Poo-ology

Its funny how life seems to run in themes.  A certain thing happens or is spoken about in your own world and suddenly you see it everywhere and everyone is talking about it or doing it.  For example, at times your life is governed by illnesses, your own or others’.  Babies seem to go in and out of fashion.  Everybody is fine for ages, then one woman goes down and suddenly you see huge bellies everywhere you look.  Recently the theme was breakdowns, as in mechanical ones not nervous ones thank goodness.  First our washing machine acted up, then the under-floor heating decided to act up and then the tap in our bathroom started to drip ominously.  At the same time my daughter’s car broke down leaving her stranded in West Cork and then her kitchen roof started to leak.  These events were swiftly followed by a message from my dear friend Jane who was looking for someone to fix her fridge and also the electrics in her spare room. You see not just my own breakdowns.

Just in the past couple of days I have been thinking about Poo, but not just me it would appear, this week’s zeitgeist is spreading itself far and wide.  Only last night at a charming little Christmas get-together I went to I found myself talking about all sorts of things scatalogical.  Standing casually with a glass of wine in one hand and a canapé in the other, the lovely Natasha told me a story about her three-year-old son, proudly presenting her with his little poo on a stick after going au natural somewhere in the garden shrubbery.  How we laughed as she delicately pulled the grape smothered in piped cheese off its little cocktail stick with her teeth.  I will protect her honour by not mentioning her name.  Oh I just did!  Silly me.  Another guest, whose name I did not catch (lucky her), was telling me about the time that somebody actually posted a bag of dog poo into her letter-box.  People do the darndest things.  A bit later on a little Freudian slip had me mention in passing that my father had defecated from Russia just after the Second World War – yes of course I meant to say defected, but that’s just how these themes are, they infect you.

One evening, while I was channel-hopping, I happened on a travel a show, this one on Japan.  One of the many Japanese idiosyncrasies being talked about was a toilet-themed restaurant where you could order an ice-cream, or indeed all sorts of foods, in the shape and colour of a gigantic poo.  During your visit you sat on a chair made out of a toilet with a poo-shaped cushion and upon leaving you could buy a little poo keyring or plush poo teddy.  Just the sort of thing one would like to snuggle in bed.

Then this morning on our walk, my own personal little poo fetishist, Kerry, managed to find the most unmentionable stuff.  I don’t actually know if it was poo, but if it was I have no idea from what animal it issued, a fox, racoon, skunk, cat, weasel!  No idea, except it was absolutely vile.  I only noticed it by its smell as we were walking into the house at which point the stench rose and assailed my sensitive nostrils.  As I went to investigate I managed to put my hand into it.  I was not a happy camper.  It was up to the bathroom immediately and Kerry got a bath.  Then I sniffed Candy and realised that she must have brushed off her sister so she got bathed too.  I was going to leave Looki out of it as I had given him the once over with my nose and he just smelled like an old leather handbag, which is his normal smell, but then I thought his ears and beard looked a bit grubby so decided to make it a hat trick.  I now have three lovely smelling, clean doggies and a soaking wet bathroom.

For those of a sensitive nature I would suggest that you look away now and do not continue reading.  For the rest I would like to talk about my own and my dogs’ interest in all things fecal…

I have always had a fascination with my own body and the things that go into it and come out of it.  This is of course not unique to me.  All humans are really quite fascinated by these things, though usually secretly, and I was amused to learn, while potty training my children (a long time ago I might add), about some of the deeper feelings children, and by extension all of us, feel about our bodily functions.  If I remember correctly it was Freud who spoke about the possessiveness we feel about our poos.  A child will take enormous pride in a rather large performance on the potty and then might express sheer horror as he sees his creation being flushed down the loo.  If you have a child who cries when you flush you should be rather more careful and not do the flushing until the child has left the bathroom and forgotten about his ‘work of art.’  I think we feel the same as adults, though manners and decorum dictate that we never speak about it.  However, I am certain that we are all secretly proud of a large, firm yet friable poo that falls away from the bottom in one movement from sit to wipe.  Luckily we learn to let go as we get older, otherwise our lavatories would get rather full.

