Dear Diary...

Pup Insanity, A Vet Visit & Out Of Date Dairy

I got to sleep in until 8.15am today, but still woke with a headache and a body that felt like lead. Despite the sun it’s bloody cold outside and the draughts are playing havoc with my hips and knees. Pup has done nothing but drive me bloody insane today constantly going back to the bikes and either chewing on the wheels or on my brake cables.! The little git can’t be distracted from them for more than a few seconds. In the end I made him come indoors and shut the back door. It’s a shame because he loves being outside and it was warm in the sun, but I was starting to piss myself off constantly repeating “Stop eating my bloody bike, you little ratbag.!” We can’t put them anywhere else unfortunately and I don’t see why we should. He needs to learn to leave stuff alone.

He growled and barked at the little old lady next door this morning. I shall have to get Bear to introduce them and then maybe he’ll stop. He doesn’t like strangers but he’s fine with people he knows and sees a lot of. He was very cautious at the Vets this afternoon. He walked in on his harness and leash, rather than in his travel crate and wasn’t at all keen on the smell. He was even less impressed with the beagle puppy that was in there and backed off, lying down right in the middle of the entrance doorway. He saw a different Vet than the last time and wasn’t keen on her until the treats came out… he got different treats from her assistant and happily posed for photos for their website.

He was then weighed and found to be 8.8kgs.! 19.4lbs… he’s gained just under a kilo a week over the past month. Then he was introduced to a different puppy, a very cute German Shepherd mix, only just 3 months old like him, but he wasn’t happy and backed off and went to hide between Bear’s legs. Socialising him is going to be a hard slog. He backs away from other dogs when we go on walks and Bear has asked a friend of his whose dog is good with other puppies if we can visit but I don’t think it’s going to do any good if he keeps backing away and hiding from every other dog he sees.

This afternoon, I made soda bread and buttermilk scones, using up the buttermilk that has been in the fridge for the past month. Luckily it was still in good condition despite being out of date by 12 days, or I’d have wasted almost a whole litre. I also made frozen yoghurt bark, with chocolate and banana and the Greek yoghurt that’s been sat in the bottom of the fridge for over a week. I couldn’t think of anything else and it’ll keep the children happy next time we don’t have dessert, or not, depending on whether I share it with them.

Five Days Too Many, Changing The Rules & Safety Measures

Oh joy.! The children are going home this evening.! I know it’s only 24 hours early, but it’s 24 hours less than I’d have had to put up with them, especially as Bear is on an early shift tomorrow and I’d have had to put up with them alone… something at the moment I’m not prepared to do. The pup doesn’t know which way is up these days as the children are constantly hassling him to play when he’s resting, and then expecting him to leave them be when they decide they don’t want to play anymore when he gets over-excited and starts biting. He’s jumping up at them on the sofa and barking, trying to get them to play and when they tell him no, he argues. 😀 They’ve been here five days too many for my sanity levels.

They have a thing about making a sandwich and putting it on a dinner plate that drives me nuts.! Bear does it too. We have side plates, we even have side dishes but no… they have to use a dinner plate for a sandwich. WHY.?!! I never use huge plates for a sandwich and I make sandwiches and toasties a lot… but no-one seems to learn from my example. I’ve even asked why they do it and point out the smaller plates they could use instead, but they don’t use them. Always a dinner plate. Grrr.!

Bear said before we got pup that he didn’t want the dog on the furniture because of the hair and yet, every night before bed he lets the dog up to sit next to him on the sofa and sometimes in the morning if he’s alone. He’s such a softie. What concerns me is how many more rules he’s going to go soft on.? Will he allow the dog in the bedroom in time.? Something he said would never happen. Let him stay out of the crate during evening mealtimes.? Overnight.? With Bear it’s often one rule for everyone else and a completely different one for him. He’s always been that way and it can occasionally get frustrating. Perhaps puppy training will be just the thing for him.

