When they were cutting his hair they found that he has a lump under his eye which is a tooth absess. This is why his face looks a little pink in the picture above.

While on any other dog this would be a relatively small thing – this is going to be very problematic with Horace as we need to give him medication to stop the infection, then I think they will open the abscess, so I have a horrible feeling we’ll need to clean that and probably he’s have more medication. And of course he’s so difficult to handle that this isn’t going to be easy by any means.

The vet that saw him hasn’t seen Horace in full warrior mode, she saw him yesterday when he was looking super-cute and he was still dopey from the sedation that they have to give him before they can cut his coat. So I don’t think she quite understands the challenge we face (but she will when we go back for a review on 28th!).

We decided to mix the tablets with water and inject this into his mouth as being the best course of action to ensure he gets all the medication. We can’t crush the and sprinkle on his food as he scatters it everywhere. Nor can we hide them in his food as he will avoid anything that isn’t his normal biscuits.

So that was a horrible experience for all involved as Horace went full-on panic, taking on super-strength and we had to wrap him in a blanket and then Ian squirt the medication into him while Horace was trying to bite me. My fear is that Horace will start to distrust us, however I think as this is just once a day, he’ll have enough time to forget. He’s currently snuggled up under his duvet and doesn’t seem to have any after effects from yesterday – so fingers crossed.

Luckily he doesn’t seem to have toothache as that would be difficult if he stopped eating.

If we can get this bit over and then the abscess treated and then his teeth cleaned, hopefully we’ll be back to normal quickly. We saw with Primrose that the affect of her teeth being cleaned was virtually instantaneous and she went from MONTHS of not eating to eating with gusto within a couple of hours!

So we took her immediately to the vet, as we were worried about the amount of blood and the vet saw us straight away – and it turns out she’d probably hit her nose on something as it was a nose bleed, her mouth and tongue were fine.

The vet gave us some tablets and we will go back when she’s recovered from this and see about medication for moving foward.

It was very different with Sam as he went years without seizures, and although the clusters were bad, he generally came round quickly. It wasn’t until he got very old that they really started to affect him and that’s when we had him put to sleep.

As Charlie’s seizures seem to be getting closer together, if we can get her put on medication it will probably be best.

It’s always a bit traumatic as she doesn’t like going – and most definately doesn’t like having her blood taken, and is inclined to make that very clear to the vet.

This time they couldn’t take as much blood as they needed, so they wanted to run the tests while we waited in case they needed to take more, so we wandered down to the beach in Burela instead of waiting in the vet’s office.

It’s quite a nice beach, with a view to the lighthouse – and part of it permits dogs all year round, which is handy!

The effect was almost instant. After nearly 9 months of her not being able to eat dry food, she tucked in herself the next day and hasn’t needed feeding since. She has though, finally connected the fact that this also means she doesn’t get the canned meat on demand which she was getting, but I am sure she will forgive us for that at some point.

Here’s a photo of Roland. He doesn’t eat on the new cat tree. He did, but they we noticed him walking with a limp, so we wonder if perhaps he fell off. Now he prefers to eat under the table. I feel a bit sad for Roland, as Pirata was his friend. Roland has always been a solo and independent cat, but now it feels even more so. But I have seen him snuggling with Babity and Primrose, so I know he does get company when he wants it.

Aren’t the dogs good! Although they probably wouldn’t be quite so good if I wasn’t stood there!

So Ian looked through our scrap wood collection and found we had enough to build a cat tree and here it is!

It is in the hallway when you come through the front door. It looks huge – but Babbity is a very small cat AND remember the door handles are a little above knee height!

Google then prompts him with ‘how can i help you today’, and sometimes he’ll say something relevant, but other times he’ll start barking, meowing or doing door impressions.

On Saturday the latter happened and Google must have been in a really bad mood – as it said ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand you’ – and then said GOOD. NIGHT. in a really grumpy voice and switched itself off. Neither Ian or I had heard anything like it before! I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. I wonder why they have programmed it to have a grumpy voice and in what situation they normally use it.

