unrelaxing do EVER! When we are sat outside in the evening, the night is punctuated by the sounds of her foot steps as she runs round and round the table ensuring we don't wander off. It's just exhausting watching her!

And, still no rain! We have a yellow heat warning for the next three days and no sign of any rain...

15 Years!

It was our 15 year wedding anniversary on Thursday. It took us a bit of time to work it out, but we both agreed on 15 years. Despite having to work out how many years it is, it still feels as though we are newly wed - which I guess is a good thing :)

Unfortunately the car bit isn't here yet and we hadn't stocked up on cheese and wine for a cheese feast. We did, however, have an avacado and brie, so we had toasted avacado and brie sandwiches, and pink wine with the addition of fizzy soda to make 'cava', which was a nice way to celebrate.

We're also out of gas now, and while I think we'd be unlucky to get stopped between here and the swimming pool where we can buy gas, given that luck generally works against us, we haven't tempted it. Happily the weather is so warm that the water is coming out of the cold tap hot, well if not hot certainly very warm.

The most serious thing has that we have run out of heart tablets for Millie and Tinkerbelle. After making all sorts of plans for getting into the vet, driving up back lanes only, or with Ian cycling part of the way, or hitching a lift... we found out we could buy them at the chemist. Which we did. And while they are not expensive tablets anyway, it worked out significantly cheaper buying them from the chemist as we bought in bulk. So that's a good thing.

Hopefully we'll have the car working again this week. Other than not having nice cheese, gas and heart tablets, it's not been too much of an inconvenience as we rarely use it, but it's still nice to have it just in case!

Ian found a big spider yesterday and learned that tarantula spiders are found in Andalucia. Hopefully this wasn't one that had travelled north for it's holiday!

Annual Outing

Last week we had our annual outing to the MOT centre. Unfortunately, Ian's attempts at gluing the car together didn't work and the car failed it's MOT :(

Probably because it was dripping fuel on the head of the man that stood in the pit checking the underneath of the car.

We have two months to get it fixed, but can't use the car in the meantime, other than to go to the workshop and back - so I suppose if we needed to use the car urgently we'd just look for a workshop near where we needed to go and go there!

It was likely to cost a few hundred euro to mend in the garage, and that would put us in the position of do we spend that on the car or not. But happily after a bit of research, Ian found the bit he needed and has spoken to a mechanic in the village who knows someone else who can get the part for him - and lend him the wrenchey thing he will need to fix it.

So, if things go well, the car may be back on the road again later this week and for a lot less than we had feared.

It means we have missed Horace's vet appointment this week, but that was just a checkup so it won't matter.

Yesterday we had a tornado go through the patio. It bought with it a lot of plant debris, including grasses with evil pointy seeds which get into the dogs' coats and cause havoc. They have all got them so we're going to have to spend some time cutting them out of their fur. Rosey has them in her beard, so that will need to be trimmed too!

Horace Gets His Hair Cut

Horace went to the vet last week for a check up. He's stopping taking the medication, just taking a tiny dose now and he'll stop completely next week. While we were there I asked about getting his hair cut as last time they had to sedate him, but we didn't know about his condition then. I wanted to make sure that there wouldn't be a problem with them sedating him - but the vet said it would be no problem at all. I made a note of the sedation tablets they give him, so we will be able to cut his hair at home next time.

So he went back on Friday to get trimmed. Goodness me, when he came out he was tiny! I remember being surprised last time too. His fur is very thick and when it grows it really bulks him out and we forget what a tiny body there is underneath it all. What we can see now he is trimmed is what good condition he's in. Although I have problems feeding him, he doesn't look too thin and his fur is lovely and shiny.

Unfortunately this time, when he came home, he seemed to have been set back a bit. It took over a day and a half for him to bounce back to his normal self. I think part of it might be that they used quite a strong smelling shampoo or something on him and he smelled of apples quote noticeably. Although he doesn't have a great sense of smell, I wonder if the fact that he smelled of apples unsettled him.

He would also have 'felt' different. He would be used to his hair being a guide for moving around and suddenly it had gone.

I'm glad he's back to his normal self again now.

The car is back from the garage - which is just as well as it has to go in for the equivalent of an MOT on Friday. Fingers crossed it will pass again this year!

Heatwave

We've got another heatwave. A lot of Spain has a red warning. We have an orange warning. Goodness knows what it would be like in Seville where the big tall buildings trap the heat. Unbearable I guess.

We always take these things quite seriously, and make sure that the dogs don't fall asleep outside - but they are generally quite good. Quite often we've been at the vet during the summer when a dog has been bought in with heat stroke or we hear of one that has died from it.

We do find they break their housetraining when the weather is very hot and I think this is because the patio get so hot it burns the pads of their feet. I've certainly burned the bottom of my feet before - not so it's blistered, but so I've been aware of it afterwards.

When we first moved here we noted how seriously people treat heat and the sun. We'd forever be pulled into the shade and someone even stopped their car once to give Ian a hat! However, it is with good cause and they certainly know the danger of the heat. A local man died in the last heat wave a couple of weeks ago. I am not sure if they are from this village or another local village, but he was an electrician and got heatstroke working outside in the morning.

Ian's just returned from taking the car into the garage. The water doodah broke - but luckily it did so not far from the garage or from the pilar where he could get water to top it up. So we are carless for a day or so - but as we only use it to go to the vet and we don't have a vet appointment until next week, it won't be too much of an inconvenience.

