For want of a nail

After the toing and froing of the past couple of weeks, this past one has been much quieter, at least for me. Stephen, of course, was in Milan until the middle of the week, which meant he was away for Valentine’s Day. He did though, with his usual forethought, leave a very fine self-assembly card-cum-picture for me to tangle with. In return, I collected him from Civitanova station at 9 on Wednesday evening, giving us a good excuse for picking up pizza on the way home for a late supper.

Of course, I couldn’t get away with a whole week just hanging around the old homestead, and Thursday saw us making an evening trip to our friendly vet as Bella had once again managed to inflict an injury on herself. This time, she had somehow broken a nail on her back left paw, though again how she managed it is a mystery. We put it down to the way she throws herself around the garden when chasing her ball. Harry, on the other hand, being all mouth and no trousers, escapes injury as he just stands around watching her with a quizzical air, occasionally joining in by barking at her. For those of you who think that breaking a nail might be a catastrophe for Kim Kardashian but hardly noteworthy in the canine world, think again. Pedicures for dogs are a delicate operation because the quick carries a blood supply and cutting it is very painful – not to say, messy. In Bella’s case, however, the first indication we had was her favouring the afflicted paw and doing a Jake the Peg imitation by walking on three legs.

An investigation by the vet, which included shaving back the hair around the nail – an operation Bella was not at all happy about – showed that it was infected as well as broken. No wonder it was causing her such discomfort. He gave her an antibiotic injection and sent us off with a prescription for the chemist. Here we collected two lots of tablets and a bottle of mercurochrome (a virulent red antiseptic that we have to apply wearing latex gloves as it instantly stains anything with which it comes into contact). It’s just as well, given Bella’s propensity for injury, that cost of treatment is so much less than in the UK, something I may have mentioned before. For €30 at the vet’s (which seems to be the standard charge whenever we visit) we got an examination and an injection, whilst at the chemist three lots of medication totalled just over €15, something of a bargain when you consider that a prescription charge in England is £8.40. What is a puzzle, though, is why anything containing paracetamol or aspirin seems to be sold here at a premium – though that may be due to these being readily available at supermarkets in the UK while in Italy they are controlled and have to be purchased at a chemist’s.

Anyway, while Bella undertook her course of treatment (to which she appears to be responding well) we got on with other things. On Friday morning we found a message in our post box asking us to call in at the post office. This usually means there is a parcel to collect but on this occasion we had to do a bit more signing as Paolo had overlooked a couple of sheets when we renewed the box. We did think at the time the paper work was a bit sparse by Italian standards; now we know why.

On Saturday afternoon we had a trip to Fermo for a wander around and to take in their contribution to the Festa Nazionale del Cioccolato Artigianale in the main square, which is always a very pleasant setting for anything involving stalls. Yes, we purchased, including, oddly enough, some very fine liquorice for me (which must have sneaked in under the radar), and a hand-selected box of chocolates to take with us today as we had been invited to Sunday lunch by Mrs Carelli. She wanted to thank Stephen and the modellist who works with the factory for their help at the fair in Milan, and partners tagged along for good measure. As expected, we won’t need to eat until Wednesday at the earliest, as Mrs C followed the Italian rule of thumb for feeding guests, which is that they are expected to eat their own bodyweight before being allowed to leave the table. Just as well it’s all downhill from the Carellis to LCDDB so we able to roll home.

And in case you were wondering, no we haven’t had a call from the driving school to collect either our forms or our driving licences - that’s something for the ‘to do list’ for when Stephen finishes his gallivanting.