Well after waking at my usual 4am feeling fine, I decided to have a snooze for an hour later on. When I woke up again I felt a bit odd, but decided to ignore it. Off to do our fortnightly shop, I stood in the post office waiting to pay my never ending bills and realised I felt sick, my legs were rubbery and my arms felt like lead weights lol. So apart from getting some milk and taking the dog for a walk, the shopping's been abandoned for another day. I've dosed myself up with some flu tablets and hope that it wards it off whatever it is that ails me.
My front room is beginning to annoy me...... I'm surrounded by colourful boxes of beads, of all shapes and sizes, mirror tiles, sequins, bits of wool, reels of cotton and skeins of embroidery thread. I'm even saving the offcuts of embroidery thread incase they come in useful for gawds sake !! The pile is getting bigger and bigger every day, as I become more and more into this new found hobby of embellishment embroidery. As usual, I can stand the mess for quite a while before it starts to get on my nerves. I am getting very close this point right now !!!
Even the poor old dog is having to pick his way through all these boxes to come and get a bit of fuss. My old dog Zac, sometimes known as Lardy, is a bit of a character/liability. At 11 yrs old he can be very set in his ways at times. He will not eat his breakfast or dinner unless me or my daughter is sat downstairs with him. He has a very annoying habit of eating my post too !! He seems to outwit me every time I try to get to my post, before him and it gets either teeth marks all through it or at worst torn to shreds. It's usually the latter to be honest, as despite his elderly age he's a dammed sight faster than me. We bought one of those wire letter boxes and fixed that to the door, feeling very satisified with ourselves my daughter and I sat thinking we had at last fixed the problem. Oh no, two lunges at that the next morning found the post box on the floor along with the remaining bits of that days post !! That idea abandoned I decided, that maybe a really heavy, very long velvet curtain hung at the door would fox him, no way would he be able to get to the post now !! What a joke, the first morning he'd sussed out how to drag the curtain back with his mouth so that he could get to the letters he loves to destroy !! So apart from taking him to the doggy dentist and having all his teeth taken out, it seems that the only way is to keep him ( and me ) locked in the front room till after the post has been.
Whoever said you can't teach old dogs new tricks, obviously has never met my dog!! At our old house we had the old latch type handles on the doors, when he came to live with us he realised pretty quickly that if he banged his nose on the door a few times, he could dislodged the latch and get the door open. At this new house he has managed to open a sliding door !! At first I thought I hadn't shut the door properly when I went out, so the next time I made doubly sure the door was shut, I got back and sure enough the door was wide open. It seems this dog must have some Houdini blood in him.
When you take him for a walk, you can let him off the lead and he's no problem. He trundles along with you quite happily, UNTIL you decide its the end of walkies, then he seems to suddenly develope selective hearing .... and takes no notice whatsoever. You can talk nicely, shout, scream at him or even a combination of all three and he just totally ignores you !! Luckily however, if you start the car up and sound the horn, he can reappear from miles away and comes and gets in the car lol.
He also has a deep hatred of men, and should any try and get over our doorstep they are likely to get bitten. This means that he has to be locked away whenever meter readers, postmen, repair guys or odd random men come knocking. We were told by his previous owners he used to be fine, until they had a change of postman. They think this new postman used to kick him, because from then on he hated men. His hatred of men is why we actually got to have him. At my old house I was asleep on the settee one night and got woke up in the early hours by a guy stroking my leg !! I sat up screamed at this guy " Who the hell are you ?" as if he ws going to tell me ....dohhhh !!! My shouting must have scared him, (I can shout very loudly, just ask my kids) and he ran off. At first I wasn't sure what to do, was it too petty a thing to report it to the police ? I decided it wasn't and called the police, sniffer dogs tracked the guys scent to one of my neighbours and he was arrested !! This really shook me up and I was left feeling very vunerable, so one of my other neighbours a lovely guy called Chris, said I could borrow his dog till I felt a bit better. So we did and very quickly me, my son and my daughter got very attached to this fat, old, but very protective dog called Zac and began to dread the day when my neighbour would want him back. One day while Chris was having a cuppa at ours he turned round and said you might as well keep Zac, he's much happier and better off with you because your at home most of the time. We very quickly accepted this offer, and Zacs been with us ever since !!
