Good News

before you ask No it's NOT Mabel

Last night,in the hospital I looked after a person who strangely enough had a remarkable likeness to Mabel. 

This just HAS to be an example of Kismet...or probably it is just a case of bulldog obsession

Whatever it was!

 at least I didn't have to syringe water into my patient's mouth every hour and literally carry them outside for a pee twice a shift.

Mabel , I am now sure, has turned the corner.

When I got home this morning she got up off her couch and ambled up for her usual "first fuss of the day"

Sure she was slower than usual

and sure, her breathing was still a little bit raspy

But the twinkle was back in her eye

and after six large gobfuls of roast chicken, the kitchen was filled with the musical normality of bulldog farts once again.

There was even more good news to celebrate here at Bwthyn-y-llan after I got home.

Sorrel, the heavy footed Buff has made it through the night without pancaking her last remaining chick into the floor of her run like a child fashioning pies out of plasticine! Mother and baby seem to be doing well.

The chick is my first baby of 2012

Bet it's a f*cking cockerel!......

Motherhood

Ok Ok

Time for some different news.

The beautiful spring day of yesterday, has bounced back into a rather blustery and wet Wednesday.

Overnight new mum Sorrel hatched out four tiny white chicks in her impregnable broody box, three of which she has accidentally flattened like pancakes with her large inexperienced buff orpington feet.

Nature can be a bit of an odd bod sometimes, as many younger animals do not have that innate ability to care for their babies with an ingrained, unwavering skill. Some mums simply need to learn 

When I was a gal, mothers generally were housewives

They cared for the kids in houses that were often influenced by a matriarch, a sort of sage that showed new mums the ropes so to speak.

Grandmothers and aunts

They were the unsung supervisors,role models and mentors for a new mother

They helped with the washing on Monday

and often did the ironing on a Tuesday afternoon.

They were the ones that knitted those intricate white cardigans and bonnets we were all forced to wear

and showed their daughters just how to bath the baby in the sink, once the dishes had been removed.

I don't think I am guilty of seeing the past through rose coloured glasses when I say mothers in the past were apprentices of sorts, with their extended family acting as unofficial assessors and teachers

Today new mums are expected to go back to work . Indeed many have to return before little Jake or Amelie has outgrown their first babygrow! Grandparents seem younger than they did.....they are not just around the corner anymore and many of them have careers of their own.

Being a matriarch housewife is not seen as a vital job anymore.

Money needs to be earned

 

So who DOES mentor new mums nowadays?

Of course grandmothers will always be the first port of call

but I wonder just how many inexperienced "Sorrels" there are out there, isolated stressed and clueless

what do I bloody know?

I haven't got an 'effing clue have I?

*********************************************************************

I will leave you with a pic of the "patient"

Fingers crossed

23.08 pm

I have just syringed a final 50 mls of water into Mabel's mouth
and have set her up on the kitchen sofa for the night
Her breathing is bloody ropey I must admit
So I have put a cushion under her head in order for her to get her breath
She has eaten some SPAR chicken ( hand fed- of course)
and looks slightly more alert as she did


I am presently sat in my chair in the living room, watching tv
Chris is in bed with the other dogs
Albert has just opened the kitchen door on his way up to bed and rather surprisingly Mabel has followed him,  and has walked slowly into the living room like an old nag where she suddenly offered me a somewhat tired kiss before sitting heavily at my feet
I think she is looking  better


hey ho
off to bed... its been a long day

Sunnier Thoughts and a Sunny Village

I pulled the last post because I felt that
1. It was all a bit negative
2. I was giving "air time" to a comment that deserved a brief "delete" and nothing more.
still, if I ever meet the person that left it, I will take great delight in bitch slapping her senseless
If you hadn't read the last post, well you have not got a bloody clue what I am banging on about


Mabel remains poorly this morning. I have managed to get her to eat half of one of our homemade sausages and part of a milk soaked bagel, and that was only because the rest of the dogs lined up next to her to have their own small portion.
She's just had her second dose of antibiotics and is sleeping in a sunny spot in the living room


