Category: Pets

Cats, Dogs, that sort of thing. Rats, Hamsters, Rabbits. You get the gist.

Advent #18

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Money, Pets

A bit like the mid-season two-parters so beloved of noughties Doctor Who showrunners, and even though I didn’t even bother with a cliffhanger yesterday, I’m back at the Christmas Market.

Not literally. (To end up at a Christmas Market once can be considered a misfortune (and so on).) But after my moaning yesterday, it would be unfair not to point out that some people DO enjoy going. And I’m married to one of them.

At the risk of sounding a little Scrooge-y, I ALWAYS start from the assumption that I’m not going to spend anything. Whereas conversely, and despite having been married for quite some time now, my wife always goes in with the assumption that I AM going to.

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In terms of Christmas Markets, I’m afraid Mrs Curnow is easy prey to a ‘free sample’ – as in a tiny little paper cup of this gin or that rum. Every time we go, sooner or later (and usually sooner) there will be a sample which she can’t resist. (This is more or less the moment at which I realise how different our assumptions about spending money are.)

Dare I say, even our puppy was less-easily swayed. Almost the first stall we came to was a ‘free sample’ of some fancy, highfalutin dog food – which Daisy was having none of. Considering that she eats cardboard, shoes and floor tiles on a daily basis (and considering she turned down the free sample but shortly thereafter was keen to smell another dog’s butt) it’s hard not to take that as a damning critique of the dog food.

So thankfully, I can report I didn’t spend any money.

Well, not on dog food anyway. Mrs Curnow found a ‘free sample’ that she somehow convinced me she couldn’t live without. How does she do that??

Advent #6

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Pets

My wife has a passion for fish.

I don’t mean in the “haddock or cod, salt and vinegar with it?” variety; I mean actual – that is to say, alive – fish. In a tank. Or tankS, rather. I don’t know what started it, but there are now two in our sitting-room and she finds it fascinating to just sit and watch them. So does her little dog for that matter. (My wife has a passion for dogs.)

It’s handy when somebody is really ‘into’ something, in the sense that it’s a useful starting-point for present-buying. It can be a double-edged sword of course, there’s the danger of somebody ending up with seven ‘Luke Skywalker in Bespin Fatigues’ figures, and would anybody actually wear Tom Baker underpants anyway?

That aside, now that she has a real passion for keeping fish it opens up a whole range of present-buying possibilities for me this Christmas. Not the obvious (difficult to wrap plus they make the paper soggy) but it’s surprising just how much paraphernalia and add-ons and the like there is in the fishkeeping world.

Current image: A fish tank, bubbles floating up, blue gravel, orange fish.

Not just sunken diver figurines or plastic fronds either. I was amazed to discover how much water testing and chemical adjustment is required, for example. Often when Mrs C’s regaling me with the pH levels, or the distinction between nitrItes and nitrAtes, it reminds me of the bit in 1981’s K9 & Company when they suddenly start talking about soil pH levels (I always assume that bit was added in as a cynical move to sex it up and get the kids interested).

So anyway, I now have a few ideas for Christmas presents. Hopefully it won’t look too suspicious if a number of parcels start being delivered – I wouldn’t want her to think there’s something fishy going on.

Advent #14

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Pets
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A year ago today, our daughter got her dog. He was a rescue and came with some issues, both physical (he is, as Peter Cook put it, deficient in the leg department to the tune of one) and mental, in that he was very wary around men. Because of the latter I kept my distance, and all I really saw of Rikki during that first week was two timid eyes staring out from a nest of blankets in his cage.

The timid eyes, and indeed the cage, have long since gone (although the nest of blankets has if anything grown) and he doesn’t ever let his missing leg slow him down – quite the opposite in fact, my theory being that he’s like a bicycle and needs to keep up a certain speed otherwise he’ll just topple over.

Yesterday he decided to wake my daughter at 5am to frighten her with his ragged breathing and rapid heartbeat. In theory we were having our annual trip to Exeter Christmas Market (this year going by train, which in my naïve way I thought I could probably spin 300 words out of (“…when I was a boy I always wanted to drive one…” etc)) but a mid-morning railway journey to the city became instead a pre-sunrise car journey to the vets.

Mind you, the two experiences aren’t entirely different (going Christmas Shopping or going to the vet, you already know you’re coming home poorer) and in fact as it happens we’ve all of us more or less finished our Christmas Shopping so we were only really going to Exeter for a mix of tradition and browsing (and hopefully food).

And for Rikki, Christmas has come early – they’ve sent him home with a huge bag full of goodies. (To be taken three times a day.)