Horace Goes Back to the Vet's

We went back to the vet yesterday for another review meeting with Horace. Poor little chap, they were picking up his legs to see if he fell over. They did say they had seen a tiny improvement in him, but I must admit that I've never noticed a problem with his walking anyway. Apparently he forgets what to do with his back left leg when he walks and only makes half a step, but I just can't see it - but Ian did point out that they probably know more about what to look for than I do!

They did say how patient we are, but they probably don't realize what a crazy house we live in anyway. What with Bobbins getting stuck on the arm of Ian's chair (every time we go out, we come back to find her balanced on the arm of his chair, unable to get off), Charlie and her imaginary sheep (she spends so much time running round, she has worn her claws right down), Larry letting us know how much he loves/hates a piece of lettuce - Horace and he quirks seem relatively normal!

The biggest challenge is making sure he drinks. It's a two sided challenge - making sure he drinks and making sure that all the other animals don't finish his water bowl. Because obviously Horace's water bowl (an old frying pan) is so much more exciting than their proper water bowl - and we fill it up, only for it to be emptied by various dogs and cats!

Ian has been working on a couple of websites which is keeping him quiet! A lady in Vermont who I have become friendly with and I help her occasionally with her website, has a very good friend who is a website developer. And her friend wants to take a change in business direction and was looking for someone to do the website development side of her business while she moved into doing more strategic work. Julie put her friend in touch with us (I think Julie thinks I am more adept at web work than I am), and we had a Skype call with her and that resulted in Ian doing a couple of sites for her. This may well turn into regular work - how it will work is she will go out and offer websites as part of her service and then Ian will do them and they will split the fees - and this works out very well. So we'll see. The one he's just finished was for a voiceover artist.

I noticed we have two pomegranates growing in the back yard. We didn't have any last year so it's a step in the right direction. The grapes are coming on in leaps and bounds too. I also noticed we had some olives starting, however I haven't seem them recently so I wonder if they've been eaten.

Snakes and Paper Wasps

I trod on a snake in the bedroom last week. Which was a bit of a surprise. It was quite big and slithered off under the bed. Ian found it eventually and said it was 'quite lively' and difficult to catch. He had to kill it as it had markings that meant it might have been an adder and if it had got lose in the house, with all our blind cats and dogs, it wouldn't have been good.

But where did it come from?

When Ian was researching snakes, he also discovered that the wasps we have hanging around the waterbowls are called paper wasps. Because of the way they make their nests.  Apparently they are nice wasps.

Nasty Vet

Having speculated whether vets are taught to express certain conditions in kinder ways, the answer is apparently not. The vet yesterday referred to Horace as being an 'idiot', and she said the other dogs won't play with him because he is an idiot and they won't get reactions they recognise from him. Ian said he thought she was using 'idiot' in a medical way. We had seen the vet who speaks quite good English and Ian thought that perhaps she translated a word into English incorrectly or didn't know a better word.

She explained the clinical signs they had seen in him (but I haven't), and the things to watch for. He's continuing to take his tablets for a little while longer but at a half dose.

She was asking us if Horace was aggressive and whether he'd ever bitten us. Aggression can happen in dogs like Horace as they don't understand what is happening, However, we're so lucky with Horace as he is very sweet natured. When we were trying to squirt his medicine into his mouth for a few days he did start to get a bit bitey when we were doing that, which is why we wanted to stop, so he didn't get to fear us. But other than that, he's just very, very sweet - and different.

Every summer when it starts to get warm, the lovebirds take to having a bath. They do this in their tiny water bowl thing, but they seem to enjoy it. So I thought I'd treat them by putting in a bigger bath, so they could really splash around. They've steadfastly ignored their new bath - pointedly ignoring it by going round their cage the long way, rather than accidentally showing an interest in it. Birds can be so contrary!

I put a bath in for Larry too, and he did use his and enjoyed it. He stands in his and splashes water around. He used to do that when he first arrived and he was above Ian's head. Ian would regularly get showered by Larry in his first summer with us!

Larry fell of his perch at the weekend (he's OK, it wasn't a monty python type falling off of the perch). We just heard a frenzied flapping and he was on the bottom of his cage shaking. He used to fall off his perch quite a lot at night, but I think he sleeps on the floor of his cage now. He's not that good at holding on when he is asleep!

All the other animals are well. I am sure they must feel a bit jealous with all the blog posts that get written about Horace!

Horace the Water Scatterer

It may look like Horace had been stood in a very localised rain shower. However, he seems unable to have a drink without scooping a load of water out. He must be very particular about the water level.

Well, I don't know what they put in Horace's medicine

I don't know what drugs we have for Horace, however he has really started tucking into his food (relatively speaking). So much so that he's gone from being a little scrap of a puppy into a little stocky pup. Admittedly, I don't know for certain it's the drugs. We also changed his food at the same time and also I hold him when he is eating so he can't get distracted or skip through his food and that focusses him on eating. I also just give him a few biscuits to start, so that sort of builds up his excitement, and then add the rest. And another change is that I hold the bowl to his head, so he doesn't have to put his head down.  He will only drink from his water if the bowl is full, so I wonder if he has problems looking down, or if that makes his head feel funny. When we go back to the vet on Monday I wonder if they will notice he's a bit chunkier!

We've been investigating how to make DIY puppy training pads, as we know now that Horace will probably not go outside. We're very lucky that he likes to go on his training pads. We've learned that dogs with Horace's condition are almost always impossible to train. However Horace is excellent at going on the training pads. I wonder if that's what he used when he was in the rescue place so that is all he's ever known. While the cost of Horaces pills is just pennies, we've realized that the cost of the training pads is starting to add up. So we're thinking about lower cost alternatives. Something the others won't think is a big game.

