Ireland Day Four
DAY FOUR
CLIFDEN VETERINARY SURGERY : 11am
After the best night’s sleep I’d had of the holiday I awoke to find Pepsi still looking very unhappy with life. Thankfully her retching had stopped, but she still showed no interest in eating anything and remained entirely listless and lethargic. Despite this small improvement in her condition, we were all in agreement that we needed to take her the vets. Jon, panic stricken, had already dug out the number of the nearest surgery in Clifden and my wife called and arranged an appointment at around quarter to eleven.
Jon, by now, was beside himself with worry over Pepsi. He had grown incredibly attached to both her and my original dog Foxy as soon as we had got them. Foxy was my first dog, a rescued collie crossed with, what one can only assume was, as her name suggests, a fox. She was a very intelligent dog, soon learning how to open the back door with her paws, to let herself into the house. Her only problem was that she didn’t like being alone in the house if ever we went out somewhere without her, and so a couple of years, and a few chewed doors and destroyed wedding cake decorations later (don’t ask, my wife still feels incredibly guilty about it, her mum still doesn’t know), we found another rescue dog to keep her company. This was the erstwhile Pepsi. She too was a Collie cross but that is where the similarities with Foxy end. Whereas Foxy was a browny ginger, bushy tailed, bright eyed, intelligent dog who had no difficulty understanding your wishes, Pepsi was a black and white, dopey eyed, perpetually dozy creature who would probably have been labelled “special needs”, “irretrievably stupid” or “nice but dim” if she was human.
Despite spending all her life watching Foxy in the back yard, rear up on two legs, then pull the back door handle down with her paws and then nudging the now open door with her nose, she never twigged that she could do the same and would frequently, when outside on her own, whine for Foxy to come and open the door for her. Foxy’s eyes showed a hint of intelligence and recognition, as if she understood you, whereas Pepsi’s eyes had the continually bemused look of the perpetually bewildered. I think Jon thought I was being cruel, rather than entirely accurate, in my assessment of Pepsi as being on an intellectual par with George W Bush and he would frequently leap to her defence in the face of my unkind criticism.
‘Fox and Peps’ as they were invariably called, were pretty much inseparable for eight years, they’d sleep curled up together and when Pepsi had done something idiotic, Foxy would look at me with a look in her eyes that would implore me not to consider her as being from the same gene pool as Pepsi.
Sadly, this happy union ended when Foxy was aged ten and developed a horrendously quick growing cancerous tumour in her neck. We made her last couple of weeks with us as happy and comfortable as possible, but we soon reached the day when the tumour in her neck had started to seep blood. We knew that this was the sign that she would, eventually, bleed to death slowly and in pain. My wife bravely took her the vets feeling that I wouldn’t be able to do so if the worst came to the worst and sadly it proved to be the case when she returned holding an empty lead and holding Foxy’s collar. She didn’t need to tell us, the tears in her eyes had given it away long before.
At the time my Dad, Jon and Alex were in the house with me when Katharine came in and shook her head stating there was nothing they could do for her and she’d been put to sleep. The moment Katharine said it, she fell into my arms and I heard three doors close behind me as Alex, my Dad and Jon disappear to deal with it themselves. I was surprised to note that I didn’t cry. To my mind, we’d shown her the ultimate in love and compassion. She may have lived a couple of days longer, but it would have been in great pain and misery as she slowly faded away. She was at least saved from that horror and her last days saw her spoilt rotten, I know chocolate is particularly bad for a dog, but Foxy loved it and on her last night with us, she tucked into an enormous Dairy Milk bar that I’d given her, with unmistakable glee. It can poison them you know, but when you’ve got hours left to live, I guess it loses its sting.
After Foxy’s death, Pepsi was bereft. Her soul mate and leader had disappeared and for several months afterwards she was lost. She lost a lot of weight, which Katharine attributed to her pining for Foxy and which I attributed to the fact that she was now no longer able to eat her own dinner in record time and then scoff as much as Foxy’s as possible. At this time Jon really took special care with Pepsi and had developed an increasing bond with her, taking her for walks and generally spoiling her rotten. However we noted that Pepsi was much happier when around another dog or two and so, a few months into the New Year, we decided to buy another dog. This time a Yorkshire Terrier.
