A Blissfully Happy Bertie

 

Under normal circumstances he looks something like this ...

A sharp westerly wind ...

 ...  freezes my cheeks and my fingers protruding from my fingerless gloves as I walk Bertie along the green strip at the edge of Monsieur F's field. The ditch beside us is full of muddy gurgling water that is pouring into the stream at the bottom.  My wellington boots slosh through the shallow lake that has reappeared following last night's rain. I let Bertie off his lead. He has his nose firmly pressed into a grass tussock and I leave him there, reassured that he hasn't noticed or smelt the two deer that bounded away across Phillipe's field when they saw us emerge from the house.

The morning is peaceful - the end of February is the end of the hunt season and this is the last weekend the guns can be out. It's due to rain solidly tomorrow; perhaps the hunters will stay at home. I send up a silent prayer for the deer.

Despite the cold, the wind brings a promise of spring. Later in the day, high above me, I hear the cranes calling. They are heading east and north for the summer. 

Cold and dank - the only words for it ...

... and I'd planned to get so much done while Tod was in London.  And here I am, due to pick him up this evening at Bordeaux airport and wondering which of those many tasks I can fit in this afternoon.

The garden and pool (which already is suspiciously green) will have to wait until this coming week when it's due to warm up a bit.

The tulips for the pots and the large fritillaries for the damp patch in the field can also wait. Bought after the New Year, reduced by 30% in my favourite garden centre, they always manage to come up at the right time.

I will need to give plenty of time for the journey.  

Bertie, who is totally recovered from his op, will be coming with me, which means a couple of comfort breaks on the way. 

The farmers' manifestations have finished, but there are likely to be mounds of old tractor tyres and bales of straw still piled up at roundabouts and junctions onto the motorway, all designed to slow us down. On Tuesday when I took Tod to Toulouse the journey there and back took 7½ hours (as opposed to the normal time of under four). We were forced off the motorway at Agen and then weaved our way in a line of traffic (nose to tail like processionary caterpillars) through small towns and villages, each with their traffic calming measures.  By this stage, the last thing we were was calm!

At least going to the airport we were in our "almost-new" car - a Renault Kadjar, which I'd never heard of until I hired one at Christmas to collect K from up on the Massif Centrale beyond Rodez.  The Merc finally told us it had had enough, and refused to move out of first gear and even after repair felt untrustworthy - hence the hire car and then the decision to buy one.

So, the Renault will be Bertie's and my mode of transport to Bordeaux airport this evening. Coming to this from driving two cars over twenty years old, is something of a culture shock - no ignition key and no brake handle for a start. But it has a camera at the back, which is reassuring when reversing in Leclerc's carpark. And after downloading the computer manual which runs to some140 pages (the main car manual is a further 310) and sitting in the driver's seat for two hours while I pressed buttons and swiped screens, I have managed to programme the sat nav to get us home (more than I could do on the way back from Toulouse). At least to get us home-ish.  The computer informs me that we are not shown on the map, so I've put in the name of a neighbouring lieu-dit on the ridge up behind us.

A further hour in the driver's seat, with computer and mobile phone (what IS Bluetooth exactly?) and I have managed to load on my Spotify playlist - more than twenty-four hours of my kind of music. That will keep me going through any burnt tyre induced traffic jams. And for the journey home with Tod? I'm hoping my mobile and BBC Sounds will come up trumps, with soothing late night music on Radio 3.

Somewhere in the manual I came across something about setting the car seats to "massage".  I think I know what I'll be doing this afternoon before Bertie and I leave for the airport.  

Bertie snores noisily in "his" corner ...

.. a small, pink triangle of tongue peeking out of his mouth.

His "corner" has expanded as he has pulled his cushion and the bath mats and towels across the kitchen floor and all four legs are outstretched into the room.  

Getting at the kettle and the toaster on the counter above his head presents a challenge. Does one lean across him at an angle, hoping not to drop the two slices of bread in the process? Or does one try stepping over him without treading on a vulnerable paw, half hidden under the scrunched up bedding?

He's recovering from his early morning walk with Tod, half way round the park in town, which progresses at a leisurely pace as every giant pine tree has to be marked, several times.

The wonderful bi-lingual surgeon in Bordeaux showed us Bertie's X-rays at six weeks and warned that as he is an elderly dog, the mending and growth of new bone below his knee would be slow.  The vet drew a diagram of steps going upwards, each step representing a week and showing a bit more freedom - another five minutes added to each walk, then being able to move at a trot, and finally, being able to walk upstairs and jump up.  