Pup has a vet appointment tomorrow afternoon for his 12 week vaccination, and to get his claws trimmed as neither Bear nor I trust ourselves to get it right. He’s gained some weight over the past 4 weeks and uses it to his advantage when playing Tug with his toys. He’s bloody heavy and it’s difficult for me to hang on to a toy when he puts his full weight on it and he knows it is. I had to repair his bunny toy yesterday because his teeth ripped it in three places and his squeaky bear will need replacing soon, as he’s tearing that in places too. It’s his favourite toy and I’ve suggested to Bear that we get him a rubber chicken and one of those soft toys that crackle and crunch. He’ll love that.

Yesterday Bear spent most of the afternoon drilling into the patio to fix metal fence post holders, to put a fence with a gate across the bottom of the patio. Pup got brave and came off the patio and went down to the next step towards the garden. I didn’t think he’d do that with all the warnings he’s gotten over the past four weeks, but he did and now we have to fence off the patio so he’s safe and so are the fruit trees and bushes. It’s not just the fruit trees though, the outside steps to the cellar are at garden level and he’d be severely injured if he fell down them and there’s ivy on the wall at the bottom of the garden, which is toxic to dogs so I’d rather be safe.

The dog seems to like his new fence, it’s another thing for him to chew and there’s so much of it. I’m impressed with Bear’s handiwork, he’s never done anything like it before and while some men would say it’s a piece of cake (as I would too, having been married to a carpenter), he’s not really the hands on type, so anything he makes himself is a newly acquired skill and something he feels good about himself for completing.

Plague, GEDcoms & An Intelligent Puppy

Last night Bear, the kids and I played a game called Plague Inc. It’s a board game where you have to infect the world, country by country and then destroy those countries… essentially wiping out the population. Seems like a nice, jolly game to be playing during this pandemic. The rules are complex and confusing and we may have to play it again tonight for me to get a better grip of them, but I came in second behind Bear, so I did pretty well. Wiping out China helped. The kids brought a load of games with them when they arrived on Monday, including something called Scotland Yard, Rummikub and something to do with colonising a prehistoric world. We’ve been playing a game every evening and probably will until Tuesday.

Over the past few days I’ve been working on and trying to sort out my GEDcom files for my genealogy. A distant relative on my father’s side asked for a copy if I had one (which I do) and when I checked I realised it badly needed updating as it hadn’t been done since 2014. So I’ve spent a few days tracking down ancestors on Ancestry.com and making notes of records and sources. Now it looks like I’ll have to go through all my other GEDcom files and update them too. It’s a good thing I keep my WikiTree updated, I can just transfer the information across.

The pup has now discovered how to get the treats out of his Kong ball, and amuses the heck out of me grabbing it in his mouth and jumping up so it gets some bounce and letting it go at the exact right moment to send it bouncing across the floor, spilling kibble treats. He’s learnt very quickly how to get the most out of the impact of the ball and tosses it around to break the treats inside, so the small pieces fall out. He’s a very smart little dog. Bear has taught him to sit when they get to roads when out on their walks and has him walking to heel really well. I say walks, I mean trots… Bear has a very long stride and the pup doesn’t seem to have a walk option, so they do very well together. I’m trying to teach him to hi-5. 😀

Today it rained really hard. Pup did not like it one bit. He was okay with the normal rain but as soon as it got harder and was almost pelting the patio, he whined and went to his bed crate. He likes it in there now and goes to it whenever he needs a rest or isn’t keen on whatever’s happening… usually when Bear puts Spotify on and it starts quite loudly or when the TV gets a bit loud. He’s figured out that when the end music to Star Trek: Voyager comes on, it’s bedtime… so as soon as he hears it, he goes straight to his crate… every time. 😀 He’s gotten really good with bedtime too, Bear only has to click his fingers and pup heads straight to the crate and gets into his bed. It wasn’t something he intentionally taught him, just something he did and the pup responded, so he carried on.