I'd seen a figure on a vet's training website that said that most dogs like Horace don't live past 2 years old (when I was researching Horace's condition I was looking at university websites with training material for vets as it was about as reliable as it was going to be - but likewise, it wasn't dressed up as nicely as it could be. It describes pups like Horace as being retarded - which I guess he is, but 'eternal puppy' sounds so much better! I hope that the trainee vets learn to dress it up a bit when they are talking with clients). Anyway, I've been thinking about this and what I don't know is the % that die because their condition worsens and the % that are put to sleep because their owners can't cope.  Horace is great as an 'eternal puppy' and his little quirks are funny and fun to watch. However, I really don't think it would be the same if he was a bigger dog, and even as he is, I am not sure everyone would want to or be able to cope with him.

He's shown no signs of deteriorating since he's come to us, and I think a lot of the poorly puppies do show real signs of deterioration quickly which is why they die so early, but Horace was born the way he is, so hopefully he'll have many long and happy years being a little bit of a special Horace.

We had our first tea outside last night this year. Not sure if that's earlier or later than previous years, but nice all the same. Feels like summer is here!

Drugs!

I often think as come back from the vets with our pockets filled with little white tablets of various sizes, that if we got pulled over by the police in our battered ancient BMW we'd look like the most rubbish drug dealers ever!

And I often think too, that if someone was to look at Ian when we come back from the vet, and he is there sat at the kitchen table, chopping up said tablets into little chunks and putting them in bags, that it is a good job no one else can see because I am sure that this would look highly suspicious.

...and then yesterday, to cap it all, a fly on the wall would have seen Ian drilling out the center of tiny dog biscuits with his drill, ready for adding crushed tablets to the hole in the center and sealing it with flour paste. Just how suspicious would that look!

The drilling out of the center of tablets was for Horace. He just will not eat anything other than his dog food. This week we've tried him on chicken, chopped ham - even dog chocolates. But he carefully eats around all the treats - leaving everything except his biscuits.

It's important he takes his medicine and we can't hide it in a treat, he won't let us put in in his mouth - and given that we now know that his jaw is loose we don't want to force anything. So we've ended up having to grab him, stick on his lampshade collar so we can hold his head still and then inject the crushed tablets and water into his mouth. You wouldn't think giving tablets to such a tiny dog would be so difficult!

But the problem was that this was starting to make him distrustful of us. We'd tried a number of approaches. Ian had tried soothing him first and then popping his collar on, we'd tried just grabbing him when he wasn't expecting it, doing it after food... and while we were successful in getting the medicine into him, there was a danger he was going to distrust us and that would be a terrible thing for the little boy. And given that we've only just got him eating well, we didn't want to stop that by his associating eating with being force fed tablets.

Hence the fact that Ian tried drilling out the centre of Horace's dog biscuits to add the tablets to it.

However, we found that he does get excited at food times when the others do, and does seem to anticipate food. And now I hold him when he eats he is a lot more focused and while he does scatter his food a bit, it's not as bad as it was before. So we tried adding his tablets to just a few dog biscuits and found that he eats them up with those biscuits. I then add more biscuits, so if he was thinking about spitting out the tablets, he doesn't and swallows them with the others. I need to watch carefully, as he does drop things, but so far this appears to be working - and is so much easier than drilling out the center of dog biscuits!

First of the season

I stood outside last night and wondered when we'd see the first satellite going overhead - and one gently glided across the night sky. I am sure the same has happened in previous years - but I am guessing it is more coincidence than them doing a special fly-over to welcome the fact it is warm enough to enjoy late into the evenings sat outside. 

Horace's Treatment

We discussed Horace's treatment at the vet today - or rather lack of it. They showed us the scan from last week and told us a little more about how is brain is affected. There's no real treatment other than drugs to reduce the swelling in his head.

They explained that all his problems - blind, no smell, inconsistent hearing... are how he was born. They also said that while his jaw is aligned OK, the ligaments are long (?) and therefore his jaw is weak. This is why he has problems eating (when he does concentrate enough to eat) and that is all part of the same thing. I 'wish' I could get him to eat soft food. But that's been impossible so far.

He is as he is, and he won't get any better - and we are hoping he won't get any worse.

On the plus side, he hasn't got any worse since he's been with us - and he's actually improved in some areas. Many people only notice there's a problem when their puppy starts to behave oddly. Whereas Horace doesn't seem to have degenerated. He's noticeably better at quite a few things. At the vet today he sat quite happily in my arms for a long time while we were waiting, while in the past he would have made a fuss and been impossible to hold. I can also brush him now, which I couldn't before.

A couple of months ago, I had said to Ian that Horace was like a little baby. I was comparing him with Charlie who is the same age, and how Horace was just a little baby compared to her. And this is quite a good way to think of him.  He's like a little five week old pup. He plays with his water rather than drink it, it skips through his food, chases his tail, he loves jumping on a leg for a bit of a play-fight, he gets excited by things even though he's not quite sure why - and he's nervous by things he doesn't understand, and will scurry back to where he's confident.

Now we know that he has a serious condition, it's changed the way we think of him. Now, it's amazing that he does what he does - before, it was frustrating that he could 'only' do what he does.

I've changed his feeding - again - and now hold him while he eats. The aim is for him to concentrate on his food. And this does appear to be working. Originally I didn't want to do this, as I didn't want him to get used to always being held to be fed, however now we know what we know, this will be a good thing to do.

We're actually very lucky that he adopted the puppy training pads so easily - as dogs like Horace are generally impossible to housetrain.

