Leaps and Bounds

Our little Herbie is gaining mobility in leaps and bounds. Quite literally. He has surprised us a couple of times for appearing suddenly out of the blue. I opened the bedroom door and found him in the bedroom, after I knew I’d taken him outside, and realized he had clambered in through the window. He has also got outside from the living room which means climbering a breeze block step, which is quite significant for a dog with wobbly legs. His climbing technique has changed too, and he now puts his front paws on a step and then bunnie hops, which shows how the strength in his legs is improving. Before it was a bit of a ungainly haul. Herbie almost ran yesterday, he certainly worked up a bit of a trot. It is quite amazing to see his improvement. I guess it is exponential as, as he gets fitter, he moves more, so he gains strength and gets fitter… We’re not going to turn him into a spring chicken, however it is nice to think that he’ll be able to enjoy life a little more through better mobility.

Pickles name has changed to Pixie. We didn’t think it was fair on Petal, as Petal kept hearing herself getting told off for things she had no intention of doing. It also give Pickle the opportunity to ignore us, thinking we were talking to Petal. Pixie is amazingly appropriate, can’t believe we didn’t think of it before.

We had an exciting day on Friday – after months of threatening, the car finally decided deposit the contents of the cooling system over the road, via a burst hose, outside the vet in Zafra. We were at the vet with Rosie who was being sterilized. The vets turn the animals out after their ops while they are not really out of the anathestic, so not only was it Rosie, but it was Rosie appearing very drunk and wearing a lampshade. This could have been a big problem as the tow truck man nodded curtly towards Rosie (well I like to think it was Rosie) and said he wouldn’t take that in the car. So Rosie and I could have been left stranded – as I couldn’t have taken her on the bus or taxi. However happily for us (and unfortunate for him) we unexpectedly saw Stephen from Feria who kindly offered to take me and Rosie home.  Ian, by this time, had asked the tow truck to take him to Llerena, where he thought he was going to be stranded. However, again, happily, the car repair people were able to do a temporary repair, and he was home within a couple of hours. Although it was a tad annoying, the fact it could have been so very much worse – imagine if it had happened by the side of the road on the way home – if we hadn’t had Rosie with us it wouldn’t have been too bad, but a very big and drunk looking dog would have made life very difficult!

I staked our tomatoes this morning, which is significant because this is the first time we’ve had enough tomatoes to stake. The tomatoes appear to be our only success this year. The cotton has grown, but is very poor and not flowered yet, and the peppers have only just started flowering. However, our lime tree not only has regained all of its leaves, but has also got a couple of fruit growing, so we could have one or two fresh limes next year!