If I was more clever, I would invent an Alexa for parrots. One that they can chat to, get it to play songs – but there’s no danger of the parrot ordering shopping, changing locks or setting midnight alarms. Ludvig has already managed to reprogram our device so he is now me and I, apparently, am called ‘No’ – which gets terribly confusing! And more than once Google has asked Ludvig if he wants to buy the song he’s listening to!

We’ve been treating Primrose for several weeks now as she had a gastro problem, and then has been refusing to eat – well it’s more that she can’t eat, the food falls from her mouth which was caused partly by an ulcer on her gum. But she seems to have turned the corner now, and is eating (chicken) on her own – and we assumed Pirata had the same thing and were quite confident that the vet would just tell us to do the same as we were doing with Primrose – so it was very unexpected.

We were talking about the legacy he left – as it was because of Pirata that we got Wilbur. The lady who had fostered Pirata knew the person who was fostering Wilbur. And then we got little Herbie, who was blind and deaf – and although he wasn’t with us long, he certainly made us realize what characters these animals with special needs have. And then it was Alfie, Bobbins, Millie, Horace, Percy, Charly and Queenie, and Roland, Missie and Primrose the cats. Some of them were only briefly with us, and other longer and others still here – but each one is down to our experience with Pirata.

I read a couple of our blog posts of how we were preparing for the arrival of Pirata – including the thought we would well bells on our ankles. What a lot we had to learn https://blog.katepullen.com/pirata/ and https://blog.katepullen.com/bells-on-his-toes/

The photo is of Pirata and Primrose sunning themselves outside. One thing we noticed was how much Pirata enjoyed being outside. We put down some black plastic on the raised area outside the front door as and Pirata soon realized that this was a warm and cozy place to sit!

The vet examined Daisy and saw she had something in her eye – and removed a very long piece of grass. It must have been tucked into her eyelid as we couldn’t see it, nor could the vet to start. The grass had scratched the surface of her eye, so she’s been on a regime of drops and potions, wearing a lampshade to stop her damaging her eye further and she goes back on Monday. But she’s had a checkup in between and the vet said she can see it healing.

I had strimmed the garden the day before, so I guess it was a piece of grass from that.

Millie has a haircut

Dumpling and Daisy will also be due haircuts. I booked Horace into the vet for his as we can’t do it ourselves, I was quite clear this time that he must be sedated before they try to trim him. He looks such a tiny ball of fluffiness people just don’t understand how difficult he is to handle. He gets super-powers.

The average lifespan of dogs like Horace is 2 years (Horace will be 7 this year), but I don’t know from that what % die natural deaths and what % are euthanized. We can cope with Horace because he is tiny and is perfectly happy to snuggle under the duvet. He plays like a puppy, skipping round, playing with imaginary friends. We can keep him safe and move him around with ease. However, I do wonder if the reason why the lifespan is so short is because of people getting bigger dogs like him euthanized as they would be so difficult to handle.

Horace is a happy dog and when he is scared, his instinct is to hide, not be aggressive, but I know some dogs like him act aggressively, so that could affect their longevity.

…and here’s a nice photo of Queenie resting regally on the chair. Her legs have cleared up amazingly since we’ve been here. Because she had chewed her legs raw all her life – with us and vets not being able to do anything about it, I had anticipated she would have scars or that the fur wouldn’t grow back. But it has (mostly). I can see where she used to chew her legs – but I am sure someone who didn’t know wouldn’t.

So why has she stopped…? It’s difficult to know. I wonder if it was cement dust? She has a lot less space here – could it be she feels more secure in a smaller space? But for whatever reason, it is so much nicer to see her not chewing her legs.

We’ll miss him as was such a lovely dog and really didn’t ask much from life (other than chocolate drops and yogurt).