When we were children my father’s work took him and us to Munich, Germany.  Culturally it was a big eye-opener for four rather sheltered, catholic school children.  Coming from early 1970’s Britain we were amazed that nudity was allowed so openly on the television and that was just the adverts for underarm deodorant or shampoo.  But it was the German toilets that we found most amusing as they were equipped with a viewing-platform.  If you are not familiar with these, try to imagine that instead of the plain plunge pool we are so familiar with, there is a step from the back of the porcelain, inside the bowl of course, which leaves the familiar plunge to the front of the WC.  When you poo your movement falls onto this plateau first and sits there in full sight until you flush.  At first we thought this was terrible and very vulgar, but as time wore on we got used to it, as in fact it gave us the opportunity to examine our own offering every morning and pass a thought or even comment on the state of our intestinal workings.  I miss that opportunity now as toilets everywhere else are all of the deep plunge variety where your poo disappears into a pool of water before you have a chance to examine it.  Even while visiting my son and his fiancée in Berlin a couple of years ago I was disappointed to find the ‘normal’ variety of toilet.  Perhaps they have all been replaced or were only common in the south of Germany.  Perhaps I should Google it.

Now I do understand that these things are not really discussed openly when one becomes an adult, but children and dogs still possess that open interest, fascination and disgust and often show it.

In the very youngest class that I teach I have children who love saying the word bottom.  No matter how many times they repeat the word it sends them and all those around them into paroxysms of laughter.  I have to pretend to be stern, but it is really quite harmless behaviour and the Spanish word ‘culo’ has a rather nice ring to it, as does our own English word ‘bottom’.  After all, who can ever forget Bottom the weaver from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and we laughed at his name as much as his silliness and his donkey head.

Farting too (or even just the sound of a fart, blown by the mouth and known as a raspberry) will also serve to send all children old and young into gales of laughter.  The smell that accompanies the bottom variety is not so welcomed though and people will stop laughing then, pinch their noses and point their grubby little fingers at the dealer of the fart.

Our morning dog-walk has its own poo ritual.  First I get the dogs saddled up and they all rush to the front door.  I then put on my jacket and put my little bag over my shoulder.  I open it and count the poo bags within. One, two, three…We will need a couple more.  I take two new bags from the stock and tease them open, then I scrunch them down to go in with the others.  I read a very wise tip from somebody on the Internet about this very thing.  Dogs have a terrible habit of deciding to go poo right in the wrong place; on a dangerous corner or slap bang in the middle of the road.  To keep herding your little pack and to enable a rapid poop-scoop it is much easier if your bag has been pre-opened, otherwise you find yourself in a terrible predicament, in my own case not only fumbling with one hand to open a fiddly new bag but also trying to hold on tight to three quite strong dogs who are trying to take off in different directions.

Three little dogs exhausted after doing so much poo.

Unless I have to do the pickup in a rush I like to take this time to examine what has come out of my dogs.  Each of my three have different bowel habits and their movements have a distinctly different composition.  I pretty much know what to expect from each.  Looki is usually the first to offload. He suddenly goes from a cocked leg to a hunch and quickly pops out the first poo.  It will be quite large, darkish and dry at the start, becoming more moist towards the tail end of it.  It is marvellously easy to pick up and normally leaves no mark on the pavement.  I carefully scan it for any odd foreign bodies that he might have ingested (plastics, string and such) and for any sign of worms, of which he did have a small infestation during the summer.  Tapeworm I think.  You might have gathered that I love Googling things like that on the Internet.  I am becoming a pretty good diagnostician.  In fact, recently I alerted a fellow dog walker to the fact that he may have been bitten by a Lyme’s disease infected tick.  He was showing me the ring-shaped mark on his calf, as one does, and I suggested he should consult a doctor as I suspected that was what it was.  Lo and behold, the next time our paths crossed he had been to the pharmacist who had said the very same thing and had prescribed him a 21 day course of antibiotics.  Serious stuff.

The next one to drop is usually Kerry.  Her movement is much thinner, moister and lighter in colour than Looki’s.  His comes out in short, round logs while hers are more of a folded, flattened worm.  Hers are more difficult to scoop up as they tend to cling to the pavement, but luckily she doesn’t usually drop until we get to the scrubby part of our walk, which is pretty much a dog-toilet.  Other times she holds it until we get to the park where it is also easy enough to pick it up off the sand.