He’s much better with the 5am toilet breaks too. It takes me a while to get him to leave the crate, but when he does, he goes straight to the toilet pad, does his business, has a small drink of water and heads back to bed. I’m back in bed again in 5 minutes too. Unfortunately those five minutes are still having an adverse effect on my sleep. Once I’m awake, I’m awake and it takes ages for me to fall asleep again, usually just in time for me to be woken up by the 8 o’clock alarm. This morning I slept in until 10.20am, and yesterday until 9.20am. It’s not all toilet breaks that are the issue… I seem to have dancing leg syndrome in my arms as well. It’s a bugger to get comfortable when you have muscle spasms in both arms and legs… and bloody difficult to sleep when your partner snores like a steam engine for most of the night.!

Causing Harm, Total Isolation & Being The Last To Know

The girl child and I are not on good terms. Yesterday the pup jumped up at her, on the sofa, for the nth time in 15 minutes. Her bare foot shot out catching him in the chest and threw him a metre across the room before he landed on his back. She was of course full of apologies, but that didn’t stop her being 10 seconds away from having her head forcibly removed from her shoulders by me… especially had she caused him physical harm. Today she stood on his back paw with her sports shoes on, while he was trying to chew on her laces making him yelp and causing him to limp.

It was an accident but she didn’t bother to apologise for it, telling the dog it was his own fault for putting his paw under her shoe and saying he was just a puppy, he was going to get hurt. When I told her he only got hurt when she was around and asked if it was his fault she’d kicked him a metre across the floor yesterday, she shut up. He yelped again when she got back from her run and tried to stroke him, but I think that was more him being startled by her sudden movement than by anything she did to him, but I’m watching her. She might only be 14, but she’s over 6 feet tall and heavily built, like her father.

Last night I called my eldest son back after missing two of his calls and spent just over 4 hours chatting and entertaining him with tales of the mad pup. He’s been completely isolated for a month now, worrying about his furlough wages and if he can afford to live, starving himself because he doesn’t know if he can afford to eat and he’s not sure if his landlord has given him a discount on his rent because of the 20% less wages he’s supposed to be getting. His fiancee has also decided to stay at home with her father and her creature comforts rather than spend time with him, even though she knows he doesn’t have the ‘Rona and neither does she.

She’s refused to even visit and it’s starting to drive him a little nuts. They talk on the phone of course, but 9 times out of 10 end up arguing over her refusal to spend even five minutes with him and he’s lonely and fed up and getting cabin fever. He needs human interaction, and he knows it’s going to be a while before that happens. I asked if it maybe was her somewhat subtle attempt at ending the relationship, there’s absolutely no need for her to not see him at all but he’s convinced that once the lockdown is lifted and he can go back to work, everything will go back to normal… not that that was much of anything worthwhile.

It’s an unfortunate fact that both my sons have terrible taste in women, as I did in men. I can only hope neither of them marries the woman they’re with before they wake up and realise what bad relationships they’re in. Not that there’s any reason why they should, I didn’t for nearly 22 years… 😦

Last night I was informed the kids were staying until Tuesday evening.!! I really hate when Bear doesn’t bother to tell me these things and I get it dumped on me out of the blue. The only reason I was told last night was because the girl child asked about laundry. I’m not sure they’re going to make it to Tuesday evening… it’s only Thursday and I already wish they weren’t here. I get antsy and pissed off at the mess they make, the wet towels they leave on their bedroom floors and their sitting on their asses, doing sod all all day glued to Netflix and YouTube and telling the dog off for trying to get them to play with him, hence how he got hurt yesterday.

Bear doesn’t bother playing with him either, unless it entertains Bear and he’s down to one walk a day because Bear thinks the 35 minutes he gets when I take him out is enough, on top of all the running about he does and playing with me. Poor pup. I’ve started wondering why we even got him… Bear was the one who wanted a puppy, yet I’m the one doing all the work and doing all the playing to keep the little guy entertained. Maybe I’ll ask.