He will go back in two weeks for a review. I must admit, I got a bit lost at this point and I'm a little unclear as to whether he will continue taking the drugs as a preventative thing to stop any increase in swelling or if he is taking them to see if there is any reduction. But we'll find out in a couple of weeks. Happily, the drugs are only pennies to buy, so if he does have to keep with them, it's won't break the bank.

What would Jane Fonda say?

I am not sure that Jane Fonda would be particularly impressed if she was to take a peek into our patio in the morning - and a good job we are not overlooked!

Ian and I have decided to do aerobics in the morning. We have found this lady on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-30LmvW0S5s&t=9s who has a whole host of different low impact videos. As Ian is prone to injuring himself at the prospect of exercise (so far skipping, running and cycling have all got the better of him), this lady is good because it's walking based and low impact. The videos range from 10 minutes upwards, so there's no excuse not just to do something.

So, imagine the picture - Ian and I jigging round in different directions (one of us is surprisingly uncoordinated), Pirata sat on the well, which is where we have the tablet propped, trying to tap the tablet over - or sit on it, the big dogs all running round wondering what game we are playing, Millie running up to join us because that's what she does, Tinkerbelle getting under our toes because that's what she does... not a pretty sight. 

The only good news is that neither of us are wearing lycra :)

Horace with his lampshade

Well, I have been reading about Horace's condition and it is now quite apparent that he has all the hydrocephalus symptoms, down to the fact they feel the cold more, and Horace loves snuggling under his duvet. Dogs with this are also described as having autistic like behaviour, which, again describes Horace. They are also supposed to be difficult to housetrain, but Horace is excellent at going on the puppy training pad. I think that might be because it was the first thing he knew and just stuck with it. He might not have a long life, but I hope we give him a happy one. Here's a photo of him snuggling and wearing his lampshade.

Horace Goes to the Vet's

Horace went to the vet today to be neutered, and we learned that he is a poorly boy.

I asked the vet to check his teeth as there is something so odd about his eating - as I have mentioned before. Last weekend I tried moving him to meat, but he just spat out the meat and hunted out the few biscuits I put in there. He seemed genuinely confused by the new food in his bowl. So I persevered for a couple of days thinking he would get used to it. But he didn't. He is so small, after a couple of days it was apparent he was going to lose a lot of weight and we put him back to the dried food again.

So I really wanted the vet to check his teeth and to take out any teeth if there was a problem while they were neutering him.

The x-rayed him and his jaw and teeth were OK, so they then scanned him and found he has a "very tiny brain". He has fluid on the brain and would have been born like this. The vet we saw, said that when they looked at the scan, all the vets there were surprised that Horace was alive and functioning because his brain is so tiny.

The vet said the condition could be dangerous if the fluid grows - and we don't know if the fluid has grown proportionately since he was a puppy or if it is the same. Although I don't think he acts any differently and I certainly don't think we've seen a degeneration in him. They will put him on some medication to try to reduce the fluid and we'll talk to the vets again on Monday.

The condition is hydrocephalus and this explains so much of Horace's oddities - the skipping round and losing his food, being comfortable in the little areas he knows, being random with his hearing, absolutely no sense of direction... 

I had got to the stage where I was pretty convinced there was something behind his oddities and I had so hoped it was going to be his teeth and they would remove a couple and he'd be fine. I'd actually said to Ian just this weekend that if we'd had the money I would have taken him to see a specialist to see if there was something underlying which we weren't aware of because his behaviour is SO different to the others, so I suppose it is more of a disappointment that it's something serious than a surprise that he has something wrong with him.

But the good thing is we now know that he really is very special and with his tiny brain he is never going to be the same as the others. I think we'll better know how to treat him. He is a happy pup, and rarely unhappy, so that's what we must try to maintain.

Never a dull moment...

Well, rarely.

Ian and I were sat at the table with Charlie (who has gone into complete sheepdog mode) running round and the table in one direction, Millie running round in the other direction, Wilbur getting excited because he thought there may be some chocolate and Larry in full squawk demonstrating his pleasure/annoyance at a bit of lettuce. It can be quite exhausting!

Charlie is showing no long term damage from her broken leg, which is good. I don't even notice her limp now. Perhaps she does, but she generally is running so it is difficult to see.

Life with Horace continues to be challenging. He is desperately sweet, but he is extremely strange too. He remains very funny about eating - but also drinking. He will only drink if his water bowl is full. And as his bowl is right outside the back door, all the others tend to drink from there too. So we have to watch it. We're getting to know the signs and when he is thirsty he won't settle. It's very strange, because he's obviously thirsty, but won't or can't drink if the bowl isn't full. This is something we're really going to have to watch in the summer.

His food also remains an ongoing challenge. I'm close to giving up feeding him outside as he 'loses' his bowl and then gets lost himself. More often than not I finish feeding him inside on the sofa so he can't get lost. I did try feeding him again in the bedroom, shutting him in there, thinking there would be less to distract him, but he just scattered his food over the floor and couldn't pick it up. He wouldn't eat soft food when I've tried him before, but I'm going to try again as there's obviously a problem with his crunching on dried food.

He hears noises but doesn't seem to be able to work out where they are coming from and he has absolutely no sense of direction. He'll take one step away from his food bowl and will be unable to find it again - without stepping in to it. I think he knows my voice, but he doesn't really react - not like Millie who goes into full pelt running round in circles when she hears me finish a class!

I think that without a doubt, Horace has been our biggest challenge and I think that if he had been our first 'special needs' dog, I doubt that our house would be so full of other animals with special needs. Even with our experience he can be a bit of a worry and I think if we didn't have any experience we would find his odd behaviour quite worrying - even though we do see real improvements in him almost daily.