Candy very rarely poos while we are on our walk.  She prefers the privacy of our own garden, but on the occasions she does, hers, like Looki’s is firm, quite dark and dryish and an easy pick-up too. 

Candy prefers a bit of privacy.

Unfortunately Looki does not usually stop at one poo.  Of the three of them he is the most prolific, on our walks that is.  (The amount of poo that I have to pick up in the garden every day for three small dogs is phenomenal!)  His second poo will be noticeably softer though and harder to scoop and woe betide you if he goes a third time, as that is sometimes quite runny, or when he has a tummy upset it is pure liquid, which is impossible to pick up so then I always hope he goes in the grass somewhere.  If he does it on a pavement I have to fish for a tissue and try my best to get some of it up or at least make the effort.  I don’t like to leave a mess.

Looki is also the dog who likes to back into a bush for a crap.  This is a bit of a pain really as it sometimes means teasing the nuggets out of the leaves and searching for them in the shade of the bush.  They can be hard to find, especially on a dull winter’s day or when you have a hangover.

Of course, like most good dogs we also have moments of coprophagia, which means the eating of excrement, one’s own or that of others found on the road.  This is a behaviour that I strictly discourage as it is plain disgusting!  I do have my limits, though as you can tell my boundaries spread a bit wider than most people’s.

I have no problem discussing my own or others’ bodily functions, though to spare you I will not go into the details of my own self-diagnosed IBS and the myriad variety of my stool movements for you here.  I think that the dogs have offered enough entertainment of their own for one blog.  But I have said it and others have noted it:  in another life I think I would have made an excellent poo-ologist, or, as I have learned now from my prolific Googling, a coprologist.

I think we should have an International Poo Day.

Montaña Rusa

Once upon a time I used to think that life was something that you got the hang of.  Obviously it would take some practice and a lot of experience, a certain level of income and for the kids to grow up.  As I have grown older, and with yet another birthday looming around the corner, I am finally beginning to realise that life is more like a huge roller-coaster ride, or Montaña Rusa (Russian Mountain) as they call it in Spain.  Now this is all sounding like one great big excuse for not attending to my blog as regularly as I should, but I just cannot fathom where this year has suddenly disappeared to or why I still haven’t got a handle on my life.

The summer was mellow enough.  I had no one breathing down my neck and no builders for a change.  I tipped away at the garden, a medal design and practiced trimming the Westies to boot.  But here we are at the end of November!  Where did the last three months go??

Like everybody I have my share of ups and downs.  Right now it seems to be a lot of downs, which are stealing my free time on the weekends as well as a lot of my sleeping and waking thoughts.  The legalisation of our property meanders on with visits from and emails to architects, builders and engineers.  Unfortunately the whole process has uncovered a possible weakness in the structure of the house.  A bit of a blow to say the least.  I had hoped for a clean bill of health and straightforward glide into home plate.  But nothing good comes easy, so I hope that it will all be worth it in the end.  Though it will of course involve yet more money to be thrown into reinforcing the foundations if indeed it is deemed necessary.

A couple of weeks ago the internet extender decided to disconnect itself from my iPad and every other device I and my November guests tried to attach to it.  It seems that it was the precursor to a mountain of little, and not so little problems, that have come to assail me since.  I am still awaiting a verdict from the computer shop where I bought it, but in the meantime find my normal socialising with friends and family severely curtailed as I now have to leave the comfort of the couch and the Westies to come up to the office to send and answer emails and messages.

Leaving the comfort of the couch and its Westies.

On Monday I managed to blow up the electric kettle, so had to go the next day to buy a new one.  I opted for a hob top, whistling kettle.  It has an enormous five litre capacity and does not actually whistle but gently moans like a distant freight train through a thick fog.

