Summer

Nearly September. Evenings are drawing in. Sun's heading south down that western horizon at sundown. Summer's almost over. Hasn't been a good 'un. Few sunny days but nothing special. Might be something to do with that mild winter we had. Normally summer and winter are pretty extreme. But not this year. Seem to recall that summer sort of began back in May with a few thunderstorms. One particularly noisy one blew up my laptop. And the livebox thingy. Luckily the local computery man managed to rescue my old hard drive (whatever that is) and load it into the new laptop so all was not entirely lost. Hard to believe but it's taken 'til now for me to work out how to load photos onto this new laptop. Actually Georgie did it. So, correction - it's taken 'til now for Georgie to tear herself away from her work and spend ten minutes solving the mystery of my photo loading system. All perfectly simple to her but clear as mud to moi. So..., have now loaded up, er, downloaded, the batch of photos that I took at odd moments throughout the summer. Probably boring as hell to anyone reading this gubbins but sort of interesting to me. Never ceases to fascinate me how the simple view out front changes with the weather and light.

Foot probs

So..., there I was, back in May, just about to visit the heart specialist for another check up. Well, it didn't go too badly from what I recall. Seem to remember him saying my heart was pretty strong which was a bit of a surprise. Told me to give up salt and lose some weight. And he changed one of my four daily pill things for one that he reckoned would reduce the swelling (water retention?) in my gammy foot. Can't remember what else he said. Left there feeling quite relieved that death didn't appear to be imminent. Popped into a big supermarket on the way home to check out grub that didn't have salt. After much reading of the small print on backs of packs Georgie and I concluded that there was no such thing as a salt-free food item. So much for the quack's instruction to give up salt. Left the supermarket thinking I was now confronted by two ghastly alternatives: death by salt, or death by starvation. That was three months ago. Bit of a surprise that I'm still alive considering my salt intake. Ah well, ç'est la vie.

Since then I'm chuffed to say that my foot swelling has gone down so I'm now able squeeze into my shoes. Haven't really done so though 'cos I've sort of got used to wearing sandals everywhere I go. Apart from when lawnmowing, of course. Feet get smothered in chopped grass and mashed dog poo due to non existence of the rear tray thingie. Hence the wearing of scruffy mountain boots when cutting the grass. Left foot couldn't squeeze into left boot when the foot was swollen. Had to wear a sandal then stick foot into a plastic carrier bag which I then taped up on lower leg. Looked stupid but worked a treat.

Anyways, I wasn't the only one in our gang with a foot problem. Poor wee Jock somehow got a cut between his toes which then turned a bit septic. We didn't know this though. He wouldn't let anyone near his foot. All we knew was that he was limping on dogwalks. Thought it might just be sensitive footpads. Or maybe a cracked pad. Things didn't improve so we took him to the vet. Had to leave him there for a couple of hours and come back later. Vet knocked him out, cleaned up the cut (which we didn't know was there), then put a few stitches in and bandaged him up. He also cut Jock's nails and, for some reason - I still don't know what - he also did something to his other front paw and bandaged that up too. He's right as rain now though. Well, apart from a gungy ear problem. Probably means another vet visit. Might have to knock him out again. Georgie and I do our best to clean out his ear but have you ever tried holding down an uncooperative Westie? It's an almost impossible task. The vet, Georgie and I have the scars to prove it.