Update on the remaining Min Pins
It’s been seven weeks since The Conteesa died suddenly in her sleep. Danny buried her in the garden under the greengage tree that Celia of Purple Podded Peas fame gave us a couple of years ago. In retrospect I believe that this was the perfect end for The Contessa. No long lingering illness. She just went to sleep and never woke up. I was worried about her blindness too – she’d lost a lot of confidence. Perhaps her sense of smell had diminished too. A couple of days before she died I had to lift her onto her ‘safe place’ on the sofa....
read moreThe Contessa
The Contessa was the subject of my first blog post way back in August 2006. Danny reminded me of the fact this evening. I often think about the time when Danny and I drove down to London to collect The Contessa. She didn’t have a name then. She was just a new stag red Min Pin pup and a wife for Dr Quito. Dr Q had been attacked and semi-paralysed during a Sunday afternoon walk on The Gallops in Newmarket and our vet suggested that a companion might salve his damaged mojo. We drew up at a tall house that seemed to have Min Pins barking from...
read moreThe cupboard was bare – so what was The Contessa going to eat last night?
Yesterday I motored down to Newmarket to fetch our medications, visit Waitrose and pick up The Contessa’s trays of diabetic prescription diet from the vet. This food is salmon and rice based as she is extremely allergic to any sort of chicken from breast fillets to derivatives. I suspect the latter are ground up beaks, claws and such like. Somewhere between Waitrose car park and the traffic lights, where I should have turned left for the vet’s surgery, I forgot my final port of call. Perhaps it was the open bag of Hula Hoops on my lap (no...
read moreCataracts are a common side effect of diabetes in dogs
The Contessa has diabetes which is being treated with daily insulin injections and a special diet. She has adapted well and loved jumping on the chair for her ‘jecky’ as it’s followed by a scrap of cheddar cheese. Then one day she jumped onto the chair and missed. I checked her eyes carefully, her nut brown eyes were smudged with milky cataracts. The Contessa’s cataracts developed very quickly. Seemingly in just a matter of days she changed from a dog with the grace and agility of a tiny gazelle to a nervous and uncertain...
read moreArachnids and Nid
I don’t like spiders. Although I know that they catch flies and must be super skilled to weave such superb webs. I hate their touchy feely legs. If I spot one in the bedroom I worry that it will creep across my face in the night. In the past I used to kill them on sight. But, for the past twenty years or so, I’ve tried to live alongside them. Old houses have spiders, arachnids that have bred over the years. Country houses have a vast panoply of spiders of every size from teeny tiny things to spiders so big that they could almost wear my...
read moreEnduring love
We were really worried about Dr Quito this morning. He was very scratchy with Inca and even growled when I tried to pick him up. “I think that he’s in pain, Danny. Cold house and an old damaged body. I’ll put him back under the duvet after breakfast.” He was keen to be cosseted and returned to the goose and duck down duvet (an extravagance that I’ve never regretted. Even when we’re raiding the piggy bank to buy milk at the village shop). But he continued to tremble and mutter. Finally when the wood burning stove had warmed the...
read moreLaunch of the Min Pin DogBlog
Finally the Min Pin DogBlog is up and running. Min Pins are extraordinary dogs. Brave, protective and independent – small dogs with big personalities. My parents discovered the breed when they were living in Germany. Their first one was called Nippy (the name for the waitresses at Lyons Corner House in London at the time). When I was 30 I bought my first Min Pin – Fly. Since then there have always been Min Pins in the house. Life would be very dull without them. There will soon be a tab at the top of the page to access the DogBlog....
read moreMin Pin memories and news
Years ago, when Dr Quito was attacked by a lurcher on the Newmarket Gallops, we didn’t go out for months as we wanted to give him every chance of recovery. He needed lots of physiotherapy and TLC. During this time, Danny and I designed our first website. It was called Surfingdog and was filled with small two frame line animations of our little hero. There you could see Quito surfing, working on a computer and lots more. The radio buttons on the site were tiny Quito heads. We had a lot of fun making the site and even had Surfingdog...
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