5am, Dead Birds & Mascarpone Cheese

Urgh.! Why am I always the one to get up at 5am.? Seems I’m the only one who can actually handle these rude awakenings at an ungodly hour, so I get the dawn callings to see to the pup. Bear puts the alarm on and then nudges me awake to do pup duty instead of getting his ass out of bed himself… then spends the day yawning and going on about how tired he is… like I’m not.! Grr.! I’ve woken the past few mornings with a splitting headache, feeling washed out and dehydrated and irritable as all hell.

The kids turned up yesterday for the week, as it’s now the May half term holidays (still no idea when they’re going back to school), and of course started to get the dog all wound up and excitable… after he’d just gotten back from a 45 minute walk. The boy child was told immediately to stop with the stupid high-pitched baby voice he uses when talking to the dog, it irritates the crap out of me, I’m not surprised the dog bites him, I would too if I could get away with it.!

The girl child of course finds it highly amusing to torment the pup with his squeaky bear toy and blankets… not sure she’ll do it again after he, while racing from garden to living room like a rocket, threw himself onto the sofa where she was sitting, nipped at her feet and ran off again. It made her yelp and me and Bear laugh. Serves her right.

Pup does seem a little calmer these days, he has his moments as all pups do, but he seems to be a little less excitable in general and not as bitey as he used to be. Next week he has his 12 week vaccination, which means he can be socialised with other dogs. Not that I think he’ll be very sociable. He backs away from other dogs as soon as he sees them when out on walks and when he sees them passing the front window when he’s indoors he growls and gets all defensive.

He doesn’t like pigeons and magpies either. He’ll happily sit and watch the sparrows and blue tits bathing in the dirt and pecking at the brick pillars between the fence panels, but as soon as a pigeon lands he goes nuts and starts barking and growling at it and barks in the direction it goes when it flies away. He almost had a magpie the day before yesterday. It was stood on the top of the neighbours fence and he was lying in front of the garden wall in the sunshine.

The magpie hopped over onto the wall above him and then down onto the patio about a metre in front of him. He didn’t bark and didn’t growl, instead he got up quietly and carefully, watching it and then full on pounced. It saw him at the last second and took flight and almost lost a tail feather. He barked like crazy as it flew away. I hope it won’t be that daft again, I had enough dead bird ‘gifts’ when I had a cat.

Today is day 42 of lockdown… and I haven’t killed anyone yet… I’d say that was quite an accomplishment. Mascarpone cheese is bloody hard to come by… nowhere around here has it… anyone got an explanation for that.? I only wanted a little to make a tomato and mascarpone pasta last night, but none of our local supermarkets had any left and wouldn’t be getting any in, as they couldn’t get it. I blame Turkey, they’ve probably commandeered all imports of the stuff for themselves… greedy buggers.! Plenty of disinfectant… for the record.

The dog is currently racing like a loon around a slippery patio in the rain… sliding around on his butt and side getting covered in dirt and rain water and making a beeline for the house, much to Bear’s and the kids’ entertainment. Guess who’s cleaning the floor.? Yeah, not me.!

Puppy Talk, Mummy Nostalgia & Being A Princess

I seem to be developing a new vocabulary now that pup is here. Using words like fuzzbutt, bugger and gremlin to describe my bitey little bat eared furball. With “No.! Don’t eat the bloody dandelions.!” becoming a more commonplace turn of phrase often heard around my local neighbourhood, along with a lamented “Why do you have to eat bloody EVERYTHING.?!!” Dear God.

Never in my entire previous life did I think I would ever have to ask a dog what in the hell he thought he was playing at… the kids yes, the dog no. Every dog I’ve previously had the pleasure to be friends with and the cats I’ve been given the honour of serving, have been well mannered, respectful, considerate and calm. This rapidly growing ball of razor sharp teeth and claws from the depths of hell has no such conscience. Everything is fair game and nothing is sacred.