It's lovely to see the steps forward he makes - and he does make significant steps forward. But we 're currently congratulating him on almost crossing the floor of the living room to Ian's desk - or we may feel pleased that he ate most of his food before getting lost again - things the others picked up in seconds! I can't help thinking that when I say 'well done' to Horace for eating most of his food the others must wonder what all the fuss is about!

But he does seem happy and he does play and skip around. He clambers up onto the sofa and he's started shunning his little bed in the bedroom and climbing onto the chair. He does seem to like company and will snuggle up with the others or sit on my lap, so he's not completely in his own world.

And he is actually extremely good at using his puppy training pad. In fact, he is so good I have put one outside as he will come in to use his training pad rather than go to the toilet outside!

It's going to take time, but it would be great to think that in a year or so's time he was more confident and I read back at these posts thinking how much he's changed!

Labour Day

So, today is Labour Day here in Spain and unusually, it coincides with a UK bank holiday. I've mentioned this before, but in Spain, they celebrate the holiday on the day it falls. So last year it fell on a Sunday, so as shops don't open on Sunday, people didn't have the extra day. But instead, when a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, they have a 'bridge' day on the Monday or Friday and that apparently evens things up over the course of a year. I've never tried to work it out, however I guess it must do so, as people don't complain when a holiday falls at a weekend or suggest the system is unfair. Perhaps I'll work it out one day...

Talking of different ways of doing things, they also work out the number of days in the month differently - they count on their knuckles. I think they count the months with 31 days on a knuckle and the space in between is a month without 31 days. They count on one hand and when they get to the last knuckle they start again - and that's obviously July and August. I've just tried and it worked out, so I think that must be right.

Ian posted a nice photo of Horace and mentioned about Horace attacking legs. This is very funny. He only does it where he feels safe, which is mainly in the bedroom where he has his little bed. When we put him on the floor he becomes like a little demon - lunging at any (human) leg and attacking it. It's play fighting, and very funny, but I'm not sure we'll think it's so funny when we are wearing shorts in the summer.

We've been trying to encourage Horace to attack our legs in the living room too. At the moment Horace isn't confident to go over to Ian's side of the room, so we're trying to entice him with Ian's nice attackable leg.  Encouraging a dog to attack your leg is probably not found in many dog training guides.  I did realise, again, that the trick with very special need pets is to do the opposite to what we 'should' do when training a dog.

I've been thinking about this and I think it's because with a dog like Horace, we need to get him to engage with us, so we need to do things to encourage him to engage, so when we see he likes something, we encourage it (it's made all the more difficult with Horace because he doesn't like food). However, with a 'normal' dog, part of the training is to get them to NOT engage with you. So I guess is makes sense what we do. I know when we had Herbie we used to give him a little bit of food from the table. Something we never do because it would just result in mayhem. However, with Herbie who was completely blind and deaf with an unknown past, we needed to do things like that so he realised that he was with nice people, and to encourage him to come to the table.

It rained at the weekend, so this might mean that there's a strong finish to the asparagus season! Can't believe that it's almost over for another year already...

Horrior the Warrior

Horace in one of his quieter and reflective moments when he's not attacking a leg.

Poor Charlie

We've decided that it's time for Charlie to have just two meals a day. So starting this week she'd been going without her mid day meal. This did confuse her somewhat and she follows Ian around from about 11 in the morning, in case he quickly nips out and gets her food when she's not looking. She's probably as big as she's going to be now, although she will fill out a bit. She's still walking with a pronounced limp, but I think that will go as her leg gets stronger.

Little Horace continues to be 'special'. Ian and I were saying that the nice thing about having a little dog like Horace, is that even tiny steps forward are rewarding to see. I am currently trying to get him to follow me outside at his meal times. And he's yet to get outside to where he has his food in one go, sometimes heading off in the wrong direction, other times heading back into the house or he gets distracted, but sometimes he is better than others. It's such an achievement when he gets at least near where he's supposed to be (it is in the same place every day). It seems amazing that we celebrate a dog getting near where his food is! Normally our problem is that they are all waiting for their food and then gulp it down in seconds.

We changed his water bowl as his first one got broken, and it's taken him some time to get used to the new one, which admittedly is a frying pan, which could be confusing, but he's not to know that. He doesn't seem to be able to drink if the water level is low. Instead he puts his paws into the water and splashes it around.

He'll be neutered soon, and when he is, I'm going to ask them to take a look at his teeth, as he still doesn't eat properly. While he doesn't make the grinding noise any more, he does seem to drop a lot of food when he is eating and only seems to crunch on one side, which might suggest that his jaw is misaligned as the vet said it might be. It doesn't matter, but it just helps us understand him a little more and the more we understand him the better we can care for him.

He plays quite a bit and I wish some of the others would play with him. They are inclined to ignore him, but I am sure he'd love to have a game of chew with them (and it would be better him playing chew with them than trying to play with my elbow when I am typing). Pixie is normally excellent with the blind dogs, she actually will put her leg in front of them so they can feel where she is to play, but she just ignores little Horace.

We've started reviewing audiobooks again, and need to get back into the pattern of listening to them. We stopped last summer and have fallen out of the habit, but it's something that's quite fun to do.

They've obviously been good this year....

Unusually for Semana Santa, the weather is looking good this year - if anything a tad on the warm side to be carting a full size Mary and Jesus around the streets. For the last few years it has rained, which has been a shame as it has come off the back of a long stretch of sunny weather. However, a peek at the weather forecast shows a row of little suns for the foreseeable future.

Many of the parades are in the evening and overnight, to ensure it's not too hot for the people taking part.

