I should know better

....Tuesday night actually. I was just going to bed when Solitaire indicated that her time had come, and after a whole sleepless night, during which she had a long rest in the middle, by 7am on Wednesday she again had a family.

All without incident except for one of the boys, who came out "double wrapped", and was not inclined, when unwrapped, to start breathing. I had read that there is an acupuncture point, just at the bottom of the nose, where it meets the top lip, which will stimulate breathing when activated.

I had no acupuncture needles. By the time I had sterilised an ordinary needle, he would be gone.

I have long nails, and the one on the left little finger comes to a point. I jabbed the sharp fingernail into the acupuncture point. He gave a great gasp, and breathed, and he is still breathing.

All well so far. Solitaire is well pleased with herself, and the puppies are thriving. The little girl, born smaller than her brothers, is catching them up, pushing them about, and bids fair to be a holy terror when she is older.

Meanwhile, all is quiet.

Just wait till they are up and running......

An update on the arm, for all of you kind people who have inquired after my health.

The red balloon symptoms went, but when the bite was inspected on Monday, reamrkable amounts of evil green stuff were still coming out,and the swelling was returning. Test results showed it had been the wrong antibiotic. I now have a much stronger one, which I was assured "will make you feel really seedy"....just what I wanted to hear.

I am told to take it easy, absolutely my favourite medical advice. At the moment we have lovely sunny warm weather for doing just that.

Nevertheless, I am missing my shows, and hope by the end of the week to see some progress and feel less as though I have been sat on by a weary elephant.

Truly, as has been mentioned before, is a problem.

The problem, possibly due to her body language, is that the other girls are out to get her. Truly, for her part, is not one to back down. I have to be on the alert.

So last weekend, when a melee erupted, I was right there to pull Truly out. She was unharmed - the whole thing lasted a moment - but in trying to get to her enemies, she slashed my arm.

I am well used to dog bites. I cleaned it out well, and put a silver dressing on it. Nevertheless, it hurt like hell all night, and during the next day my arm started to swell. And swell, and swell. Saturday, with no health facilities open except A&E at the local hospital - usually full on a Saturday night. So I called NHS 24.

This is an emergency system in which you phone in your problem, it is assessed by medical staff at the other end of the line, and you are advised what to do. Evidently the words "dog bite" rang all sorts of alarms with them, and at once I had an appointment at the local hospital. I took my red balloon arm along, was prescribed an antibiotic and yet another tetanus injection.....which I would have to get in A&E, after at least a five hour wait. I took my chances with that, and went off to get the antibiotic.

I was quite impressed with the whole NHS24 thing. I had heard about it from other people, and in particular had the memory of a friend whose hsuband had developed a huge boil on his nether regions. Being a man, he refused to go to the doctor, and it became quite nasty. Eventually his wife phoned NHS24. They asked all the details, and in particular wanted to know the exact dimensions of the boil. Picture the woman, phone in one hand and tape measure in the other, as her husband bent over in agony and bared all.......

Anyway, I am now bandaged and recovering. It is slow going. Truly must have been harbouring some really nasty Swedish bug in her mouth. I had it looked at again midweek, and the colour and the smell will not bear description here (but really impressed the nurses). I may yet need another course of different antibiotics.

So that, and travel difficulties, mean no shows this weekend.

Truly is supremely unaffected by all this. She is probably wondering why she cannot produce such gratifyingly awful results when she bites the other bitches.

Not much showing, but plenty of activity here.

Decibelle (guess why she was named that) is now 9, weighs a lot less than 5lb stands about 8 inches at the shoulder, and believes she is a Rottie. That is probably why she tried to steal the food of a much larger dog, stood up for herself when challenged, and ended up being tossed about like a furry toy as all the others, who had been really bored up to that point, gleefully shouted "Fight! Fight!" and joined in.

I rescued her at once, and carried the muddy object, like the creature from the black lagoon, still shouting defiance, in to be washed and examined. No bites, but sore limbs.

I put her down to see if she could walk. And she did. On two legs. Both on the same side - the right foreleg and the right hindleg. Yes, it can be done, No I didn`t have a camera - you never do at moments like that. She headed lopsidedly for the nearest dish of food, looking like a crab doing a wheelie. I picked her up and headed for the vet.

Two injections and quite a few pills later, she is getting back to her normal self...well, indeed she never changed in character at all. She still believes she is an enormous formidable dog.

What is it about the little ones? Marcus is now obviously having a middle age crisis. Instead of having the relatively harmless human male symptoms of buying a motorbike or hunting for a young blonde, he is now bent on world domination. Having totally failed to dominate the much larger Shelby, or indeed any other dog, he is now eyeing up Fidget. Fidget is also much bigger than him - most things are much bigger than Marcus - and is not impressed.

Marcus and Decibelle need to learn that in order to throw your weight around, you have to have some weight to throw.

I will have to keep an eye on both of them.

Solitaire has been scanned, and is definitely in the pudding club again.

She had visited a young dog, but he was very friendly to me, while quite ignoring her. But her next choice, handsome and more mature, made her an offer she couldn`t refuse (and after a few minutes, had no intention of refusing.) I realised that the young dog probably loves Barbra Streisand, his ringtone is YMCA, and his handbag a perky shade of pink...

So here we go again. She is quiet, large and obviously thinking deep thoughts.

It`s as well she didn`t hear what the scanner said.....

"At least four..."