I had been vetoed on my first choice of a Newfoundland because of two reasons, firstly the cost to get a puppy was astronomical and secondly, the cost to feed one made the cost of buying one in the first place look like small change. I therefore decided to opt for the other end of the scale and having had plenty of experience with Yorkies as a child (we’d had two as family pets when my brother, sister and I were children) we decided to get a Yorkshire Terrier to keep Pepsi company and thus Cookie appeared on the scene at age 8 weeks.
She was small, but not tiny by Yorkie standards but compared to Pepsi she was minute. However from the moment she came to live with us, it was clear Cookie wanted to be in charge. I had been vetoed on naming the dog after my suggestions of “Titan” or “Rambo” were summarily dismissed as inappropriate and Jessica, twee and girly as ever, suggested Cookie. The name seemed to fit her so it stuck. She quickly proved to be a bossy little madam as most Yorkshire Terriers tend to be and we waited patiently for Pepsi to take control of the situation and put the young upstart in her place. All to no avail, I think even the Dog Whisperer would have despaired. It reached the point where Cookie would start playing with Pepsi, nibbling at her tail and jumping at her face and we would have to encourage Pepsi to “tell her off!”. On one momentous occasion Pepsi did turn around and growl a snarled warning to Cookie which led to an impromptu round of applause from all present and glowing praise for Pepsi from us all. I dread to think what this may have looked like to an outsider, as a group of grown adults cheered, whooped and hollered their delight as a medium sized cross breed dog, snarled and growled at a tiny Yorkshire terrier puppy.
Just a few short months later however and the dogs were inseparable, Jon I think felt that because Cookie seemed to be bright and was definitely my dog, that somehow poor Pepsi would be the “odd one out again” so he began to lavish yet more attention on her. This wasn’t the case really, Pepsi has always received equal attention, but perhaps because she is the intellectual canine equivalent of a jam sandwich, she needs a bit of extra care. A duty of care which Jon is only too happy to provide over and above what we as a family do for her. It was because of this that he was so concerned with Pepsi’s condition and had decided to go with Katharine to the vets.
After they’d departed with Pepsi, though none of us stated it, we were all a little worried. I had visions of Katharine coming back with an empty lead and collar once again, having to cart a wailing Jon out of the car before he flung himself into the ocean distraught, so for the rest of the morning, we sat waiting for the phone to go to inform us of what the vet had said.
At the vets, Pepsi had for one, behaved herself. Despite not being bright, Pepsi seemed to innately understand what a veterinary surgery was and would cry, whimper, squeal, yelp, claw down the floor and generally do anything to get away from it. The vet called Katharine and Jon through with Pepsi and took one look at Pepsi’s rather forlorn expression.
“Oh! Dear me! Look at that face! She’s depressed!” the vet stated in a thick Irish brogue.
“She’s depressed?!? She hasn’t got to pay the fecking bill!” No, it was a good job I wasn’t there.
Katharine explained the situation to the vet who gave Pepsi a thorough examination. She ascertained that Pepsi had definitely eaten something that she shouldn’t, but an examination of her tummy showed no sign of anything large or nasty that could be causing the problem. In the end the vet gave us a couple of prescriptions for some medicine to help Pepsi’s stomach settle. She did say however that unless she showed signs of improvement very shortly, she’d have to bring her in and put her on a drip and keep her overnight for further observations. Gulp! However Katharine had noticed that Pepsi was starting to pick up slowly. She wasn’t doing the can-can in delight just yet, but she seemed brighter and more herself.
This information was relayed back to us via mobile phone, and met with some relief and a degree of confusion, as to what Pepsi could have eaten that had caused the problem. We all agreed that it must surely have been something washed up on the beach, but what?
