THE TALES OF LILLY

Tantrums, Trackers and a Twisted Wrist

Oh, and Teeny Tot Photos

by Karen Lee Turner

Lets begin with Tantrums

Lilly like every other dog has nails, and nails that grow quite a bit. Lurcher nails are long anyway due to needing the grip when dashing around like a whirling dervish, but I started noticing that they may need attention when she was play fighting with Damian and his arm ended up looking like a road map of the Spaghetti Junction with the amount of red scratches.

Her dewclaws - the ones that are a bit further up the leg - had quite a demonly sharp end, mainly as they never make contact with the ground, so never wear away. I grabbed some pretty sturdy human nail clippers, and she happily let me chop off the point. All good.

Well this lulled me into a false sense of security thinking that she would be fine with me tackling the rest. After a quick call to Pam, my dog groomer friend, for recommendations of nail clippers and a quick internet order later, they arrived the next day. I waited until she was happily relaxing, picked up the clippers and positioned them at a toenail.

Oh no, she was having none of it. Gone was the calm dog who let me clipper her dewclaws, replaced by a grumpster who was utterly determined to avoid all contact. I hadn't even touched her toenail, not one cut was attempted, she was just being a mardy arse. A few days later, a second attempt, the same result. Third go, no deal, so I rang Pam and arranged for her, a professional, to have a go.

Damian and I rocked up to her grooming parlour - Best Friends in Gatley, and lifted her on the table. I was glad to see that Lilly played up for her too, to the point that Pam offered to muzzle her, but in the end a slight head lock from her Dad was what it took to let Pam swing into action.

Approximately 2 minutes later, and all was done, and we left Pam's and headed to the car, but not before Lilly wandered into the hairdressers next door, which had the door open, and introduced herself to all the ladies in with a wiggly bum, happy smile, and absolutely no sign of the trauma that her evil parents had just put her through.

Such a drama queen!

Next up -Trackers

We have been sent a tracker by Tractive to review, and it has opened a gateway into the movements and scatterbrain of our sometimes elusive hound.

As mentioned previously in these Tales she occasionally goes off for a naughty wander through the woods. Most of the times she comes back, but there have been a few times when she hasn't responded to calls and freaked us the f**k out for a heart-palpitating half hour or so, therefore a tracker seemed like a good idea.

The Tractive will be fully reviewed in the next issue, so I won't go into the nitty gritty, but I will say the app and its mapping is great at showing where she is, and where she's been.

I say great, meaning for us, not so much for Lilly, as knowing what she gets up to has meant a bit more restrictions on when and where we let her off.

This is mainly due to a 5 minute wander that showed she not only had a great romp through the woods as usual, but also showed she ran across a road just outside the park. Luckily this is a very quiet road, off the beaten track, but it was enough to scare the excrement out of us.

We are now tracker evangelists. If you have a dog, get a tracker!

Where does a Twisted Wrist come into this?

Get a dog It's good for you. You'll get fitter - or so they say!

HA!

Since getting Lilly both Damian and I have both been damaged by her. Well more like, damaged because of her. I've told you in the past about Damian going arse-over-tit when she decided to swerve in front of him whilst running on a beach. This ended up with a trip to the docs, and then to the specialist to have his rather swollen knee drained. This month it was my turn.

I will admit it wasn't truly her fault, buuuuut....... if we didn't have a dog I wouldn't be sat here trying to type this story, and put the magazine together, with a wrist in a metal brace. Let me tell you more...

We were out in the park, Lilly on her lead snuffling about in the undergrowth when 2 dogs, not on leads, came running over to her. Unbeknownst to me Lilly had had dealing with one of them before and didn't take too kindly to its rambunctiousness. She decided to take off running, but instead of running forwards she headed backwards and around my body. Unfortunately my hand, which was firmly attached to the lead, got yanked in the opposite direction to its normal movement, and, hey presto - a four hour wait in A&E with a suspected broken wrist!

The long wait in A&E meant Damian got to amuse himself by writing this Facebook post:

One x-ray, some very squished cartilage and a bit of ligament damage later, we headed home to be greeted with the waggiest of tails and big dopey smile. All is promptly forgiven.

Teeny Tiny Tot Pics

Lastly our lovely little Lilly turned 5 on September 4th , so she is now middle-aged, being 35 in human terms (oh how I remember being that young).

Like her owners the grey hairs are showing, but seeing as she already had a lot of them when she came to us, it got us pondering what she looked like as a puppy.

A quick message was sent off to Nicole, her previous mum, to see if she had puppy pictures of Lilly. We were not disappointed.

Look at those Puss in Boots eyes.

Who could resist?

Not us!