We should have shown the diagram to Bertie!  We won't talk about the afternoon he managed to open the kitchen door by standing on his hind legs, run along the veranda and down the steps at the end and out onto the drive. Or the time we took him, on the lead, round to friends and he jumped into their armchair without so much as a by-your-leave. Nor indeed that, left in the back to "guard the car", his reaction is to bark with all four feet off the floor.

The diagram takes us to Christmas Day and then, all being well, freedom and the chance to run free. 

For all of us.

 

Bertie is Feeling Better

 Four weeks on and finally we've taken off his collar - with some trepidation.  Because he accepted it we kept it on as long as possible.  He licks - a lot - and we wanted his various wounds to heal as much as possible before he could get at them.

His shorn left back leg has fine baby down over it and, when he walks, all four legs are now on the ground. Yesterday he had an osteopathy session.  He was firmly convinced he didn't need it and spent much of the time trying to get off the table. The vet reassured me there has been good progress and he is walking well.

The lack of a hood offers him greater freedom. I pop into Leclerc after the vet's session and come back to find he's squeezed past the netting that is supposed to keep him in the back of the merc, has climbed over the back seats and is sitting behind the steering wheel.  The potential for him to damage his only partly healed left knee is almost infinite. 

Our challenge from now onwards will be to keep this energetic "I'm feeling better and I'm bored" mutt safe and well.  There is still another eight weeks to go!

In a calmer moment ...

Well, the deed is done ...

 ... Bertie has had the op.

We are fortunate in where we live.  A much-lauded young veterinary surgeon in Bordeaux has been operating on cruciate ligaments since 2006, when he started at UCL in London.  That's the year before Noel Fitzpatrick carried out the same (experimental at the time) op on Smudge.  So our "young" vet can't be that young, he just looks it. And he speaks perfect English, so communication was easy as he drew diagrams for me showing what he was going to do and Tod and Bertie took no notice, neither of them wanting to know the details.

All our lives have been turned upside down and will be so for the next two to three months. Thursday, we collected a subdued and slightly wobbly Bertie wearing a plastic cone to keep him from licking, with a back leg that looked like a plucked turkey's and a page of strict instructions: cage rest, five 5-minute walks per day on a short lead, no jumping, running, twisting, slipping. 

We have an extraordinary number of large cages from our Airedale days - one huge one which Smudge had for the same op and two big ones, probably for when Vita and maybe Clara and Rosie were adolescents - Airedales don't stay small for long.  So we thought we were well set up for Bertie's convalescence: the huge cage in the kitchen during the day and the big one in the lounge for night and the other big one in time to be used in the garden so he can watch us work. This, of course, assumed that he would settle - Smudge did and Vita had been known to.

All the advice is "let them cry it out" - so on our return, we let Bertie, in the huge cage in the kitchen, cry, howl, whimper and pant as we tried to carry on our normal daily lives against a barrage of unhappy noise. THREE HOURS LATER, I phoned our vet in despair - the "cry it out" strategy was not working; indeed, quite the reverse, since his distress was far from restful and healing.  She suggested when there was a brief break in the noise and he stopped to draw breath (by this stage he was having a full-on barking temper tantrum) to take him out of the cage and keep him by us on a short lead. (I've tried calling it a crate to make it sound better, but Bertie, he of the rescue centre in Cahors, knows in no uncertain terms that it is a cage). 

The moment he was out, all the noise stopped and, now exhausted, he slept. 

But he has to be in his bedtime cage in the lounge at night in order to be safe - otherwise he would be jumping up onto the sofas. I got three hours sleep that night as he leaned against me with all of his weight in the doorway of the big cage and then protested loudly as I forced the door shut.  I watched hours of rubbish TV as he grumbled and whimpered.  I imagined designing elaborate enclosures with the lounge furniture and then decided the big cage was not big enough or comfortable enough for him - he banged the metal bars with the plastic cone every time he turned round.  So I dragged the huge cage into the lounge (thank heavens for wide doorways) opened it up and attached it to the merely big one, to make a small run.  That was an improvement as it now meant Bertie could move between the two as he whimpered and panted and refused to settle. I sat on the ground with my back to the cage reading. Suddenly it all went quiet.  Great, I can now go to bed.  The moment I moved away the protestations started again. 

So, sofa cushions were put down as an improvised mattress. I rolled myself in a duvet alongside his cage and finally we slept.  

