Genghis has not been having a good week. Therefore I have not been having a good week. Last Saturday when I was taking my visiting friend* for a fabulous cliffside walk, he decided without warning or explanation to excrete a rushing stream of squish along the narrow clifftop path . . . just in front of a group of foreign visitors with an accent even more alien than mine. Welcome to Scotland. Sorry! I said, probably with gobbling noises & waving of arms.**
That evening, having put my friend on the train & gone up to my stepson’s as is the standard drill on Saturday nights, Genghis, who had seemed to be FINE all the rest of the day . . . threw up.
On the sofa.
VOLUMINOUSLY.
Also on the floor, as I was hysterically trying to DRAG HIM OFF THE SOFA.
Did I say VOLUMINOUSLY? We were all therefore UNPREPARED FOR HIM TO DO IT AGAIN A FEW MINUTES LATER. EQUALLY VOLUMINOUSLY.
What a very, very, very, very good thing it is that my stepson & his wife are dog people.
I took the beast home & gave him the standard having-eaten-something-you-shouldn’t-have homeopathic remedy, which usually works pretty well.*** Next morning: small, perfect excretion. Yaay. Heave sigh of relief. Will keep him off raw veg—he likes carrots—for a while, but we’re obviously fine . . .
That afternoon: STREAMING SQUISH. Nooooooooooo.
This went on a while, & my homeopathic vet is in Hampshire. I’m out of my depth pretty quickly so I started him on the superglue-plus-probiotic that you can get from your ordinary vet, or on amazon. Since I am now the nonplussed owner of a dog that will SWALLOW ANYTHING I keep a tube of it on hand.
Yesterday was good. Today looked like being good . . .
Do I start breathing easier & sleeping through the night?†
Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with his gut at the minute. I hope.
HOWEVER.
We don’t get seals on our local shoreline,†† or only rarely. The irony is that my stepson mentioned over the current jigsaw that they were going off to Mumblemumble Point††† today, to look at seals, Mumblemumble Point being where you go around here if you want to see seals. In four years I’ve not seen one on the town shore; twice, I think, in walking distance when you start getting out of town. Never with Genghis.
There was a seal on the shore today. Slap in front of the pedestrian alley from the main street. Not a little cute one. A GREAT BIG MUTHA. & if you know anything about seals, you’ll know to never mind those huge beautiful melting-brown eyes: they have teeth & they use them.
I realised about two-thirds of a second before Genghis did that that giant pale treetrunk that had washed up on the shingle WASN’T A TREETRUNK WHEN IT LIFTED ITS HEAD & LOOKED IN OUR DIRECTION. THAT’S A FLAMING-DOODAH FRELLING SEAL.
The two-thirds of a second gave my thumb just long enough to smash convulsively on the long-lead brake. Genghis went MENTAL, even by Genghis’ standards of going-mental, which are, um, SPECTACULAR, especially when you’re the poor wretch on the other end of the lead. When he goes mental after a seagull, which he does, the worst that happens is that he kills another seagull, & while in the great scheme of things I think one fewer seagull is GREAT & DESIRABLE, I don’t like being responsible. I also don’t like the seagull-blood-everywhere aspect, or the corpse. I try VERY HARD TO STOP HIM. I also can’t remember not to scream imprecations at my flaming-doodah frelling dog during these skirmishes, which probably amuses the locals no end. Most of our worst contretemps occur in public. Of course.
But I usually succeed¸ & the blasted seagull flaps away for another day, to crap on someone else’s head & divebomb someone else trying to walk their crazed-prey-drive seagull-munching dog.
I couldn’t afford to lose today’s struggle. It wouldn’t only be seal blood decorating me & the landscape if Genghis got away from me. The long lead was about half extended when I hit the brake, & the longer the lead is the harder he is to crank in. Plus we were on sand, sand generously mined by stones, seaweed, driftwood & miscellaneous rubbish. Stepping on a plastic bottle when you’re trying to prevent your dog from committing suicide is not helpful. I couldn’t keep my feet under me.
So I’m hauling & jerking & being jerked—he’s a good sized dog anyway & he gets bigger when he goes nuts—& yelling & he’s doing cartwheels & leaping amazingly high off the ground & just in CASE anyone was missing the show BARKING & BARKING & BARKING in this demented berserk way, I hope some of the seaside flats had time to ring their friends & sell tickets.
Because this went on for several minutes.‡
I eventually got my feet dug into what traction there was‡‡ & started backing, with agonising slowness, uphill toward the town & pavement. The fact that I’m WRITING this means I won. Otherwise I’d be sitting outside the vet’s office waiting for the surgical team to tell me how he was, or possibly at A&E being stitched up myself. :: INSERT WHATEVER YOUR IDEA OF VERY BAD LANGUAGE IS HERE :: Maybe we’ll move to Wyoming. Very few seals there. No, wait, grizzly bears. Not Wyoming then. ‡‡‡
When I finally got him cranked in & could get my hand through his COLLAR I knew we were okay, although I was streaming with adrenaline & starting to shake AND the bloody dog still wouldn’t let that seal go, he was twisting in my hands & climbing me, I may have mentioned this little habit of his before, when he GETS VERY EXCITED, as he turns himself inside out, all those very long legs & giant whirling paws get between my legs & while I can hold him, I can’t move. §
I was right, two & a half years ago, when I was discussing what kind of dogs we each wanted with my also recently dogless next door neighbours. I wouldn’t touch a German Wire Haired Pointer with a BARGE POLE. THEY ARE MANIACS.