We were still discussing this when Katharine and Jon arrived back with Pepsi and her medicine. Katharine had paid for the treatment on her card, which meant that we’d have to sell a child for medical experiments when we got home, but which seemed fair enough now that Pepsi was showing marked signs of improvement. She wouldn’t eat anything just yet, but was drinking and not retching and her general demeanour was much improved. Jon was positively delirious at the signs of improvement, I swear he was so happy that he almost offered to buy a round of drinks for people at the pub in celebration.
“I wondered if it was rat poison?” said Katharine out of the blue.
Seeing our collective confusion, she led us outside and showed us the small traps that she had noticed that had been laid around the property to catch and kill the rodents. While any poison seemed to be contained safely within the traps we saw, it did offer us another possibility. I did toy with the idea of Pepsi perhaps being able to open a trap to get at what was inside, but thought better of it when I realised Pepsi barely has the mental capability to open her bowels at the right time, so a cunning locking mechanism is probably going to be beyond her.
Surprisingly Pepsi took her medicine rather well and the anticipated struggle to get it down her never materialised. We’d decided that since the weather seemed to be agreeable, we’d get the stuff for a barbecue this evening and it was I who ventured back into Clifden with my sister and Ian to pick up provisions for the feast.
Remember, if the rat poison doesn’t get you, then my barbecue cooking will.
COTTAGE : 8pm
There was a staggering sense of inevitability about it in the end. So far, Pepsi’s ailment apart, the holiday had pretty much gone according to plan. Even the Rain God hadn’t managed to invoke his minions to unleash a deluge upon us. That was of course until we actually planned to sit outside and have a barbecue, whereupon as soon as we’d left the supermarket in Clifden laden with goodies to cook up later over a flaming grill, the heavens decided to open.
It continued to rain as we drove back from Clifden to our cottage.
It continued to rain as I sat in the kitchen, listening to Ian reassure everybody that this was probably only going to be a few showers and that by 8 o’clock it would be balmy, nay, tropical outside.
It continued to rain as I began to prepare the meat and vegetables as I listened to Ian explain how that any weather front in Ireland, especially Western Ireland, usually passes very quickly and that it is extremely unlucky for us to have been on holiday here twice and have been constantly rained upon.
And thus, the barbecue outdoors became an indoor grill. This does have its own merits. While you do lose the frisson of eating outdoors and the feeling of being at one with nature, you do gain in the fact that you will not be constantly attacked by wasps who regard every single morsel of food you have as their own personal domain.
I loathe wasps. I don’t understand why, if there is some general creator of things, he or she felt the need to put them on the planet. All they tend to do is buzz around near dustbins and picnic tables, slurping at your coke, licking at your food, buzzing right next to your ear or stinging you. At least when some bees do this, they have the good grace to keel over and die. Wasps can do it again if they like, and then they’ll carry on nicking your coke and commandeering your picnic. They provide nothing positive for the environment or for folks in general (though I am sure there will be a passing waspologist out there who will happily point out to me that in actual fact wasps are vital to the planet because they fart enough oxygen to supply Leytonstone with breathable air for two weeks or some other such nonsense). It is almost as if they have been put on the planet to do two things, leech of you incessantly and annoy the flaming tits off people. An uncanny trait they seem to share with your children, politicians and solicitors.
So the weather conspired to turn our barbecue inside out, however it didn’t really matter. The food was cooked and enjoyed by all, no wasps were invited (nor did any gatecrash the party), Pepsi’s appetite picked up to the point where she actually ate a small piece of chicken roll (the vet had suggested buying some as it would be easy for her to digest after her gastric trauma) and the evening was enlightened still further by the revelation that we had approximately 200 Euro’s left in the communal kitty to last us for the next four days.
“We’ll do something cheap for tea tomorrow night... something like Fish and chips.” stated my Dad and we all agreed with him. We just now had to find somewhere that did them because, like it or not, the fishermen were catching nothing that was even vaguely edible out of the sea.
A fact which Pepsi had possibly proven all too well.