For several weeks I had been trying to organise a service of our solar panels.  With so much going on in November (it was the month that everybody decided to visit me – one of the ups) it had been hard to arrange a date that was mutually acceptable between myself and the heating engineer.  The date finally came last Friday, but as luck (or should I say bad luck) would have it, a couple of days before that when I was sitting contentedly rubbing Westie heads and bellies and all sorts of other bits in between and watching a bit of rubbish TV as I do of an evening, without warning, the lights all went out!  Luckily I had the fire lit and a couple of little candles glowing away so I was not plunged into total darkness.  I just sat for a while taking it all in and knowing that usually when the electricity cuts out here it does not last for long and within a few minutes I was certain that the current would be restored and I could pick up where I left off.  But as I sat there in the darkness, rubbing a Westie bodypart, I realised that all the little thermostat lights were still on as were the various lights on the heating control panel that stares at me from the corner of the living room.  This was strange, because it meant that it was not a general village-wide black out, but very local, to my house to be precise and not every fuse was affected.  So I got up and went to the fuse box beside the control panel and with one tiny little night light in my hand I discerned that the main trip switch had tripped out, so I tripped it back on.  Bang!  Off it went again.  I tried again. Bang!  So carefully I turned all the switches off as I have been taught and put on the main one again and began methodically working through the switches.  To cut a long story short it seemed to be the underfloor heating in the master bedroom that was causing the failure, but to my horror I also discovered that the lights and sockets upstairs were also all on the same fuse!  So now I had no lights in the bedroom either.

One of the November visitors.

I was not a happy camper and for a couple of days I actually did get dressed in the dark, giving me a real excuse for some weird and wonderful colour combinations.  Though actually I have always been pretty crap at dressing myself.

I rang the heat engineer the next day and he said he would take a look at it when he came and if he could not fix it, he knew a good electrician.  There was the silver lining!  Only very recently I had being asking around for a good electrician to do some small jobs for me.

This week has also seen a very pleasant washing machine repairman, Rogerio, come to fix the longtime faulty digital control panel on the washing machine.  He came last Tuesday and fiddled about with it for a bit, then declared it would need a new part, which he duly went off to order.  In the meantime though I have used the machine and his fiddling has rendered it working again for now, but I know it to be very fickle and it acts up just when you think everything is going smoothly.  Still I know that he will return one day soon (I hope) with the part and finish the job properly.  I am sure that he will arrive unannounced as he is a very quiet, neat little man who I feel has his own particular way of working.

Friday dawned and Andy, the heat engineer, arrived and took me on a tour of our rather complicated heating system, which I now think I am beginning to get a better handle on.  He showed me how to top up the solar panels, which is a job that I can do myself in the future and he will return next week to see how the floors are heating up, now that I am using the heat pump in conjunction with the wood fire.  I told you it was complicated.  Unfortunately the floor in the principal bedroom is not heating up, so it will be his job when he does return to uncover the reason why.  Let us hope it is not terminal, like the bathroom underfloor heating probably is.  My bedroom is decidedly chilly at night now.  It is lucky that I possess a Siberian goose down duvet and three very cuddly Westies or I would be sleeping in the guest room, which is toasty.

Andy arrived early, but had to go away to get antifreeze and check on another job, he returned at two with the electrician, Fernando, in tow; Fernando the silver lining.  Obviously he first had to deliver the bad news on the bathroom underfloor heating, but then he proceeded very swiftly to put in another trip switch so that at least I would have light in the bedroom again.

On the downside I now have to wait for the floor to dry out to try the switch again, which means I will have to shower in the guest room for the time being.  Well lucky me!  We have a second bathroom and it too has electric underfloor heating, however, there is a downside to that also, the thermostat in that room is very, very complicated to use.  I have spent hours in the past trying to programme it only to press the wrong button rendering it necessary to start all over again.  Now I cannot seem to adjust the temperature on it at all, so as I brush my teeth I am sort of doing a funny little dance on the far too hot tiles.  I will turn it off at night I think, until I can figure out how to lower the temperature.

I then asked Fernando if he would be able to put up a few light fittings for me someday.  He said “yes” and I said “when?” And he said “anytime” and I said “today?” And he said “yes”.  Which rather caught me on the backfoot, but at least he had to go home for lunch first which gave me a couple of hours to find the now ancient but new light fittings, bought in hope many moons ago, but never put up because I never really found a good electrician…until now.

Candy on the backfoot.

