Now you know as well as I do that Mr B has had his fair share of health issues over the last year or two. Well, it seems he's actually a cat in disguise - it's the only answer I can come up with for the amount of times he's made miraculous recoveries.
Only last week my daughter walked into the room, took one look at him and said, "Oh God, mum, is this it?"
Apparently not. See attached photos of him on the beach. They weren't taken today but they might have been, he was gambolling round like a spring lamb!
Last week, a couple of days before his birthday he had a seizure, swiftly followed by another one. After his seizure he has taken to barking.
That wouldn’t be so bad if we still lived on a farm but we don’t. Now we live in a flat. A huge dog WOOOF, WOOF, WOOFING away at five in the morning might be considered a nuisance. We have discovered that taking him outside generally calms him down. That’s what I did. It was a bit too soon really as he wasn’t yet steady on his feet but I wanted to get him into the cold air as soon as possible.
He wobbled up the path and we sat on the pavement together. Every time he lifted his head to bark I shoved a piece of bread in his mouth. It was funny – it was a kind of WWWWWWO. Ooh, bread, nomnomnom. At one point he snatched for the bread and got my finger. OUCHIE!!!! He sat there with my finger clamped in his mouth while I silently screamed OWOWOWOWOW!!!!!! I had to open his jaws to retrieve my finger. That of course upset him because he thought I was taking food out of his mouth so the barking resumed.
Obviously,goes without saying, it was the stillest of night, you could have heard a pin drop. So the sound of a six stone dog barking reverberated off every wall. Oh my God!! We set off walking and he barked all the way round our little neighbourhood, setting off all the other dogs in his wake. Honestly, I’d have been better keeping him in the flat. Instead of disturbing half a dozen people he disturbed a hundred. No one needs that at 5am do they? I decided to get him back home as quickly as possible.
As we were already most of the way round the block I tried to go into our back gate but it was pitch black and he refused to go in, even when I lit it with my torch. So instead of getting him home quickly I had to walk him all the way back round the block. Woofing as he went.
Eventually he calmed down and I got some sleep around 6.30. Happy 11th birthday, big fella!!!