CLIFDEN VETERINARY SURGERY : 11am
After the best night’s sleep I’d had of the holiday I awoke to find Pepsi still looking very unhappy with life. Thankfully her retching had stopped, but she still showed no interest in eating anything and remained entirely listless and lethargic. Despite this small improvement in her condition, we were all in agreement that we needed to take her the vets. Jon, panic stricken, had already dug out the number of the nearest surgery in Clifden and my wife called and arranged an appointment at around quarter to eleven.
Jon, by now, was beside himself with worry over Pepsi. He had grown incredibly attached to both her and my original dog Foxy as soon as we had got them. Foxy was my first dog, a rescued collie crossed with, what one can only assume was, as her name suggests, a fox. She was a very intelligent dog, soon learning how to open the back door with her paws, to let herself into the house. Her only problem was that she didn’t like being alone in the house if ever we went out somewhere without her, and so a couple of years, and a few chewed doors and destroyed wedding cake decorations later (don’t ask, my wife still feels incredibly guilty about it, her mum still doesn’t know), we found another rescue dog to keep her company. This was the erstwhile Pepsi. She too was a Collie cross but that is where the similarities with Foxy end. Whereas Foxy was a browny ginger, bushy tailed, bright eyed, intelligent dog who had no difficulty understanding your wishes, Pepsi was a black and white, dopey eyed, perpetually dozy creature who would probably have been labelled “special needs”, “irretrievably stupid” or “nice but dim” if she was human.
Despite spending all her life watching Foxy in the back yard, rear up on two legs, then pull the back door handle down with her paws and then nudging the now open door with her nose, she never twigged that she could do the same and would frequently, when outside on her own, whine for Foxy to come and open the door for her. Foxy’s eyes showed a hint of intelligence and recognition, as if she understood you, whereas Pepsi’s eyes had the continually bemused look of the perpetually bewildered. I think Jon thought I was being cruel, rather than entirely accurate, in my assessment of Pepsi as being on an intellectual par with George W Bush and he would frequently leap to her defence in the face of my unkind criticism.
‘Fox and Peps’ as they were invariably called, were pretty much inseparable for eight years, they’d sleep curled up together and when Pepsi had done something idiotic, Foxy would look at me with a look in her eyes that would implore me not to consider her as being from the same gene pool as Pepsi.
Sadly, this happy union ended when Foxy was aged ten and developed a horrendously quick growing cancerous tumour in her neck. We made her last couple of weeks with us as happy and comfortable as possible, but we soon reached the day when the tumour in her neck had started to seep blood. We knew that this was the sign that she would, eventually, bleed to death slowly and in pain. My wife bravely took her the vets feeling that I wouldn’t be able to do so if the worst came to the worst and sadly it proved to be the case when she returned holding an empty lead and holding Foxy’s collar. She didn’t need to tell us, the tears in her eyes had given it away long before.
At the time my Dad, Jon and Alex were in the house with me when Katharine came in and shook her head stating there was nothing they could do for her and she’d been put to sleep. The moment Katharine said it, she fell into my arms and I heard three doors close behind me as Alex, my Dad and Jon disappear to deal with it themselves. I was surprised to note that I didn’t cry. To my mind, we’d shown her the ultimate in love and compassion. She may have lived a couple of days longer, but it would have been in great pain and misery as she slowly faded away. She was at least saved from that horror and her last days saw her spoilt rotten, I know chocolate is particularly bad for a dog, but Foxy loved it and on her last night with us, she tucked into an enormous Dairy Milk bar that I’d given her, with unmistakable glee. It can poison them you know, but when you’ve got hours left to live, I guess it loses its sting.
After Foxy’s death, Pepsi was bereft. Her soul mate and leader had disappeared and for several months afterwards she was lost. She lost a lot of weight, which Katharine attributed to her pining for Foxy and which I attributed to the fact that she was now no longer able to eat her own dinner in record time and then scoff as much as Foxy’s as possible. At this time Jon really took special care with Pepsi and had developed an increasing bond with her, taking her for walks and generally spoiling her rotten. However we noted that Pepsi was much happier when around another dog or two and so, a few months into the New Year, we decided to buy another dog. This time a Yorkshire Terrier.
