Monday, November 02, 2015

Puke

Today

On Facebook my niece was describing how one of her dogs had guzzled down a bottle of coconut oil and the resulting mess when the dog's body rejected the oil.... "Dogs seem to have zero self-control" commented Lizzie.

In My Day

Caspian, our dog, had all the best qualities of a mongrel. He ate whenever there was an opportunity, clearly having no faith in the regular arrival of his next meal. Food never seemed to touch the sides and you couldn't leave him alone with it. 

In our garden at Montfort Close there were a couple of conference pear trees. The fruit was nothing special but Cas used to sit beneath the trees, crunching on windfalls, earwigs and all. He could consume 20 at a time. He never made the link between how bad he felt the next day, shivering and vomiting, and these orgies.

He once stole 5 kilos of cheese after I carelessly left a shopping bag on the floor and another time spent a night at the local chippy in Crowborough devouring the contents of the bins.

On another occasion he  took a flying leap into someone's picnic when we lived at Southampton, stealing a Marmite sandwich just as its rightful owner was lifting it to his lips. And I routinely had calls from the butcher at Stoke St Michael to tell me that Cas had got into his bins.

His worst hours came after he'd found a catering pack of mixed dried fruit. He consumed the lot, only to lose it all on the patio a couple of hours later, feeling very ill indeed.

What he also never understood was why we had to starve him for twenty-four hours after each of these excesses to give his body a chance to recover, and that a visit to the vet might also be necessitated.

I don't think that self-control is in a dog's dictionary, Lizzie, so we have to try to have it for them! At least in Sarah's case the accident necessitated an huge house clean, which might be a good thing, only I doubt if that was how she had planned to spend her Sunday.

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