Day 6 - September 22^nd

Had to take Lewi to the vet’s today. As I was playing gently with him this morning, I discovered a tick on him. Our garden used (before Lewi came along) to be the overlap area between a number of cats’ territories, as well as being a hedgehog magnet. Until recently, it was, unfortunately, not a rare occurrence to find a drowned hedgehog in the swimming pool – hence all the puppy fence building work through the summer. So I suppose, especially after the warm and very damp, it is only to be expected that we will find a few such unwelcome residents under the shrubs and in the grass.

The two nurses who dealt with him were very nice, but yes it did take 3 of us to get him to accept being inspected in his ears and between his toes. He snapped at one of the nurses, she tried putting a muzzle on him, but the smallest was too large, so I volunteered to look after safety at the business end. When they were checking elsewhere though, he was as calm and good as can be. They did end up by making a big fuss of him, three humans petting and praising him! Almost worth going through the examination again. They saw the vet who prescribed some stuff to prevent future problems, but I bought some tick removers just in case. It feels like when your child comes home with nits. Although, as a teacher, I learnt that it was extremely common, and usually the whole class gets them, you still feel a sort of shame.

We had quite a heavy shower of rain today, the gusty wind in the trees had him puzzled and cautious. (I remember again back at school we used to dread windy days, the children’s behaviour was always much worse). He was unsure about the noise of the rain on the conservatory roof, but didn’t care at all about the rain falling on him. I had to limit his time outside though. At first he was not going to accept the towel, thinking I wanted to play some sort of game with it, but in the end, I think he quite enjoyed being dried off. I don’t want him catching a chill and having to go back to the vets… Actually, to dry him off, I had him sat on my lap (a first that, he’s normally too wriggly) he snuggled up and fell asleep there. I, of course, could not move and disturb him so I was forced, against my will you understand, to have a quick 5 minute nap myself.  

Not sure what’s happening here but we’ve had about 3 little puddles on the hall carpet. Each time I have sprayed with the cleaner spray which is supposed to stop them weeing there again. That bit doesn’t work, but at least it does clean the carpet well. I tried doing the recommended thing. A sharp NO to stop him then take him to where he’s supposed to do it and praise him for finishing off in the right place. Twice I found him doing it, but by the time I got him through to the garden, he’d forgotten what he was doing and would go and smell a rose or something. So that’s not going to go the way the textbooks suggest. Patience I suppose, it’ll work in the end, just puzzled as to why he has started doing it, perhaps it’s because of something I’ve done to worry him, like taking him to the vet’s house of horrors. It’ll be in my shoe next.

The vet gave me a worming tablet last week, well he didn’t give it to me, he sold me it to give it to Lewi. I’ve got to give him a third of a tablet. I hope the dose doesn’t have to be too accurate, and how do you get a puppy to swallow a tablet! That will be interesting when the day comes.