I had been vetoed on my first choice of a Newfoundland because of two reasons, firstly the cost to get a puppy was astronomical and secondly, the cost to feed one made the cost of buying one in the first place look like small change. I therefore decided to opt for the other end of the scale and having had plenty of experience with Yorkies as a child (we’d had two as family pets when my brother, sister and I were children) we decided to get a Yorkshire Terrier to keep Pepsi company and thus Cookie appeared on the scene at age 8 weeks.
She was small, but not tiny by Yorkie standards but compared to Pepsi she was minute. However from the moment she came to live with us, it was clear Cookie wanted to be in charge. I had been vetoed on naming the dog after my suggestions of “Titan” or “Rambo” were summarily dismissed as inappropriate and Jessica, twee and girly as ever, suggested Cookie. The name seemed to fit her so it stuck. She quickly proved to be a bossy little madam as most Yorkshire Terriers tend to be and we waited patiently for Pepsi to take control of the situation and put the young upstart in her place. All to no avail, I think even the Dog Whisperer would have despaired. It reached the point where Cookie would start playing with Pepsi, nibbling at her tail and jumping at her face and we would have to encourage Pepsi to “tell her off!”. On one momentous occasion Pepsi did turn around and growl a snarled warning to Cookie which led to an impromptu round of applause from all present and glowing praise for Pepsi from us all. I dread to think what this may have looked like to an outsider, as a group of grown adults cheered, whooped and hollered their delight as a medium sized cross breed dog, snarled and growled at a tiny Yorkshire terrier puppy.
Just a few short months later however and the dogs were inseparable, Jon I think felt that because Cookie seemed to be bright and was definitely my dog, that somehow poor Pepsi would be the “odd one out again” so he began to lavish yet more attention on her. This wasn’t the case really, Pepsi has always received equal attention, but perhaps because she is the intellectual canine equivalent of a jam sandwich, she needs a bit of extra care. A duty of care which Jon is only too happy to provide over and above what we as a family do for her. It was because of this that he was so concerned with Pepsi’s condition and had decided to go with Katharine to the vets.
After they’d departed with Pepsi, though none of us stated it, we were all a little worried. I had visions of Katharine coming back with an empty lead and collar once again, having to cart a wailing Jon out of the car before he flung himself into the ocean distraught, so for the rest of the morning, we sat waiting for the phone to go to inform us of what the vet had said.
At the vets, Pepsi had for one, behaved herself. Despite not being bright, Pepsi seemed to innately understand what a veterinary surgery was and would cry, whimper, squeal, yelp, claw down the floor and generally do anything to get away from it. The vet called Katharine and Jon through with Pepsi and took one look at Pepsi’s rather forlorn expression.
“Oh! Dear me! Look at that face! She’s depressed!” the vet stated in a thick Irish brogue.
“She’s depressed?!? She hasn’t got to pay the fecking bill!” No, it was a good job I wasn’t there.
Katharine explained the situation to the vet who gave Pepsi a thorough examination. She ascertained that Pepsi had definitely eaten something that she shouldn’t, but an examination of her tummy showed no sign of anything large or nasty that could be causing the problem. In the end the vet gave us a couple of prescriptions for some medicine to help Pepsi’s stomach settle. She did say however that unless she showed signs of improvement very shortly, she’d have to bring her in and put her on a drip and keep her overnight for further observations. Gulp! However Katharine had noticed that Pepsi was starting to pick up slowly. She wasn’t doing the can-can in delight just yet, but she seemed brighter and more herself.
This information was relayed back to us via mobile phone, and met with some relief and a degree of confusion, as to what Pepsi could have eaten that had caused the problem. We all agreed that it must surely have been something washed up on the beach, but what?
