Shingles, Tinkerbelle and Rain (or lack of)

Ian has been suffering from the shingles for the past week or so. He actually spent the afternoon of his birthday at the hospital as the pain was so bad, and at that time the rash hadn’t really started so it wasn’t clear what it was. But the rash started so he popped down to the doctor and the doctor confirmed it was shingles and sent him home with some tablets to help stop the shingle process and to relieve the pain. Ian suffered a lot from the pain in his back to start, but has found that by moving around during the day and changing chairs, the pain is less at night.

Tinkerbelle has still not been eating well so we went back to the vet yesterday. It is possible that she has become fussy – but I can’t help thinking this is unlikely. She will eat pasta, but nothing else, so I think if she was fussy it would be for more exciting food than pasta! Also, I’ve noticed the food falls from her mouth. So I wondered if she has problems biting – it’s sort of similar to Horace and the tendons aren’t properly formed in his jaw which is why he doesn’t eat well – which is what made me think of whether there was something that was stopping her eating well. She can sort of hoover up pasta, in a way she can’t other food.

But they didn’t find anything and checked to make sure that there were no other problems with her teeth. She does have a lump under her eye, so that might make things uncomfortable. So there’s not a lot really that we can do other than try to encourage her to eat more than just pasta. She is eating quite a lot of pasta, so she’s not getting underweight – but it’s plain pasta so she’d not getting a lot of vitamins or other nutrients. If there’s no physical reason then I guess we’ll have to get strict about moving her back onto balanced food, but I’ll wait until this lump under her eye has gone. It’s pea sized and moves around, the vet called it a ganglion.

And still no rain! My predictions of the rain arriving at the fiesta were unfounded, and it’s the big Feria in Zafra this week and next, and it looks like there’s no rain coming then. I haven’t seen the resevoir at Llerena, but I imagine that’s pretty empty now, as it was low last year and we didn’t have a very wet winter. Of course, when we do get rain, it will be about 10 minutes in before we start moaning about how wet and cold it is!

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