Advent #8

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Pets, Weather
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In anticipation of Storm Darragh yesterday, I brought our wheel bin indoors. The last time I had to do that was only a couple of years ago – but having recalled the occasion, it struck me that back then we had four dogs (who I slept downstairs with to avoid them getting scared by the wind – whereupon they all slept soundly on the sofa and I gave myself backache perching on a footstool worrying about the fence) whereas now we are down to just one, after losing Ellie.

Ellie arrived, like the Matt Smith era of Doctor Who, in the Spring of 2010, and was our first small dog. And perhaps because of that, and although we always try to treat our childr—our PETS, treat our pets the same, we would often take her out with us rather than leave her home with our giant labrador and stupid collie and run the risk of her being inadvertently sat on.

So she visited both my brother’s flat and my parents’ house, peeing in the corner on both occasions (which I suspect they might have all forgot about by now if I hadn’t just reminded them) and spending one St Peter’s Fair evening tucked inside my jumper.

She was also, which is often the case of small dogs surrounded by idiots, very protective/aggressive (depending on which side of her teeth you are standing on). That’s why, this time last year, I was worried about Ellie’s first meeting with Claudia’s new dog. Rikki is large and gangly and towered above Ellie – but after a moment’s sniffing, frankly it was ‘business as usual’ and back to dozing on the settee.

Despite my worries, it was peace and goodwill to all men (and dogs!) after all!

The Easter Mystery

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Moaning, Pets

To misquote Noddy Holder, It’s Eas-ter!!!!!!!

There are of course two Easters, just as there are two Christmasses – that is to say, there’s the actual religious festival and then there’s the commercial event. And I think, whether wholeheartedly or begrudgingly, we just have to accept that.

It’s inevitable really, given that of all the many religious festivals only those two prompt Bank Holidays and all that go with them. No doubt there’s mutterings in some corners that even this simple fact is yet another example of how fundamentally discriminatory and just plain awful the British are… but in fact no, that’s just how our particular society has evolved. (Personally I’ve no objection whatsoever if anybody wants to get us an extra few days off work for Eid or Diwali – I often think that if Rishi Sunak promised three extra bank holidays (and to fix all the potholes) even he could still get re-elected.)

It would be foolish to expect an entire society to be of one mind, most of the time we can’t even agree on who should win Strictly; so it’s not unreasonable that for those who, to misquote Shakespeare, have Easter thrust upon them, there should be a secular element to give it some identity. Not that I’m suggesting the manufacturers of Easter Cards, and chocolate eggs, and the not-to-be-confused-with-Playboy bunny ears, are doing it out of a sense of civic duty. I’m guessing, to be blunt, they’re mainly in it for the money.

This was made very obvious to me today when I ventured into our local Morrisons to find that the Easter aisle has already been cleared out. No doubt come Monday it’ll be full of buckets and spades and other Summertime paraphernalia (which will be there until about mid-July when they’ll be replaced by new School uniforms and Halloween stuff). For the merchandisers, even before Easter has actually arrived it’s time to dump all that and move onto the next thing.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really mind that. I do, though, have a bit of a problem with the insidious playing down of Easter itself. Actually no, I think insidious is unfair – that suggests strategy, which suggests conspiracy. When, for example, Iceland bizarrely removed the cross from their hot CROSS buns, I don’t believe it was a calculated move to eradicate Easter. Much more likely it’s another example of this infuriating modern trend of trying to pre-empt somebody taking offence, and in the process offending many more people.

I’ve done no research but I’m prepared to go out on a limb and say nobody, nobody, has ever objected to having basic Christian iconography pushed on them via the medium of baked goods. I’d go so far as to say if anybody has objected to it, well, the problem probably isn’t with the bun.

Even the word itself, Easter, seems to be an embarrassment in some quarters, as though there’s a worry that poor innocent consumers might unwittingly come over all C-of-E simply by reading it. Just taking a quick straw poll of the five-and-a-half chocolate eggs currently in our house, the word Easter is only prominent on the two that my wife felt strangely compelled to buy for our dogs – the eggs intended for human consumption mention Easter only once and only in the small print.

All of which seems very odd to me. Of course we are a multi-faith culture now, which is a tremendously encouraging thing to aspire to (even if, as has been pointed out, ultimately only one of them can be right (possibly not even that many)) but at the same time you can’t unwrite the country as it has evolved and you can’t rewrite history. Nobody would visit Vatican City and complain that there are too many Catholics, or open a gift shop there but play down anything that was “a bit too Pope-y”.