We were still discussing this when Katharine and Jon arrived back with Pepsi and her medicine. Katharine had paid for the treatment on her card, which meant that we’d have to sell a child for medical experiments when we got home, but which seemed fair enough now that Pepsi was showing marked signs of improvement. She wouldn’t eat anything just yet, but was drinking and not retching and her general demeanour was much improved. Jon was positively delirious at the signs of improvement, I swear he was so happy that he almost offered to buy a round of drinks for people at the pub in celebration.
“I wondered if it was rat poison?” said Katharine out of the blue.
Seeing our collective confusion, she led us outside and showed us the small traps that she had noticed that had been laid around the property to catch and kill the rodents. While any poison seemed to be contained safely within the traps we saw, it did offer us another possibility. I did toy with the idea of Pepsi perhaps being able to open a trap to get at what was inside, but thought better of it when I realised Pepsi barely has the mental capability to open her bowels at the right time, so a cunning locking mechanism is probably going to be beyond her.
Surprisingly Pepsi took her medicine rather well and the anticipated struggle to get it down her never materialised. We’d decided that since the weather seemed to be agreeable, we’d get the stuff for a barbecue this evening and it was I who ventured back into Clifden with my sister and Ian to pick up provisions for the feast.
Remember, if the rat poison doesn’t get you, then my barbecue cooking will.
COTTAGE : 8pm
There was a staggering sense of inevitability about it in the end. So far, Pepsi’s ailment apart, the holiday had pretty much gone according to plan. Even the Rain God hadn’t managed to invoke his minions to unleash a deluge upon us. That was of course until we actually planned to sit outside and have a barbecue, whereupon as soon as we’d left the supermarket in Clifden laden with goodies to cook up later over a flaming grill, the heavens decided to open.
It continued to rain as we drove back from Clifden to our cottage.
It continued to rain as I sat in the kitchen, listening to Ian reassure everybody that this was probably only going to be a few showers and that by 8 o’clock it would be balmy, nay, tropical outside.
It continued to rain as I began to prepare the meat and vegetables as I listened to Ian explain how that any weather front in Ireland, especially Western Ireland, usually passes very quickly and that it is extremely unlucky for us to have been on holiday here twice and have been constantly rained upon.
And thus, the barbecue outdoors became an indoor grill. This does have its own merits. While you do lose the frisson of eating outdoors and the feeling of being at one with nature, you do gain in the fact that you will not be constantly attacked by wasps who regard every single morsel of food you have as their own personal domain.
I loathe wasps. I don’t understand why, if there is some general creator of things, he or she felt the need to put them on the planet. All they tend to do is buzz around near dustbins and picnic tables, slurping at your coke, licking at your food, buzzing right next to your ear or stinging you. At least when some bees do this, they have the good grace to keel over and die. Wasps can do it again if they like, and then they’ll carry on nicking your coke and commandeering your picnic. They provide nothing positive for the environment or for folks in general (though I am sure there will be a passing waspologist out there who will happily point out to me that in actual fact wasps are vital to the planet because they fart enough oxygen to supply Leytonstone with breathable air for two weeks or some other such nonsense). It is almost as if they have been put on the planet to do two things, leech of you incessantly and annoy the flaming tits off people. An uncanny trait they seem to share with your children, politicians and solicitors.
So the weather conspired to turn our barbecue inside out, however it didn’t really matter. The food was cooked and enjoyed by all, no wasps were invited (nor did any gatecrash the party), Pepsi’s appetite picked up to the point where she actually ate a small piece of chicken roll (the vet had suggested buying some as it would be easy for her to digest after her gastric trauma) and the evening was enlightened still further by the revelation that we had approximately 200 Euro’s left in the communal kitty to last us for the next four days.
“We’ll do something cheap for tea tomorrow night... something like Fish and chips.” stated my Dad and we all agreed with him. We just now had to find somewhere that did them because, like it or not, the fishermen were catching nothing that was even vaguely edible out of the sea.
A fact which Pepsi had possibly proven all too well.
Comments
Post a Comment