The lost dog

Damaris came back from her eye appointment (she has Glaucoma) and, as she turned off the main road onto the steep narrow local road that leads to our hamlet, she had to brake suddenly because there was a dog flopped out in the middle of the road. This was not a case of some creature choosing an inappropriate place to sun itself (for starters, there was no sunshine to be enjoyed). The animal looked very sick and ill-at-ease and Damaris even wondered if it was rabid – a disease which we have never heard of anyone contracting anywhere even vaguely near us.

The dog was a huge Italian sheepdog and it turned out to belong to the goatkeeper who lives at the bottom of our hill. We knew he had a big female one – she is kept chained up outside the whole year long and even in the middle of summer (35C or above) and winter (-12C and below) she has no shelter or respite. Apparently she gave birth to three pups – one he kept, one he killed and this one which he allows to roam the countryside looking for food (as he refuses to feed it).

Damaris called the local Vigili (police) on their mobile (the guy is going to regret giving her that!) and he sent two dog-catchers around to collect the mutt from the road. How they ever catch a dog must remain a mystery because no matter how old and decrepit it might be, it would still move faster than them. Anyway, they arrived just in time for it to scarper off across the fields.

From the dog’s point of view this is just as well. Capture by the dog-catchers effectively means life (as in until death) in a tiny cage with very limited human contact. Damaris had offered to take the dog (although what we would have done with it, goodness knows). At one year old, it was far too badly set in its anti-social ways to fit in with our plans and, in any case, there is no room left in the back of our Nissan Pathfinder after our three dogs are in it.

This is how locals view animals. If they don’t work or don’t feed you, then they are useless. This is not just the English sense of ‘fair play’ nor our obsession with pets and their rights, this goes deeper. There is something very lacking in the education of the people here. Did you read my post on the hunter who shot a thrush? It was ‘OK’ because it was a migrant bird and not a native one. What has that spurious bit of logic to do with anything?

I don’t think that a single person we know has any idea of environmental changes, disappearing species, overcrowding, pollution or any of the long list of modern ailments. Is this just a lack of interest, an in-built arrogance or the product of a catholic education? For a people who are normally more caring to strangers than many places one could name their attitude seems incongruous and incomprehensible.

Cure for doggie fur balls

Until recently we had two golden retrievers. The older one is still alive but is prone to fur balls which usually manage to manifest themselves at about 3am when he insists on waking us to do something about it.

We’ve tried all the usual stuff including letting him go out and eat grass to make himself sick. The best thing we have found is a stick of celery. This is digestible yet stiff enough to push the furball down into his belly and send him back to sleep with a full stomach! Accordingly, we try to make things like celery and carrots (another option but not quite as good) into treats. Like many retrievers, he suffers with weight problems and I can’t see that feeding him roughage like celery and carrots isn’t a damned sight better than high calorie ‘doggie snacks’.

The end of summer

It’s been a short but hot summer here up in the mountains. Our oldest dog doesn’t venture far from home these days as he overheats. He is, however, prone to nocturnal jaunts to our nearest neighbours whom we’ve dubbed the ‘Hillbillies’ namely because they seem to resemble the ‘nouveau riche’ hicks of the tv series inasmuch as their brand new house is already surrounded by bits of farmyard equipment, animal dung and there is a mad old woman who spends most of her day running around it crying, “Chee” in a very high-pitched voice to her chickens.

Needless to say all their dogs are securely locked up in cages all day long. Apart from a couple of very small ones, they don’t ever seem to be let out. Our dogs wander over there from time to time (against our wishes, of course) and wind up the resident canines. We have a sneaking suspicion that our mutts somehow get to eat their food.

No doubt we will get a complaint one day soon. That said, we’ve been here a year now and not spoken to each other. We get on ok with the other people on the hill except for the guy who runs the hotel and who served us that inedible, greasy meal at 25 Euros a head (see this blog).

The outdoor swimming pool has finally been chlorine-shocked and sheeted and the pump put on ‘casual duty’. The winter storms haven’t really started yet but one is scheduled for tomorrow and we know that the north wind that blasts sub-zero temperatures up our valley cannot be far off.

That said, we’ve still been cropping strawberries and the odd raspberry although there don’t tend to be too many left after the dogs have picked them. The tomatoes go a similar way, too.

Now, we just sit and wait to see if our new under-floor heated, double-glazed option room with insulated walls and ceiling and thickened north wall are up to those gales we can expect. More to follow, no doubt.

Our dogs and fruit

Damaris has just come in from the garden. Our dogs have been eating all the tomatoes and strawberries again. They just walk past a bush and browse on its contents. It started when we were back in England. The oldest dog, Newton, would follow me around observing what I ate. I realised this when he started eating loganberries off of the bush we had.

The other key to him observing was with the grapes. Perhaps foolishly I gave him a grape. Having a soft mouth, as retrievers do, it wasn’t in his nature to bite the grape so he just sat there with it in his mouth looking a bit lost. Then he saw me bite mine and that was it. Grape eaten – can I have some more, please, master?

It’s not like their short of fluid – we’ve just had water-melon for lunch and they had a fair share of that off of us, too. Water-melon is probably the favourite although apples go down well, too. Pascal, the retriever we had to have put down in January (chronic cancer of the spine) was once clocked as having eaten 10 apples in an afternoon. My own suspicion was that he ate the over-ripe fallers which had just started to ferment and which, I would guess, tasted (and were) a bit like a mild scrumpy. He certainly slept after one of these apple binges.