Lockdown is a real bitch. We can’t sign him up for puppy training until it’s over and it’s looking like we’re going to be locked down until early June.! I’m not sure I’m going to have the requisite number of limbs by then and even less sure pup’s going to have the requisite number of teeth.! I have yet to find an effective deterrent for his destructive chewing… and believe it, when I do I’m bathing in that shit.!!

Yesterday we gave the little hooligan a break from sitting in his crate for a few hours while we sorted out the cellar. Today, he was back in it as I wanted to go through some of my boxes and ditch stuff that I’ve hoarded too long. Stuff like photos of my ex that I had no idea I still had… Bear wouldn’t let me burn them (spoilsport), so I ripped them into tiny little pieces instead.

I found all my old college and Adult Education certificates and got rid… they’re decades old and wouldn’t do me a damned bit of good over here anyway. I shed a few tears at finding my eldest son’s (25) first baby shoes and smart outfit that I’ve kept since he grew out of it. I still remember him in that outfit, so tiny and so lovely and now he’s a dark humoured, sarcastic cynic who hates everyone and everything and has commitment issues.

I’m honoured that he still loves me. I’m in a very small minority. I also found two of my old ball gowns that I bought to wear to Military balls back in the 2000’s and discovered they still fit me and nicely too.! 😀 And my old tiara. I intend to wear it everyday to prove that I am indeed a princess. Bear used to tell me I was when we were all loved up and soppy with each other. Not that we’re not now, just not so much. Too damned tired.

It seems I need to anyway, because my halo keeps slipping and people laugh when I tell them I’m an angel. I actually am, my passport says so. 🙂 I guess it’s all the lamenting and frustrated sighs and long suffering looks they see on my face when I go on walkies with Cerberus.

Time Outs, Human Treats & Crap Clearing

So far pup has managed to go five to five and a half hours at night before needing a toilet break. I’m getting a lot more sleep and am finally starting to feel a bit more human. The house has gone to shit though, as the more I try to clean up, the more mess gets made. Bear and pup play in the garden a lot and neither has the consideration to wipe their feet. Pup decides every now and again that his potty pad is offensive so pees and poops on the floor… it’s the cleanest part of the floor at this point.

Everything has either teeth marks or claw marks in it, including me and I’ve taken to giving pup a time out when he gets over-excited and bitey. He still has his baby teeth and they’re razor sharp and the little git has a thing for bare skin. So when he gets too much I give him a chewy toy and put him in his crate for a minute or two, or for however long it takes for him to calm down, usually no longer than four minutes. Obviously he gets told he’s a good boy when he comes out and gets a treat and he’ll happily go and play with a stick or chase his squeaky bear.

His favourite treat is banana, he can smell it from the bottom of the patio and comes running to get some. He makes sure to smell my hands and check the banana is all gone before he’ll go find something else to do. Bear tried him with a tiny piece of Minneola, which he likes to toy with before eating but he’s not sure about the sharp taste. Yesterday we took him to meet The Mommy, who we haven’t seen in five weeks. It was her 74th birthday. We kept the correct distance and made sure to take hygiene wipes to wipe down the plates, cups and cutlery we touched.

They were so pleased to see us and to meet the pup, who was more than happy with all the attention he got. He’s been really good the past few days, spending a couple of hours at a time in his crate while Bear and I sorted out the crap we’ve hoarded down in the cellar over the past seven years…well, in Bear’s case hoarded for the past 18 years… and just taken from house to house and dumped in storage. Finally he’s getting rid of stuff instead of deciding he can sell it. How he can seriously think someone is going to pay good money for his ancient crap is beyond me. It’s well past vintage and bordering on antique, and not in a good way. Thirty year old Ikea furniture is not a thing.