He returned at about 5.00pm, which is normal for Spain, and cheerfully worked away for a couple of hours.  He then went home again to fetch bulbs for the light fittings as I had none.  Another hour and a half passed, this is as I said, Spain, but luckily it was also Friday and I was under no pressure myself.  He came, put in the bulbs, checked everything was working, I paid the bill and he left as cheerfully as he had arrived and I closed the door on another normally eventful and busy week.

The helter-skelter continues as I put on the kettle for another cup of tea.  Only three days old and it now boils and boils, but no moan comes out of it anymore.  I’m starting to feel seasick.

I take all my creams and pastes into the guest bathroom and start performing my ablutions.  The shower drain gurgles and Candy is on it immediately, curiously tipping her head from side to side to catch the sound and work out what sort of creature it is.  She sprawls on the floor of the shower with her nose in the drain as the water trickles into the sink.  She sighs gently waiting patiently for the animal to appear while I do my funny little dance.

These are all first world problems I realise, and they are not really getting me down the way they used to when I was younger. I am aware of the terrifying things going on in the larger world over which I have no control, so perhaps that is why I try to keep things very cool here on the homefront.  In my own little way I try to keep peace, lead by example when I can and live the best life I can for myself and my little family.

…and yet I still have not got the hang of life or the people in it, including Victor.  After his sudden departure last Christmas he is due to return to me and the Westies in time for this year’s festivities.  Like every great Russian mountain I am certain it will not all be easy climbing as we try to put our life back together again and I know for certain we will have plenty more downs along with the ups…but finally I think I am starting to learn that you never do get a handle on life.  It is life that has its hooks in you and all you can really do is hang on and enjoy the ride!

a gratuitous photo of Candy on a mountain  

....and another one xx

A Lucky Boy - as seen through the eyes of my lovely boy Looki

They call me Looki, which is the way that Spanish people pronounce the English word Lucky, but until I came to live with Mary and Vic I really cannot say that I had a very lucky life at all. 

My earliest memories are very sweet.  I had a lovely Westie-mum they used to call Phyllis, Kerry reminds me of her sometimes.  She was bossy like that and used to lick me behind my ears until the fur nearly came off, but I was clean.  If I stepped out of line with my brothers and sisters she was very quick to give me a clip around that very same earhole, but when we all snuggled into her at night she was the best place to be and somehow she managed to get a paw around each and every one of us even though we were five pups.  She was the best mum in the world. 

I don’t remember my dad at all.  I don’t think I ever met him, but he must have been a handsome fellow because all of us were too, or so everybody said at the time.  I don’t think he ever lived with us but we didn’t miss him, Phyllis was mum and dad all rolled into one and we loved the bones of her.

a handsome boy

All too soon though that life of sunshine and breast milk ended and one day a lovely, happy couple came to where we lived.  They picked me up and chucked me under the chin and said how handsome I was, which I knew already.  Papers were signed, for I had a pedigree in those days, and when they left they took me with them.

For the first couple of weeks I was quite happy although I did miss my brothers and sisters and Phyllis terribly, especially at night.  

My new home was comfortable enough though everything was so big it terrified me.  The garden was huge and there was a large expanse of blue water they called The Pool that looked very deep so I did not go too near the edge.  The house was enormous and there was a big stumbling block called The Stairs which stopped me exploring too far until, that is, I got a bit bigger and then I discovered a whole new world called Upstairs, but I am getting ahead of myself here. 

At this time of my life I lived on the flat.  I didn’t stray too far from the kitchen, which became my home for the first while.  I had a comfy bed there and lots of chewy toys.  The lady who was now my mum gave me kisses and treats and gently chastised me if I did a wee wee or worse on the tiled floor or rug, but gave me very tasty treats if I went on the newspaper by the back door.  The man, who did not smell as nice, used to give me a round slap and stick my nose in my own poo if he found it first.  Then he would shout at me and the lady and put me roughly on the back doorstep where I would shiver and whine until he had finished shouting at my mum.  Then she would come out to get me and clean me up. Her wet eyes glistened while she was bathing me and she would whisper how much she loved me and how much she hated Him so I would lick the slender hands with the long pointy nails and told her that I loved her too and promised to be better in the future.

