Bruno's Blog – a complete animal at work

In principal, a good thing, I suppose, but a bit of a mixed blessing, I find. I mean the kids are around, which is great and I don’t have to get up early, feign enthusiasm and hack off to work with the old man every day, but the kids are not that, well, interesting, all the time.

The boy likes watching TV (snore) and playing with his playstation (double snore, but with more annoying noises, and he turns the volume up way too loud if no one tells him not to), whereas the girl likes watching Big Brother (tra la la, er, was that me losing the will to live under the bed here? No one seems to care any more) and chatting to her friends on the phone (marginally more elevating, but on a scale of one to really good fun, I’d say for me it scores about a minus eight).

But they are willing to be taken for walks, and to different places, and they have no idea of how things are done when you are out walking with the lord and master, which is of course a very good thing.

That said, apparently I’m back at the office tomorrow. They’re all off to see the homeopath, an event to which I am not invited (shame) so its a walk in the park and then a day spent with a queer little dachshund called Wilbur who has been threatening to take over my bed under the desk whilst being ‘house sat’ by one of the girls.

What a strange little fellow Wilbur is. Are all minature Dachshunds like him? I sort of like him, but I’m not quite sure whether we’re from the same species or not. He doesn’t seem to have any legs at all, and has ears like the wings of a bat. He also trots round carrying balls that are far too big for him and has bad breath. And doesn’t sleep very much. He picks things up, takes them to people and drops them on their feet. When they throw them away, he goes to get them and brings them back. Again and again and again.

I think I’ll have a little chat with him about that tomorrow. Either he’s missing a trick there, or slightly more alarmingly, maybe I am. Better not give too much away.

I’ll let you know.

I got into two fights today. TWO. The cheek of it. And what’s worse, the old man told me off and made me sit in my bed for hours as if it was my fault.

Slightly scary that it started them talking again about a certain surgical procedure that I have huge interest in them not carrying out on me.

First up, in walks Alfie.

‘Oh he’s so friendly, everyone loves Alfie’

Excuse me, but, er that’s my strapline, I think you’ll find. Alfie is a Staffie with a massive head. Looked friendly enough so I went up in the usual way. I gave him the standard 

‘You don’t mind if I just pat you down, sir, it’s house policy’, but failed to notice he was unable to put any weight on his right front leg. Body language all got a bit confused, and suddenly i found myself having a go.

OK, OK, I’m sorry, My fault. It’s just with all the security alerts recently, some of us are on a bit of a hair trigger these days. We were separated and I was banished in disgrace. He turned out to have a shard of glass impaled into his foot. No wonder he was a bit touchy.

Later on in comes Toggle. Toggle is a Border Terrier who’d just been set upon by two Staffies in Regents Park. Poor guy, apparently at one point the other two had him one from each end and were puling at him like a rag doll.

The lady brought him in to the old man to patch him up, which all seemed to go well. Toggle was getting ready to go home and was back with him mum in Reception. I sneaked out of the office and went to have a look, but he thought I’d come to have a go, so before I’d had a chance to comiserate, he was onto me.

Banished again.

Got home and found the girl and the woman doing much the same there, so I reckon we can blame it on sunspots or the phase of the moon.

Definitely nothing to do with hormones, any of it.

 

Saturday is of course the first day of the weekend and is therefore traditionally celebrated by a LATE START. This is important. After a busy week – and I for one have a punishing regime of walks, sessions with my personal trainer (although he is rubbish. He needs far more training than I do), security duties here at home and at the clinic, social calls to make, foxes to chase, you know the kind of thing.

I am tired on a Saturday morning. No more seven o’clock wake up and reluctant run in the park with the girl. It’s lie upside down in bed until the call of nature obliges me to pay a visit to the tedious old man who by then is probably watching telly whilst still half asleep in bed.