Sleep Glorious Sleep, Walkies For Beginners & Boring Vegetarian Recipes

Imagine the surprise I got this morning, waking up to find it was light, the birds were singing and Bear was nudging me and asking if I’d been down to the pup in the night, which I hadn’t as the alarm hadn’t gone off. In fact, no alarm went off last night so I got 5 hours and 45 minutes straight sleep.! Hallelujah.!! \o/ Finally… just as I was beginning to think my next decent nights sleep would be in 2021, the dog sleeps through.

He must have been exhausted with all the running instead of walking and racing around the house like a mad thing he’s done this weekend. That’s a plus side to having the children stay… they tire the dog out. Two walks a day plus playtime and races around the patio with toys and the broom head and jumping up and down chasing his stick is more than enough exercise to keep my little whirlwind happy.

I’m keeping fingers crossed that we get another decent nights sleep tonight. Apparently pup is supposed to have 13 minutes exercise a day, according to DogForum.com, but as he uses that up as soon as he wakes up in the morning, racing around the house and patio with the Zoomies and chasing his squeaky bear and ball (and his own tail) he’s getting way more than his recommended quota.

He goes for a walk with me in the morning, which consists of being carried out of the house and halfway down the road (because as soon as the harness comes out of the cupboard he tries to eat it rather than allowing me to put it on him and flatly refuses to budge once stood on the doorstep, inside the house), before he decides he will walk after all and sniffs his way along the grass to the paved road on the opposite side, where he then starts to trot in the general direction of home before running hell for leather to the front door of our house. It takes all of 5 minutes.

I’m not sure he quite grasps the concept of walkies. He loves the sound of the word, but once the harness comes out he backs off and has to be held with one hand while I try to manoeuvre his head into the harness with the other. Once the harness is on he stands still and lets me do it up and attach the leash. Then he refuses to budge and scoots backwards to try to get away.

When Bear takes him out in the evening, he happily makes it to the front step before deciding he’d rather not and tries to wriggle out of going outside. So Bear has to carry him a certain distance before he’ll then want to walk and the whole trotting and running for home process starts over. He has grasped the concept of stick though… now having three after picking them up on his walks and happily trotting home with them, despite one of them being three times his length.

Today I had to get the weekly dinner menu sorted and a shopping list written for Bear. Every week it’s getting harder and harder to find decent low calorie vegetarian recipes that don’t include lentils or tofu and I’m finding that I’m going back to previously tried and liked recipes and changing them up a little because there’s nothing new and inspiring on the Interwebs. You’d think with so many in quarantine and locked down for weeks on end, someone would come up with new and interesting foodie stuffs and share it, or do I have to do it all by myself.?

Today’s shopping list included chestnut mushrooms and Greek yoghurt as I’m working on a Mushroom Stroganoff recipe with tarragon that I found back in January. I may post it here so watch this space…! 🙂

Nine Week Vaccination, Going A Little Nuts & In Need Of Attention

Yesterday was pup’s first visit to the vet. It was also his first time going for a walk with a harness and leash outside of the house. The vet said he was in perfect health and gave him his nine week vaccination. It made him quite drowsy within half an hour, which for me was pretty good because it meant I got shit done while he was happily curled up in his bed crate, sleeping for hours on end. Bear and I even got more than three hours sleep between toilet breaks last night. \o/ Not that the past fortnight of broken sleep isn’t killing us, but it’s a bit better than it was in the beginning. We don’t look quite so haggard and exhausted. Our sex life’s gone to shit though, we just don’t have the energy for more than a cuddle and a kiss goodnight any more.

Walkies was fun last evening, if you leave out all the times pup decided to try and eat something. He spent most of the 35 minutes we were out walking around a 3 minute route, sniffing the air and watching people and traffic, and walking all of a metre before stopping, sitting down and surveying the temporary boundaries of his new Kingdom. He also got carried a short distance because he decided he didn’t like the texture of the road surface and refused to budge. He looks so cute in his new harness, but he walks with a wiggle, which is so funny. 😀 He’s also found more things to chew on, which is starting to drive me a little nuts. This morning Bear had to move a huge patio plant pot because pup has managed to figure out how to get into it to chew on the newly blossoming stems.