There's been some controversy in Llerena as some women wanted to take part in carrying the statues, but were told they couldn't - they had to get their own Mary and Jesus if they wanted to play.

Last week was the last of Charlie's having-to-rest period. Although I don't think we did a very good job of keeping her calm - much easier said than done. She needs to get some strength in that leg now, but I don't think it will take her long to get back to full bounciness.

Horace seems to be coming out of himself more and more. Eating with the big dogs has been good for him as he does pick up that something is going on. While he's still amazingly ssssssllllllooow at eating and can get distracted quickly, he's getting on much better and feels quite solid now.

He had one little set back when he fell into a pile of leaves. The combination of falling off the step, becoming disorientated and the crunchiness of the leaves sent him into one of his little panics, but it wasn't too bad and he scurried into his 'safe' area and quickly came round.


Not really too much else to report. We've been out asparagusing a few times. It's been a good year so far and we've done well with our picking. Now the pins are out of Charlie's leg and Pirata's ear is healed, we haven't had any trips to the vet for a couple of weeks. Long may that continue!

Dimrose and Ian

Tea (our tea collection)

odd cat

People wonder why we have renamed primrose, dimrose. It is because she does odd thing s like this. Asleep in a strange position...

Spring?

The start of spring seems to have hailed a downturn in the weather. While two weeks ago we were wearing t-shirts, this last few days we've been huddling under blankets and lighting the fire again at night. Poor little Horace timed his hair cut badly as he has lost his insulation and he snuggles up under the blanket too.

I bought Horace some more puppy training pads from Amazon as we have found them very successful. Admittedly there's a problem that the others either want to sit on it, chew it or carry it around the house, but when they ignore it, it works well. I thought we might have a problem with house training Horace, but he seems to be in the routine now of going on the training pads. Trouble is, he doesn't recognize the difference between a puppy training pad and something else soft, and I believe he may have spent a penny in my slipper, which is something to watch! He gets in and out the back door now, so there's no reason why he should not become house trained.

Charlie's leg doesn't seem to be slowing her down, but the vet said to keep her quiet for another two weeks, before she starts to do exercise. Which is easier said than done. I've noticed her leg twists when she walks, which I hope is where the muscles are week. In a couple of weeks we'll start taking her for walks to help to build her muscle up again. I think she'll be OK going for walks as she seems to be friendly and inquisitive, whereas Queenie finds it all a bit scary.

And Pirata seems OK now. He is no longer wearing his lampshade collar which I am sure he must have hated, and now has a bit of a curly ear. I'm not sure if that will remain, but he won't know any different. He's having to get used to going onto the cat tree again for his food - Ian was feeding him by hand as it was difficult for him to eat with the lampshade, Pirata quite liked that and appears to be under the impression that he would like to continue to be hand fed!

When we were at the vet with him last time, we saw the lady who originally rescued him. It was the first time she'd seem him since he came to us - but unfortunately, Pirata was grumpy because he was at the vet, and refused to look at her. She came in to us with the vet so she could see him then and it was nice for her to see him looking so well (as well as he could do with stitches in his ear!).

Hoping that the weather will brighten up a little so we can get out and pick some asparagus. The countryside must be bursting with it after all this rain :)

Tiny horace

I was expecting Horace to look smaller after he had his hair cut, but he is tiny! He is shorter than Pixie and his body is a similar size, with a pointy face, less round than Pixie. They had to sedate him as could.not control him. He is now shivering under a duvet,.Poor.little chap

After

before

Horace goes to The hairdresser

Visit to the Doctor's

Unusually for us, this week featured a visit to the human doctor, not the animal doctor. I hurt my back on Sunday (standing up - believe it or not), and it was very painful so Ian helped me down to the Doctor's on Monday.

Again, we marvelled at the excellent health service we have here. Only recently, another of my adult students was saying that a disadvantage of living in a village is that you can't see a doctor until the next day if you are ill in the afternoon, where is if you live in a town you can see a doctor morning or afternoon (I quite often here this, so it would appear to be a local concern). I can't help thinking that there'd be a lot of people who would be very happy to wait till the next day to see a doctor.

They also moan about prescription charges, which I believe have only recently been introduced, however, again, at 70 centimos per subscription, still seems pretty reasonable.

However, I guess if someone has never had to wait a few days to see a doctor, having to wait until the next day if you fall ill after three in the afternoon probably does sound like a bad thing!

It's the same doctor we've seen before and he is very friendly and helpful. He makes sure we understand everything - which typically we do with medical type things as many of the words are the same or similar.  He remembered the lump that Ian had under his chin and asked about that, even though it was several years ago now.

The only downside of the health system is that everyone is inclined to know everyone else's business. The doctor's waiting room turns into a bit of a social gathering. This time everyone was well behaved, however in the past, the nurse kept having to come out and shush them up from talking too loud!

Tomorrow we head off to the vet to get Charlie's pins out - but I don't know if that means she will be lampshadeless or not. I think she will find it odd when she no longer has her lampshade as her head will be so much smaller! She has been wearing it for quite a large % of her life so it will be feeling quite normal to her now. It will be a proper operation, so she can't have breakfast tomorrow morning - don't think she will be happy about that!

I think her leg has taken longer than they expected to heal. Not least because she is still very bouncy. It was very difficult keeping a four month old collie calm. Pirata has had a small op on his ear too - so hopefully his collar will be removed tomorrow. He reputured something in his ear and it was swollen, the vet had to mend the ear so he didn't end up with a cauliflower ear. Poor little chap. However, as always he takes it all in his stride.