So maybe the UK shouldn’t worry so much. Leave the cross on the hot cross bun, leave Easter on the eggs. Anything else, we leave that to your own beliefs.

To not misquote Dave Allen: Goodnight, and may your God go with you.

Happy Easter.

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Pets

I’m beginning to think that simply by mentioning Connie Francis’ Baby’s First Christmas I’ve invoked some kind of curse. First Radio 2’s Sara Cox plays it at peaktime, improbable enough – and now we find ourselves with an actual baby’s first Christmas situation.

Well, sort of.

If you’re picturing me stood on the steps of Curnow Towers a la Mrs Thatcher (“we are a grandfather”) you’d better back up the truck. Our daughter is responsible, but only in the sense that as of last Thursday she has acquired a three-legged friend (and yes, that is 75% of a Roy Rogers song).

Her dog is called Rikki and he’s a Podenko (no, me neither) and somewhere in his past he’s lost a leg. He’s four, so it’s his first Christmas WITH US, in the same way that TV programmes are ‘new TO DAVE’. He’s very quickly warmed to both my daughter and wife but he’s not all that keen on men so as yet he’s only got close enough to tentatively smell me. (You can decide for yourself how close that is depending on how pongy you think I am.)

Getting a dog as a single person is a bit like Brexit in that it restricts free movement; but in fact I think our daughter will be glad to have some company around the place. Having moved from our ‘home complete with menagerie’ it’s probably been rather quiet living on her own this past year. I can’t, to be brutally honest, see Rikki fulfilling any kind of ‘guard dog’ role given how timid he is – but on the other hand, missing leg or not, as soon as he twigged he could jump on the bed he appears to have really found his calling as a hot water bottle.

Advent #8

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Pets

I mentioned last year that our dog Bobby probably wouldn’t make it to another Christmas, and sure enough he didn’t, and I thought I might write something about him, but there isn’t much to say really. He arrived as a puppy in 2008 and he left March this year. It wasn’t any big drama, it was just time. And of course it was a bit sad but I’d certainly be lying to say I think about him every day.

Not many WEEKS go by though. Often it’s when I’m walking the two smaller dogs, and I find myself trying to remember what it was like when I used to walk them alongside Bobby – and sometimes I can remember, and sometimes I can’t. When he was younger, when I was younger, occasionally a walk would go on for miles, across muddy fields, or across slippery ice, and then I can remember us both getting very literally bogged down in the one, and the impatient bugger pulling me arse over elbow on the other.

Many dogs chase their own tails – he’s the only one I’ve known who could actually catch it. He was less accomplished on Christmas morning, where we always scrunch up balls of wrapping paper and throw them for the dogs. He enjoyed the game but never managed to catch anything, approaching it all with a mix of enthusiasm but no talent, rather like my attitude to Games when I was at school (except for the enthusiasm bit).

If we scrunch up some wrapping paper for the other dogs this year, I think it might be legitimate to miss Bobby a little then, because he was our dog for a very long time. Not much to say really.

Advent #23

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Childhood, Christmas, Family, Pets

We have a “Baby’s First Christmas” tree decoration which goes up every year. Naturally, the baby in question can’t remember that year, any more than I can remember MY first Christmas when “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)” was number one.

Not just my first one either. My grandparents used to have a photocube atop their telly one of the images in which was the whole ‘tribe’ together one Christmas. I’m in it, probably about three or four. Bruv’s there too and various of our cousins (one is so young, it was probably ‘s first Christmas). But I don’t remember the occasion, only seeing the photo years later.

There’s something both good and bad for the ego, to know that people were perfectly capable of enjoying Christmas, and indeed happily went about doing so, without me. Just as we’ve ‘inherited’ Christmas from generations before, similar in many ways, changed in others, I expect that in fifty years time our descendants will have kept the bits they liked, dumped the bits they don’t, and added their own traditions into the mix.

Because although Christmas often feels like returning again to the same familiar things, it’s never quite the same twice. Long after that first Christmas, our baby has moved out, but only recently so she’ll be with us as usual this year; meanwhile our old dog is fifteen but probably doesn’t have sixteen in him… So I’m aware that with baby steps this year, but larger strides next, our Christmasses are already changing.

The time may even come when people will have to go back to enjoying Christmas, and indeed happily go about doing so, without me! I wish them as good a batch of Christmasses as I’ve been fortunate to see!

Although not for some time yet I hope!

Advent #14

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Pets

My daughter never reads this, as I mentioned yesterday. I’m less confident making the same claim of my wife – so I may be asking for trouble by admitting that I had a Christmas dinner today without her.