I learned the ropes pretty quickly.  Me and mummy, he called her the Prize Bitch, used to play together and she would sing to me sometimes too.  She had another much prettier name, Michelle, which she used to use when she spoke on the phone with her friends.  Most days I would hang out while she fixed a sandwich in the kitchen and I usually got a bit of cheese or ham, then we would go out to the pool and she would lie on a lounger while I chased earwigs and imaginary mice.  Sometimes she put me on the water bed and pushed me out into The Pool.  I did not like that at all, it made me feel all wobbly, but she always made sure that I would get off it again safely and she never insisted that I went swimming like she did.  I think she knew that I did not really like water.

When the man came home in the evening the mood would change and I used to pretty much take to my bed as it seemed the safer option.  My bed was just inside the kitchen door and as neither he nor she did much cooking I was pretty safe, as they used to sit in the other room watching telly and drinking.  So I would doze and dream of Phyllis and my siblings.  As the evening wore on they would get louder and louder and eventually there were the usual angry raised voices, perhaps the sound of breaking glass, a slammed door and tears of course.  He would usually storm off to bed first and she would be left crying and clearing up the mess.  I might poke my nose out then and she would be looking disheveled and sad.  The tears streamed down her face taking the lovely black mascara with it.  She would continue picking up the pieces, ignoring me except to let me out for a run before bedtime, which is just as well because I was usually bursting by that time.  Then she would follow her man up to bed.

I grew bigger and bolder all the same and slowly my lovely pretty mummy got smaller and smaller.  Her bones stuck out everywhere and her mascara was always smudged now.  Sometimes she even had great big bruises on her pretty face.  She told her friends, in whispered tones, on the phone that she had walked into the door again, but I never saw her bumping into anything.  She didn’t cuddle me as much and sometimes forgot to feed me, but I still loved her and when she cried I was always there to comfort her.  The man called her something even worse now that sounded like “Stoopid Can’t” It didn’t sound very nice and was always shouted in an angry voice.

One day it all got too bad though.  It was my fault.  I thought I was a big man (I was probably all of six months old) and decided it was time to climb The Stairs.  Up I went, slowly and carefully and when I reached the top I discovered a new paradise of rooms with beds with lovely fluffy quilts on them.  The grandest room with the largest bed had a the most beautiful navy blue throw I have ever seen and it looked so inviting that I could not resist it and jumped up to take a look.  It smelled of mummy and had little white roses embroidered on each corner.  I thought the colour suited me rather well so I decided to close my eyes for a few moments and think of Phyllis.  But of course I fell asleep.

I was awoken abruptly by a heavy boot in the side of my body and I flew like a ragdoll to the other side of the room.  “You little bastard!” the man yelled at me.  “The bed is ruined!”  With that he tore the quilt off the bed and pushed it hard under my quivering nose so that I could see the tiny white hairs, mine, that were stuck on the navy fabric.  Then he threw the quilt over me and I felt myself being lifted bodily.  I could hardly breath, but through the noise of the man roaring and the panic in my body and brain I could hear Stoopid Can’t shrieking and crying and saying “No, No No!”  I had no idea what was happening and have no memory of anything else until I woke up, somewhere, still half smothered in the throw.  I whimpered and called for my mum and then Phyllis, but nobody came.

How long I tussled with the fabric I do not know, but thankfully I finally saw a pinhole of light and wriggled my way toward it.  I crept out blinking in the harsh midday sun.  All around me was grass and weeds and I hadn’t a clue where I was or where my mummy was.  So I sat and whined.

I don’t think I was there very long, which is just as well because I was getting hungry by this time, before a nice looking woman came towards me.  She picked me up and took me to her waiting car.  And thus began a long string of ‘owners’ in my lifetime.

I became like the proverbial hot potato, passed from family to family.  In the first home I wet the floor and got smacked.  Then I was passed to the next home where I bit the little girl.  Well she strangled me…and not just once either.  In the next home I tried to mount the lovely girl poodle that already lived there.  She was asking for it I might say, but her mummy took exception to my behaviour and that was that.