At 10.30 I took the other dogs out around the village.
Its a bright lovely day and the village seemed busier than usual.
Carol , Gwyneth in her electric wheelchair and Peter were chatting by the church, Peter's black Labrador Billy was playing gently with Carol's new Welsh terrier puppy, Seren. Seren means "star" in Welsh.
They told me the latest village news- that another neighbour had sadly suffered a stroke and was in hospital.
I will drop off the lady's elderly husband some eggs a little later.Both had helped me a great deal when I started my Oral history blog


On a bench,outside the Memorial Hall, caretaker Pat was enjoying the sunshine with friend Jean and local character Gordon, from the pensioner bungalows merrily waved his stick at them and at me as I passed!
"How's the family?" he bellowed opening his arms wide at the the dogs, who all crowded around him like hens around corn
"Come to me" he laughed hugging them close and after I had eventually pulled them away he called after me
"Have a lovely day PETER!" he trilled out!
He never gets my name right.


Mrs Jones (Pen-y-Cefn), I could see was fending off two Jehovah's Witnesses at her bungalow door.. she waved at me energetically and closed the door quickly on her two guests after they had turned to see who she was waving at! She's a sharp old coot!

Albert was laying comfortably in the lane when we returned Waiting impatiently for his dinner
He shouldn't be peckish, I saw him eating a baby rabbit at dawn
hey ho

The Trelawnyd Intensive Care Unit

Mabel has a pneumonia

I had suspected as much.

She has a rip roaring temperature and looks dreadful

Being an over bred Bulldog means that you have an extra short trachea

and therefore the route between mouth and lungs can be dangerously concise

Bacteria and foreign bodies love the shorter  route into lung tissue

Kennel club take note!

The vet was happy that I take Mabel home with antibiotics and anti inflammatories .

Because of some intensive" water-sprayer-in-the-mouth" therapy at least she is not too dehydrated at present.. if she were, he would have admitted her.

Mabel was happy that I took her home too 

The strangeness of the vets frightened her terribly and with great difficulty she took herself off to the surgery exit as I paid the bill, where she stared sadly at the Berlingo in the car park, waiting to get home.

Her need to get back to her "safe" little Trelawnyd world broke my heart

She looked s a poorly.dog when she returned to the kitchen sofa.

But has accepted hourly fluids squirted directly into her mouth

Hey Ho

Mabel Sick

My weekend has been somewhat dominated by caring for a sick bulldog

The vet seemed more relaxed than I have been.

He seems to think that Mabel has a stomach bug

I was almost convinced she had somehow found some rat poison

When it comes to bulldogs, losing Constance so theatrically outside the Church gates has left me, I know, with  an unhealthy neurosis when unwell dogs are concerned.

Despite eating some chicken and rice,

The big lump of bulldog remains listless, uncomfortable and obviously sick.

I don't worry about any of my patients as much as I do about her.

F*ck You!

Not as funny as yesterday's  blog featuring the wisecracking Jason
but it sorts of underlines just how much old bods can be funny
working tonight! 
hey ho

SGB

Around 3pm, I walk the dogs around the village and deliver eggs if there is a need to do so.
Today, along London Road, I bumped into the ever cheerful Jason, who as usual was carrying his toddler daughter on his shoulders.They were off to pick up Jason's other daughter from school.


As I stopped he looked me up and down slowly
.
Egg and chicken poo on my hoodie top
Ripped combats
Rubber over shoes,
hair all over the place
Not a good look, I would admit
"Do you know" he said "that The Red Faced Welsh Farmer ( RFWF) is setting up his own blog!?"
I fell for it
"No " I said
"Yes!... apparently he refers to you in it as The S.G.B.!"
"What's that stand for" I asked
He laughed 
"SCRUFFY, GAY BASTARD!"
Time to tidy up, me thinks...........
and I am serious....