I had to move my genealogy book and box, because he’s managed to wet the corner of the box enough, through licking it, to make a hole and then started ripping into it and eating the cardboard. Little bugger.! You’d think he didn’t get fed enough or didn’t have enough chew toys to play with, or didn’t get enough attention. Believe me, he does… I spend my entire day entertaining him, racing around the patio while he tries to bite my shoes, playing with a big broom he likes to chase and bark at and rolling his Kong-type ball around and playing tug with his squeaky bear and new rope toy he got from the vet’s yesterday. If anyone needs attention, it’s me. When I’m not entertaining the dog and trying to keep him from eating shit that could seriously damage his health, I’m cooking meals I barely have time to eat, sleeping like crap and missing out on a lot of the basic affection I used to get pre-puppy.

The laundry needs doing and I’m barely managing to keep Bear in underwear, only getting me time when pup is dozing happily in his bed crate for the 15 minutes before his next meal is due and my hands are red raw and dryer than parchment, and bloody sore. Maybe I should go to the vet’s for a shot to make me drowsy. 🙂

A Pet Store Visit & A Teacher Named Pain

On Friday Bear and I took pup to the pet store with us to get him a new harness and lead so he can go for walks once he’s had his nine week vaccination tomorrow. If a puppy could get cabin fever, I’d say he has it. Two weeks stuck indoors with only a patio area to explore and the same two humans to look at day in and day out… boring.!! So we enticed him into his travel crate and took him out for a browse around the local pet place, adhering to the 2 metre distance rule while asking advice and queuing at the checkout. We eventually decided, after he’d done his turn as a catwalk model, on a padded silver/grey and black Y harness that can be adjusted as he grows and a sapphire blue lead.

He was none too impressed with all the attention and even less so with the car rides there and back. He spent half an hour with his new harness on on Friday and spent the entire time trying to get it off. On Saturday he spent another half hour in it and even had the lead attached so he could be walked around the living room and patio area. He gets the idea, but isn’t entirely convinced it’s something a big dog should be doing. Yesterday he kept it on for 35 minutes and roamed around like the Battle Cat from He-Man, his butt wagging as he walked. Still not used to it. Today it stayed on for an hour, but only because he fell asleep with it on.

I spent a fair part of Friday afternoon cleaning moss off the bricks around the garden fence, because the walking stomach decided to start chewing on it. I swear he does it just to piss me off. He’s taken to chewing on the bike chains and mud flaps and pedals and pretty much any damned thing that means I have to chase him off or bring him something else to chew on. Damn dog’s too clever for his own good. He adores Bear though, so that takes a little pressure off of me to be his full time servant and go-to chew toy. He’s also sleeping a little better now, which means I am too. Three hours 27 minutes straight last night before he peed like a racehorse and decided it was playtime. I was not amused.

On Saturday he managed to hurt his back right paw, catching one of his claws in something and tearing the skin. I have no idea how he did it, but there was a lot of blood. I washed his paw in warm water and tried to get a better look, but he wouldn’t let me. Thankfully it stopped bleeding, but I’m still going to mention it to the vet tomorrow and get him to take a look. He also needs to check out doggo’s mouth, as the dopey little sod decided to chew on the latch of his bed crate yesterday and hurt himself again. He didn’t half yelp and tried to hide under the dining table but I went after him and made sure there was no blood and he had all his baby teeth intact. He gets told ‘No’ every time he heads for the cage door to chew on it, but he still goes ahead and does it. Maybe this time he’ll learn. They say pain’s a great teacher. Time for obedience training though me thinks. It wouldn’t hurt Bear to learn either. 😀