On and on this went until one day my then current owner took me for a drive in her car, she let me out for a run and while I was sniffing about in the grass she drove away again.  I looked up from my work and once more I found myself all alone, this time with nothing but great big airplanes flying overhead.  I was probably around two years old and all I really craved was love, which was the one thing that seemed to evade me, and food, of course, I was always hungry.  Hunger was my immediate problem now and in the distance I saw a building so I walked across the wasteland towards it.  I was pretty certain that I would find food there.

It was a busy place, with people going in and out with big cases and bags.  It turned out to be quite a good place for food too.  As they rushed in and out the people often threw a half eaten sandwich at one of the bins, of which there were plenty.  If I was lucky, they would miss and then I could easily pick up the sandwich and take it to my secret corner where I would settle down and eat it.  Unfortunately if the sandwich went into the bin all I could do was think about it longingly as my legs were too short to get it out again.  But I tried.  There were a couple of other dogs with longer legs and who could jump and they sometimes managed to spill the bins and I would often rush in and try to snatch something from under their noses.  Sometimes I succeeded and other times I got bitten, but I learned to bite back too.  It was, as they say, dog eat dog living at the airport.

I am not sure how long I managed to live this way, but I was not happy.  I was getting thinner and thinner and my fur was getting long and matted and I could hardly see through my fringe.  I am a dog that needs quite a bit of grooming.  But luckily, over time I made friends with one of the airport guards.  He began to bring me little titbits of food and sometimes rubbed my ears, which I adored.  One day he brought a collar and lead and put it around my neck and led me to his car at the end of his shift.

He brought me to a house in the country.  It belonged to an old grisly man with huge hands.  He grunted and took me and tied me up on a long chain outside the back of his house and there I stayed winter and summer except for the odd occasion when he would get out his shears and chop off my matted fur, give me a very rough bath in cold water, bundle me in the car and take me to a place where I would be introduced to some lovely little Westie bitch.  Not the same one every time, but I did get to know one quite well.  Her name was Juanita and she was very welcoming.  She had very pretty eyes and long dangly teats from having lots of babies, but it did not put me off and I always did the business.  After a couple of days larking about with my sweet Baby Jane, as I liked to call her, I was whisked away again and back to the farmyard with the long chain. 

I lived there some years.  I lose count now, until one day the old man fell while going about his farm chores in the yard.  I went over to investigate, luckily my chain was just long enough.  He seemed to be asleep, so I just sat quietly beside him to look after him.  It was getting dark when a man who looked a lot like my owner drove into the yard and when he saw the old man he starting shouting and took his phone out of his pocket and rang someone.  It was all action.  Another car drove up, with a younger man named Juan, who turned out to be the second man’s nephew.  Then a very loud van with flashing lights drove very quickly into the yard.  Two burly men in blue clothes got out and put the old man onto a stretcher and they took him away.  I never saw him again.

Juan and his uncle spent a bit of time at the house.  They fed the hens and they went into the house, where I hard them banging around for a bit.  At least they threw a bit of bread out into the yard for me, which I guzzled down in seconds.  I was very hungry by that time.  I could have done with a drop of water too, but neither of them thought to fill my water bowl.  Finally they came out of the house and talked a bit to each other.  Juan then unhooked me from the chain and tying a piece of string around my neck he led me to his car.  I was off to a new home yet again.

Juan lived with his father in the town.  He took me into a long thin, very dark, house.  Right through it we walked.  I would have liked to have stayed in the kitchen where he sat most days with his father.  They never did much, just watched TV and ate bread and chorizo sausage, but I was grateful for small mercies in those days and that lifestyle would have suited me fine.  Instead, as I say, he took me through the house and out to a very small yard with high walls all around.  The yard was full of bits of metal, broken lamps and flowerpots.  And that was my new home. 

It wasn’t the best of homes.  Juan was not cruel to me, but he never so much as ruffled my ears and that’s all I ever really wanted.  He usually fed me, though sometimes he didn’t get round to it.  He hardly ever filled my water bowl, which was pretty stagnant for the most part, and I got used to living in my own excrement because he was not very good at cleaning up after me either.  But I did not like it as I am basically a clean dog.  He put a kennel in the yard for me so at least I had some shelter when it was excruciatingly hot in the summer or when it was miserably cold and wet in the winter.  Every few months he took me out and I got to service another pretty bitch.  It wasn’t Juanita though and I missed her, almost as much as I missed Phyllis.