Charlie must be near enough full grown now, perhaps just filling out a bit. She's going to be a small collie. She's between Sam and Queenie in size. We've seen other collies at the vet and they appear quite small to us too, so I don't know if Spanish collies are small, or if I have a distorted memory of them.

Horace remains skippy. I've made him a little bed in the bedroom which is actually a small table which has a bottom shelf that he sleeps on and I've put a blanket around it to keep him snug. He can get in and out as I don't like shutting the blind ones in a cage, but this way I can be sure he doesn't wander and get into trouble at night. But often I will wake up and hear him skipping around the room. I think he plays with imaginary friends as he skips around just as he would if there was another dog with him. His eating is definitely better since he's been eating with the others. But he is still slooooooow, interspersing eating with a bit of skipping, which disperses food around the floor. I sometimes worry about Horace, however Ian says Horace is a very happy little dog, but very 'special'.

Last week the weather was glorious and we had a lovely time picking asparagus, but the last few days have been cold and miserable, but the sun is out today and the weather is starting to look good again....

Horace - Change of Strategy

We have mentioned before that Horace is a problem when it comes to eating. He spends ages eating his food, just skipping around and scattering food everywhere, which he then can't find. It can take him hours to eat his meals, which is why we cut him down from three meals a day to two, because it was taking most of the day with him eating - or not eating. As he is so small and a puppy it's important that he does eat well, but he won't eat anything other than the dry dog food and just isn't interested in food.

So we've had a change of strategy and we're now feeding him outside with the others, hoping that he might sort of catch on to the eating thing just from being around the others. Of course, he won't see the others, and although he does hear some things, I'm not sure what he'll pick up on, however it seems worth a try. This is the first time we fed him outside:

This is typical Horace behaviour, and this skipping goes on for hours, so the new plan is that perhaps he'll be more focused if he is outside with others. This skipping went on for quite a while and then the other dogs (and Pirata) started paying hopeful attention:

And eventually they all gave up and wandered off, and even Rosie got bored and had to sit down while he finished;

Anyway, the good news is that this seems to be working. He did a bit of skipping this morning, but not quite as much and finished his meal within minutes as opposed to the hours it was taking before (but still a long way away from the seconds it takes the rest). So hopefully he'll catch on to the fact he is eating with the big dogs now and we'll be over this hurdle.

The vet has said that his jaw might be misaligned and you can see in the video he does seem to do odd things with his head when he eats. She said to give him soft food, but he just won't eat it. We've even tried sneaking some little bits of sausage into his food, but he just eats around it! Don't think any of our other dogs would do that!

Queenie and roland

Horace has a bath

Actually, Horace has quite a few baths, because he does get quite stinky! However, I thought it was interesting to take this pic so you can see the size of him compared to Pixie when he doesn't have all of his hair sticking up (he also suffers from static)

Horrible Charlie

'Encouraging' Horace to jump down the step...

Asparagus

First of the season!

Butt Cheeks

I bought some baby wipes for Horace. Because his legs are soooooo short and his fur has got so long, he is like a tiny mop head running round on the floor. And of course, he runs through everything, resulting in one stinky hound.

I wash him quite often, but he doesn't like it and it's also making his fur get dry and full of static. So I bought some antiseptic wipes for cleaning him with, mid bath. I read the label and there was a word I didn't understand. When I translated it, it translated at 'butt cheeks' which just make me smile. Apparently these wipes are gentle enough for eyes, ears and butt cheeks. Ah, it's the little things...

We're taking some positive training action with Charlie. Over the last couple of weeks she has become grumpy. A lot of grumbling and barking comes from her, particularly when others come by. But of course, this also co-incides with her breaking her leg and having to wear a lampshade. She got an infection in her leg earlier this week, which meant she couldn't settle and became quite subdued. So her grumpiness is very likely to do with her situation, but we decided that we'd take positive action so it doesn't become a habit.

She gets protective over Ian, she grumbles if she is sat by him and others come and sit near. But she doesn't do that with me, so we've tried to stop this by her now sitting away from Ian. She gets shut out of the room when she barks and Ian is going out of his way to only pet her when he is petting one of the others, so she can see if she wants attention, another animal has to be nearby too. Although we've only been doing this for a couple of days, the change has been noticeable. But this also coincides with her feeling better after the infection in her leg - so who knows. Obviously being blind in one, partially sighted in the other and being deaf means that wearing a lampshade makes life even more difficult for her. So I am sure that this has exacerbated her grumpiness - and she's not even allowed to run round and let off steam!

I am sure she will be looking forward to having the lampshade off and being able to run around again - I know we are!

Hop-along Charlie

Well, it's two weeks since Charlie broke her leg and it hasn't slowed her down. She went to the vet for a check on Tuesday and they said the bone is repairing. The say that because she's a young dog, her leg will repair quickly, so hopefully there won't be too many weeks left of this. It's the lampshade which is the problem. She doesn't realize her head has suddenly got big and she keeps getting stuck!

She's still full of energy and also doesn't understand why she can't play with the big dogs anymore. Well, just stop playing in general! She's nearly six months old now, and I think she may be quite a small collie, unless she has a big growth spurt. She seems huge compared to how she was when we got her, but then see her against Queenie who is a similar dog and she's a lot smaller.

Horace continues to be Horace. He's still VERY odd about his food. It can take him HOURS to eat. I just don't know what is wrong with him - I have never known another dog like it. He will only eat his dried food - if I put something else in there like sausage or cheese he just eats around it (very slowly). He will eat quicker if I hold on to him. I think that's because he can't get distracted.  I've cut down his meal times to two because a/ he is so slow at eating, his meal times were lasting most of the day and b/ I wondered if he ate less he may get more excited about food. It didn't work!