Last night, there was progress. Much grumbling while I got myself ready for a second night on the sofa cushions. The moment I lay down - blessed silence. So tonight?  The huge cage will be in the bedroom and he will go in it as I go to bed.  And for the rest of the day?  The kitchen is his domain, with doors closed and openings gated and he has his usual corner where he tucks himself down.  The only drawback? One of us has to be with him all the time with his lead to hand. So all my plans for all the gardening I was going to do this autumn while he was (happily - huh!) caged  have gone out the window.

He's snoring contently in his corner as I type this. Even in these couple of days he is getting stronger and more confident.  The new knee is still kept folded and he lops along on three legs as I walk him (briefly) round the park in town with all its enticing other dog smells to keep him diverted.

We will all get through this, just fine.

Mary had a Little Lamb

 Bertie follows me everywhere. If I get up from my desk where I'm typing this, although he seems asleep, he will "wake" and follow me - like Mary's little lamb.

The problem at the moment though is that he's supposed to be resting.  In fact he's supposed to be in a cage, resting - except that would make him wretched. So, we leave him free to roam the house.

He's torn his left back leg cruciate ligament.  I knew it was serious as he limped badly towards me last Monday, followed by one of the Jack Russells from up the road who quickly disappeared as soon as he saw me.  Were they playing? Or (more likely) was it a "confrontation"?  Anyway, the result is one torn ligament and strict instructions from the strict young female vet in town, who has no empathy, to keep him in a cage.  

This is a dog who is never still who, when we got him from the rescue centre all those years ago, we were told had jumped out the window of the family who took him the day before and so they (fortunately) brought him back.  And the photo of his mournful face looking through the bars of his cage made me decide he should come home with us and we drove all the way to Cahors to fetch him.  A cage? Not likely!  I look for reassurance that not putting him in a cage is ok and find a "modern view" on the internet that he needs to keep his other three legs strong while the fourth one stays up in the air, so it is better to let him roam (a bit).  

He's not supposed to jump either.  But that's not happening. He's up on the sofa, back down on the ground, up three steps, before we have moved.  I'm hoping that the vet I'm seeing tomorrow - the one who is also an osteopath - will be pleasantly surprised at how well he's doing and not rebuke me.

We've been here before.  Smudge had that same dire limp sixteen Januarys ago - the year we decided to move to France.  He was operated on by the "Super vet" before he was famous and then spent three months (was it really three months?) in a cage. So one of us always had to be with him and that was why, in March, I came to France on my own and found our house.

We got Smudge a television to keep him entertained while caged.  Although he was boisterous he was also resigned and tolerated his imprisonment.  Bertie?  We doubt he will be as phlegmatic.  So there is a hard decision to be made at some point whether, given his age and disposition, we put him through the same process. And for what?  Smudge never again had the same freedom of movement.  What would an op do for Bertie?  Mind you, the alternative isn't great - strapped in a prosthetic, taking painkillers and anti-inflammatories for the rest of his life.

And Bertie right now?  He's not worried. He's happy as anything, hopping round after me, as happy as Mary's little lamb.  Perhaps we should start calling him Larry.   

 

The forecast promises ...

... twenty-seven degrees Celsius tomorrow. Bliss!

We just have to get through this afternoon and tonight. At 2pm the thermometer in the shade on the veranda says one hundred degrees Fahrenheit (nearly thirty-eight degrees Celsius).

The hydrangeas on said veranda have collapsed in the heat.  I head for the water butt and a watering can then back off.  A cloud of wasps is around the tap, going for any dampness they can find.  The long hose to the outdoor tap to the house proves a safer bet.  I water the hydrangeas to the background noise of the combine harvester trundling up and down Monsieur F's neighbouring field of sunflowers that are blackened and shrivelled.  This is a month early, surely?

We cover the pool to keep off the dust and detritus from the harvesting. I'll open it up again tonight and swim in the warm water in the dark, stars and the lights from distant silent planes above me,  before heading for bed.  We have no guests at present, for which I'm grateful. No need to clean the cottage or iron bedding in these temperatures.  I have until the end of next week and its wonderful mid- twenties coolness. In Rio, when the temperature dropped that low women used to get out their fur coats. 

I've bought a mesh raised dog bed for Bertie from Lidl which is supposed to keep him cool. Bertie remains to be convinced, preferring the tiled floor. He lies in my study alongside the bed (which is not small) and I pick my way across what little of the floor is left for me and get ice to put into a small cube shaped fan on my desk, designed to be personal air conditioning. For the rest of the afternoon I'll play online games, gossip on Survive France and read others' blogs. Only mad dogs and Englishmen are out.  This English woman and her sensible dog are staying put indoors.