And so I lived for over two years, though sometimes in the summer months they took me back to the farm where I used to live and there they tied me up to the long chain again.  At least I could watch the chickens, but the old lady who lived there now was very cranky and often gave me a clip around the ears if she felt like it, which was pretty much every day.  So I bit her.  Not hard, but just enough to tell her to lay off.  She didn’t and very soon I was back at Juan’s, this time with no escape clause.

Over the years I had noticed the people next door.  They used to say hello to me from time to time.  They also did a lot of work on their house and there were often builders in who sometimes gave me the end of a sandwich or even bones, which was nice.  But it was very noisy and very dusty.  Still I used to look for the people as they looked pleasant and smelled friendly.  In any event anything new to look at was interesting, I didn’t usually get a whole lot of excitement in the yard.

One day they even invited me in.  They were having a barbeque and I was allowed to run around their lovely garden.  I tried to get up onto the man’s lap, but I was so smelly that he pushed me down again.  I don’t blame him, I didn’t like the way I smelled either.  Even the lady only gingerly patted the top of my head, but it was all that I wanted, a bit of affection.  That day ended too soon and I was put back in the yard though the lady and the man looked sad when I left them.  I think they wanted me to stay, but I belonged to Juan.  I held onto the memory of that day for as long as I could, but it started to fade like all the rest.

Time passed, it was November again and it was getting cold.  The building next door had grown and now obscured more of the light from the yard and also had taken the back of the house too far away for the people to pop their heads over the wall or their hands through the fence anymore.  So I was starting to feel even more isolated and lonely.  The yard, which was always cluttered, was now even more filled with broken furniture and ladders and things I did not know the name of. I couldn’t see much, only the occasional cat which was brave enough to walk across the wall.  I barked at them, but my heart wasn’t in it and it was not as exciting as it used to be.  Sometimes great big rockets were fired off in the town.  I hated them.  They terrified me, but there was absolutely no point in complaining as nobody came to hug me and say that I would be safe.  All I could do was cower in my kennel. 

I could tell that Juan was getting fed up with me being there as he hated cleaning up my poo, even though he did not do it very often.  I found out later that the lady next door (who is of course now my mum) used to ask him to do it when it had been collecting in the yard for too long.  By this time I could hardly move and there was nothing to do, so I just started to sit staring into space.  I think I was going slightly bonkers if the truth be told because during the day I began talking to the walls and at night I would howl ever so quietly at the moon, even if there was none.  It all felt so hopeless and I was so sad and lonely.

Then suddenly one day it just happened.  Juan came to get me from the yard.  He put on my harness and lead.  I thought I was probably going out to see some nice bitch, though I really needed a bath.  He led me through the house and out to his car.  The lady and man from next door were waiting for us there, which was strange, but nice, and the lady took my lead.  We all got into the car and like a good boy I settled in the footwell at the lady’s feet and we all drove to the Vet’s.

I got a check over and all the people and the Vet did lots of talking and writing and some money was passed across the desk, though I was more interested in the Poodles, the Yorkies and the Bodegueros in the waiting room.  Then we all got back into Juan’s car and drove back to the square.  We got out of the car and joy of joys, this time I went with my new mum and dad, Mary and Vic, into their house and the rest, as they say, is history.

I was pretty scared at first

but soon learned to relax a bit

and now, well I feel right at home

I have been here now two years.  It took me a while to settle in and it was not without accidents, illness and tears, but you have read all about those things in Mary’s other blog posts.  The one thing that is different here, well, there are many things different really, but the one thing that gives me hope and has made me the very happy boy I am today is the thing that Mary whispers in my ear every night.  “You are my Best Boy Looki”, she says to me and then she takes my head in her hands and looks me straight in the eyes and says “As long as there is breath in my body you will have a home here.”  And this time I believe that it will be so. 

I love you mum

And I love you too dad.  I can’t wait for you to come home……

Looki xxx

PS I love my sisters too, though they sometimes sit on mum’s knee before I can.

I love my sisters xx