His not liking food is turning into a problem with training him. It's impossible to reward him, so he doesn't know when he's being good. He's doesn't really do anything bad - I put him outside to go to the toilet, and he's quite good as using the puppy training pad overnight. But I'd like to tell him what good behaviour is - like sitting nicely to be picked up and not skipping round like a very skippy lamb. Skipping around isn't something I can tell him off for, but staying still is definately something I'd like to reward him for. But I'm sure we'll get there.

With regards to picking him up, it doesn't help that his coat is like fine silk. He is so silky that he easily slips through my hands. It's like trying to pick up a wiggling bar of wet soap!

He's grown quite a lot, but is still very small. His legs don't seem to have grown much, so he's like a little white mop head running round on the floor. His other problem - well more of a problem for us than for him - is that his fur is now so long and his legs so short - he really is like a little mop on the floor and he gets disgustingly dirty! I'm going to take him to a proper groomer to get his coat cut as it will be good for him to get used to being handled by others - and because of his wiggling and silkiness, I just don't think I could hold onto him!

Sam appears to have recovered fully. He seemed to come round much quicker than last time. Last time he spent a lot of time in the shower room or pacing, but this time he was back to normal within a couple of days. Hopefully that will be it for seizures for a while now.

And the rest of the household are doing OK and have settled down from the onslaught of new puppies followed by new puppy wearing lampshade and banging into everything.

The last couple of days have been rainy. First time for a long time that we've had a run of bad weather - but potentially good news for asparagus... :)

Do you have another one in stock...

...it's just that this one's broken?

This won't go down as a great week animal wise. After losing Alfie last weekend, this weekend started with Charli spending the night in the pet hospital in Zafra.

She'd been happily playing with Rosie all week, but midday yesterday, the play was interrupted by squealing. Kate got outside first and could see she'd hurt her leg. After checking her, I confidently declared it wasn't broken.

Joanna, the vet, spent about 5 seconds checking her before declaring it was broken.

Her leg's now held together with pins and scaffolding. We think Javi oversaw her operation, but didn't do the work himself. Javi is the vet who fixed Pirata's leg after he broke it before he came to us, so hopefully Charli will make as full a recovery.

So long Alfie

Rather out of the blue, we lost Alfie on Sunday. We'd taken Tinkerbelle to the vet Friday morning for a revision as she's had a cough. Before leaving, Alfie had coughed a few times, but not anywhere near enough to think about taking him with us.

We were back home by lunchtime and by mid afternoon, Alfie was starting to cough a lot more. I made a second visit to Zafra to have him checked out and they wanted to keep him in overnight.

I went back Saturday morning and he hadn't improved. I asked if we should be considering putting him to sleep, but they wanted to give him a day or two to see if he could bounce back. Because his breathing was poor, they didn't want me to see him and get him excited, but would call with an update on Sunday.

By then, I was preparing for having to put him to sleep, but at breakfast on Sunday, they called to say he'd died that morning. Obviously rather sad and I do wish I'd been with him, but being at the vets was obviously the best place for him.

He'd have marked four years with us in April and as we were told he was 12 when he came to us, he'd had a reasonable run. All the more so as late summer 2015, his sudden epileptic seizures made us all assume he had a brain tumour and probably wouldn't be with us for that Christmas.

We'll never know how he came to be a stray up in Palencia, but he'd obviously been cared for in his earlier life. Someone had his eye patched up and his back leg that he'd lost at the knee. Hopefully his time with us and with his previous home will have offset the bad things he went through.

I remember when we were driving away from the vets a few years ago having discovered he had an airgun pellet lodged by his lung.

I turned to Kate and started to say, "I can't believe that someone would shoot..."

Then, "...oh actually, no I can!"

It was probably someone who'd tried to feed him some frankfurter. He had drugs twice a day and these were given to him in a chunk of frankfurter. I learned the hard way not to pass it to him, but to put it on the ground just in front of him and let him pick it up from there.

For such a little thing, he's left quite a space. Along with Herbie and Millie, he's played a big part in turning me into a bit of a Yorkshire Terrier fan. That's something I'd never have imagined saying five years ago.

Climbing Horace

Horace is a bit of a climber. We've had to move his bed as he used his bed to climb onto a chair to climb onto the bed base to climb onto the mattress to climb on top of the duvet. I watched him do it and it was like watching the squirrel from the advert on the television a few years ago. The trouble is, as his preferred method of movement is skip, he skipped over the top of the duvet and straight on the floor. So I moved his bed to stop him from climbing.

He also climbs onto the sofa now and no longer needs the little box he used before and I think he'd climb onto the table if I let him. He's also finding his way onto the back step when I put him outside. That doesn't happen every time though, I think it depends how far away his has gone. If he goes up one of the steps he can't get down, so he gets stranded. However, I've put a water bowl outside the back door and he's getting used to drinking from there, which is better.

Poor Sam is in the middle of a cluster of seizures at the moment. It had been a very long time since he'd had a seizure - over a year - but he's had several now since Friday.

I bought Larry some super-posh food. It's food specially formulated for South American parrots. Although goodness knows how many generations you'd have to go back to find Larry's South Amercian roots. It's formulated by the Tenerife Parrot Park and contains less sunflower seeds - which is good, and more grains and nuts. I'm watching him closely, however, as he is a very piniky eater, and when he was ill two years ago, it was because he was only eating sunflower seeds. He's a lot better now, but we still have to watch him.

Still been very dry. It did rain the other day, but not much. We now want it to rain as it is getting close to the asparagus season!