Much as TS Eliot measured out his life with coffee spoons, I seem to measure out my holiday entitlement driving people to hospitals; today was a trip out with my daughter to an appointment which, although she’ll never read this, I’m not convinced she’d want anybody else reading about either so I won’t elaborate on. (Although, she was complimented on something people don’t often get compliments for (and by a professional, so somebody who knew what they were talking about (and what they were looking at)).

Anyway: afterwards, in the time-honoured tradition of making sure your offspring are eating properly, we went looking for food, ending up at a pub with, to finally get to the point, a Special Christmas Menu. Granted, it was padded out with non-festive fare (unless I’m missing an obvious connection between the cheeseburger and the Magi) but it contained, top billing, a Turkey Dinner. A short while later, I contained it too.

We always have duck for Christmas lunch, so this made a nice change. Luckily, there’s usually turkey available when we go down to visit my parents of a Christmas Day afternoon – and I have to admit, as the old people of my youth always seemed to say, it IS better cold.

Oddly enough, and it’s never occurred to me before, we never think about taking Mum and Dad some of our cold duck in exchange. We’ll definitely do that this year, the animals will just have to go without for once.

Not that they’ll find out until the Day itself. Our dogs NEVER read this.

Prevent the Dog from Barking with a Juicy Bone

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Pets

We recently inherited a dog.

She arrived one Thursday evening in January with several toys, lots of food and an air of desperation after her owner was rushed into hospital. In theory it was temporary, but in practice neither owner nor dog went home again.

Snowy was one of those small white hairy types, with Denis Healey eyebrows. For the first week-and-a-bit she was ‘overgrown’ and in as far as we could see her eyes at all, it was like someone peeping at you from deep inside some bushes. After we got her clipped she looked completely different, it took 1.4286 years off her (that’s 10 in dog years).

And then Snowy bit one of our other dogs.

Not just one bite and done. No, the two dogs were suddenly a whirling, spitting blur, like the cartoon version of the Tasmanian Devil. With our two boy dogs there was no problem, no tension at all. But with our Jack Russell, a scruffy grande dame called Ellie, it was a different matter.

Ellie’s nearly twelve now and was the last of our dogs I got away with naming after characters from Dallas before my wife rumbled me. She doesn’t back down. Which means that where the boys always back off, any kind of minor growl from Snowy or Ellie would be met with an escalating growl in response from the other. There were several vicious spats, and several more that we managed to head off at the pass by distracting them early doors. And then after a while they seemed to settle down, and all was well.

And then it started again.

And then, last night, Snowy bit me!

Not deliberately and not maliciously – at least I don’t think so –  it was more that, by intervening in the thrashing, snarling frenzy of fur, my arm accidentally got where Snowy (and particularly her closing jaw) thought some part of Ellie was. (Twice.)

So this morning saw me making an uncharacteristic and unscheduled visit to the nearest Minor Injuries Unit. I was of course asked when I last had a Tetanus Booster, and gave the slightly shamefaced response that it was probably not since the millennium. In fact, the actual answer is even longer ago, before I was married, possibly over 30 years ago. It’s much easier to pin down the answer to the question now, I last had a tetanus booster TODAY (about ten minutes after I mentioned the turn of the century). I’ve also, for the first time in my life as far as I can remember, been given antibiotics, so I can finally find out what all the excitement has been about all these years.

The morning got worse of course. Any alternative housing prospects for Snowy had already been unsuccessfully sounded out before that January night when she was metaphorically left in a basket on our doorstep. When we had her checked up recently, she had a string of cancerous lumps along her belly which sooner or later would become an issue. And now, even if we could find one we couldn’t with a clear conscience offer her to another home, knowing that she might snap. All of which is a long-worded way of avoiding the end of the paragraph, because we had to make the painfully obvious, but obviously painful, decision to put her to sleep.

Ellie is dozing happily on the settee now, so that’s good. Three weekends ago me and Mrs C were away leaving Miss Curnow in charge of the dogs, so in hindsight it’s lucky nothing happened then. So that’s good. Snowy didn’t get to the stage where the cancer became painful or debilitating. So that’s good too. All these things are positives – and I should know, because I’ve spent a great deal of this afternoon reminding myself of them in an effort to convince myself.

At the moment the house feels both empty and full of Snowy. There’s a gap where she would usually be, and there are still leads and bowls and baskets around even though they’re no longer needed.

Like my faintly-throbbing arm, they’re just… painful reminders.