We stormed back up the steep hill to our home eyrie & once we were out of sight of the ginormous, pointy-fanged seal, Genghis dropped back to being his usual cheerful boisterous happy go lucky self. ARRRRRRRRRRRGH.
Remind me why I wanted a dog.
[Beat]
Because they’re such good blog material.
* * *
* Yes I know, EVERYONE needs a name. Readers of the old blog will remember that nearly everyone had a blog-specific alias.^ I will be doing this again, but my brain seems kind of frozen at the wheel about it at present. Possibly aggravated by technology. When I started the new blog I wanted to look at the old blog’s dramatis personae. I’ll undoubtedly reuse some of the names^^ but I don’t want to outrage anyone’s finer feelings, which is to say mine, so I want to see who wore a given name before I launch it at anyone else.
Micro******** couldn’t find it. Refused to find it. Wouldn’t look for it. Sulked. Polished its fingernails on its lapel & hummed a little tune. I tried everything I could think of & quite a few things I couldn’t^^^, & then I tried searching various names that I knew were on the list. BLOG POSTS CONTAINING THESE NAMES CAME UP. THE MASTER LIST OF NAMES DID NOT. & I am way too stupid to have tried to save it in some other clever way. I would have hit SAVE like I do with every other document, given it a name & a date, & expected it to store itself with the other 1,000,000,000 documents I’ve accumulated in the last thirty years.~
So, where did I finally find it, because I did finally find it, NO THANKS TO MICROBLEEP? On the desktop/wallpaper/opening screen of my elderly rarely-used desktop. Hanging out with a lot of other icons-indicating-something-or-other that I’ve never got round to tidying away. REINFORCEMENT FOR BAD BEHAVIOUR. DON’T TIDY THAT THING AWAY, YOU’LL NEVER SEE IT AGAIN.~~
^ Barring Peter. Sigh. & Merrilee, my agent. & the dogs, sort of. All my dogs have call names & nicknames. I read in a dog book somewhere that since you want your dog to REACT when you say his or her name, give them a nickname they don’t know, that you use when you’re talking aboutthem. My dogs’ names in the blog are their real nicknames.
^^ Here’s one of those regrets-for-the-past I bet you don’t hear very often. I’m sorry not to have southern English towns to rename in a sober & sympathetic manner any more. Southern England town names are often delicious. Nether Wallop? Preston Candover? Odiham?+ Scottish towns are different. At the moment I’m in the early stages of leafing through a variety of Scottish language & folklore books & cackling.
+ Yes. Pronounced odium.
^^^ Yeah. Work that one out.
~ Yes. Owner attitude to the contents & furnishings of my computer strongly resemble owner attitude toward contents & furnishings of this house. But if there are any other no-newspapers-or-dead-mice hoarders out there, I assume you will recognise this: if you do convince yourself to throw something out, six months or ten years later you will be SURE to regret it. I mean, books, well. But I’ve been approximately the same body size+ for over forty years++ & there are items of apparel I regret from college. Which I graduated from in 1974.+++
+ although trying to track yourself through the minefield of clothing sizes is almost as mentally damaging as trying to make Microbleep do anything.# ALMOST.
# Erm. Anything you want it to do.
++ AAAAAAUGH. ::Bangs head on table. Gently. It’s a very old head:: I have friends who are one third my age. I mean, grown-up friends. They haven’t been grown up very long but they are out there having informed opinions & earning a living.
+++ I think. The memory is not what it used to be.# All that head banging perhaps.
# & FURTHERMORE IT NEVER WAS
~~ The only thing that may finally persuade me to clear off the desktop desktop, so to speak, is that all those little stamp-sized computer-significant thingys are blocking the backdrop photo of hellhound puppies being adorable. The only thing really wrong with dogs is that they don’t live long enough.
** Arm. The other one would have been holding onto Genghis. Firmly. He likes people.
*** on both of us. I, however, do not voluntarily eat unidentifiable decomposing matter. I only eat holy perfect organic food. But my gastrointestinal system periodically decides it’s BORED & has a tantrum just for something to do.
† SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT?? ARE YOU KIDDING?? However when Genghis is not at his best just the usual dog thing of getting up & spinning around in his bed once or twice & settling down again with a sigh WILL WAKE ME OUT OF MY ERRATIC DOZE WITH AN ADRENALINE SPIKE THAT NAILS ME TO THE CEILING.
If this post is less recognisably in English than usual, well, I’m shorter of sleep than usual.
†† Yes! This TOWN needs a name!! I KNOW!
††† YES! ANOTHER NAME NEEDED!
‡ Several minutes of frantic prayer that the lead doesn’t snap.
‡‡ Yaay All Stars. Just by the way.
‡‡‡ Note that there were other dogs on the shore today. If there had been a circus of frenzied raging dogs all being effortfully dragged away from the thing I was assuming was a treetrunk, I’d’ve been quicker off the mark, or on the lead button-brake. But no. There were even off lead dogs meandering around different areas of the shore. None of the others were GWHPs however.
It’s off lead dogs I’m always clocking first, you know? They’re what I’m used to being a problem. They’re what my head spins like an owl’s to check out. Hollow laughter. ARRRRRRRRRGH.
§ There is a tactic for this too, although any professional dog trainers who have got this far, look away now. I lift him up on his hind legs with a death grip on his collar, wrap my non-lead-holding arm around his chest, & limp along, clumsily propping my thrashing, vertically-extended dog against that side of my body like a kind of nightmare crutch. It is not pretty, but it gets the job done. It’s even less pretty if the adventure we’re frelling trying to escape is some irresponsible bozo’s off lead out of control dog who runs after us.