Not this Saturday. Both he and the woman were up and about at seven (that’s seven o’clock in the morning) and almost immediately loading up the car. I was bundled in – not may favourite place as you know – and off we went. Leaving the girl slumbering demurely at home. Given the choice, I think you get the picture as to where I’d rather have been. Tucked up in bed with gorgeous or being thrown around in the car by his lordship.

We arrive at destination #1 – as it turned out – and unloaded the car. I made the obligatory bid for freedom and was sternly put back in the car, where I could do little more than watch pitifully from the back seat. The woman appeared to be dumped by the roadside with a coffee as the old man and I carried on. Apparently she was cooking for some French rock star, whatever that is.

Another half hour later, as we parked and I hopped out, small bells began to ring. I’d been here before. This was a college. There were other dogs. I remember. The old man teaches. Cheered up by the presence of Moose (de Beauvoir), Pepys and Luna, plus a tiny Yorkie, an apparently Crufts winning Munsterlander and a slightly smelly black Labrador whose name I can’t remember, the day started.

I started off sitting half on his lap, but before long he’d put me on a table at the front of the class and was pointing out various bits of me: nose, tail, vast brain, strong heart, imposing musclature, intelligent eyes, that sort of thing. The audience coo-ed appreciatively. But he does go on. The heart this, the lungs that. I was soon bored and sat down.

‘Stand up, there a good boy’ he can be very patronising at times. I stood. And started to get bored again so I sat down. He didn’t appear to notice so I lay down with my head on my front legs as if I was paying attention, which of course I wasn’t, but then it all became too much and I rolled over on my side, still on this very small little high table.

Advanced torpor rapidly got the better of me and before I knew it, I was out, with my head lolling right over the side of the table. As needs, must.

How does he talk for three hours? He’s boring enough during the odd five minutes we get at home, but these people seemed to like it. He was showing pictures of some of the guys who’ve been in at the clinic for treatment, so I’ve seen it all before.

Osteopathy, I think they call it. All very touchy feely, rolling around on the floor, deep tissue massage, that sort of thing. I get the odd treatment every now and then – particularly after I’d been run over by a bicycle in Hyde Park. Did I ever tell you about that? Came out of nowhere. I was crossing the path – which turned out to be a cycle path, but how was I to know? – and suddenly there she was, right on top of me. Not necessarily a bad situation, I know, and she was quite nice about it but it did hurt. Spilled her right off her bike. Wheels went over me bu-bump.

The osteopath said that I had bicycle tracks across my back.

All of which gave the old man a chance to wheel out his ‘favourite’ Jack Russell stories.

Old man’s favourite Jack Russell story #1:

He had just finished his final exams and more surprisingly passed them. He was down in Bristol with his parents for the graduation ceremony, which was due to take place that afternoon. They were walking down by the docks. An old VW camper van was reversing slowly round the car park, paying scant attention to the far more important Jack Russell who was investigating something interesting nearby. Nearby turned out to be very nearby indeed as one of the rear wheels of the van made contact and went right over the top of said Russell, all this right in front of the old man (albeit in a younger form). Much shouting and kerfuffle.

‘Oh my god where are we going to find a vet…’ wailed the driver of the van.

The old man’s dad took exaggerated pride in stepping forward

‘Well, ahem, he’s not strictly speaking a vet yet, but will be in 2 hours time – can we help?’

Enter stage left, the shy young man, cringing at parental intervention, for a quick check over and pronouncement that said terrier was fine.

Old man’s favourite Jack Russell story 2:

One of the early major trauma cases that he had to deal with in practice was a Jack Russell that had been hit by a – wait for it – TRAIN. Obviously the train was badly damaged by the encounter, as indeed was the dog. Poor little fellow had a broken jaw, fractured leg and quite nasty soft tissue injuries to his head, but was basically fine. The old man – again a much improved junior version in those days – was sweating away in the operating theatre attempting to put the terriers ears back together when in walked the senior partner at the practice.

He peered over the operating table and enquired benignly what was going on. Having been told the story, he looked up

‘When dealing with Jack Russells, you have to redefine words like tough’ he said, and wandered off.

Never a truer word.