Mind your step

After last Sunday’s shock to the system when the temperature plummeted, things picked up again during the week. It was clear and bright, with just a hint of freshness to the air that made it much more pleasurable than the intense heat of early August. It was a false sense of security, though, the climate’s vendetta against weekends continued, starting on Friday, which set a pattern of sunny mornings, tempestuous afternoons and evenings of departing clouds – more of that later.

When Monday morning dawned, we were anticipating a very quiet week as there was nothing special on the calendar apart from my visit to the dentist later that morning, Stephen getting back into the work groove and my two lessons with Michele in Port San Giorgio – but we had reckoned without the x-factor that is Harry.

The trip to see Claudia, our dentist, went more or less as planned, and included making arrangements with her to start conversation lessons in October. She is keen to improve her limited knowledge of English and has been taking some lessons. However, she is wanting to spend time talking with a madrelingua speaker as she had no great faith that the South African man whom she was seeing was actually teaching her to speak proper English. Let’s hope she doesn’t feel the same about a Northerner. Being a bit busy with family and various professional courses, she is looking at coming bi-weekly on a Saturday morning, and if her chair-side manner is anything to go by, there will be no problem in getting her to speak.

When I got back home it was to find that Harry was still obsessed with his right front paw, which he had been licking for a couple of days at every possible opportunity. Before you think we must be bad parents, we had inspected it several times but were unable to spot anything amiss, nor was he at all bothered about having it touched or examined, suggesting that he was not in any pain. However, when Stephen took him and Bella for the pre-bedtime walk that evening, he started limping and holding the paw up in that pathetic and guilt-inducing way particular to dogs.

He did the same the following morning, and further scrutiny showed that the area between two of his toes had now become swollen and there was a small puncture mark. He was also whining and pulling back when it was touched, explaining why he was finding walking uncomfortable. We took him that afternoon to our usual vet in Piano di Montegiorgio, who had a good look at it. After shaving off a spot of fur, he opened the swelling and cleaned up the gunge that exuded from it, but was unable to find any cause for the puncture or inflammation. He thought that whatever it was may have gone in and come out again, or just have gone in and was biding its time. He gave us some antibiotics and instructed us to keep an eye on the wound, to keep it clean, to watch for anything coming out and to return on Saturday for a further check.

Though the swelling went down, Harry continued to lick at the paw over the next few days and the puncture hole remained despite the vet’s intervention. Then on Friday, Maddalena called Stephen to say that her sister, Chiara (who, if you recall, works at the veterinary practice but with the other vet, who was not on duty on Tuesday, and who was chipping in in the background throughout the call) said not to feed Harry the next day, Saturday, so that if it was felt necessary to give him an anaesthetic to open up the paw surgically then it could be done there and then. It was just after this call ended and I returned from our afternoon walk that Stephen, on looking again, thought he saw something in the paw. He was able to pinch the end with his finger nails and drew out what at first he thought might be a scorpion sting, but which turned out to be a 1mm long grass seed with a remarkably hard and sharp point. At least we now knew what had caused the problem and took it with us the next day when we returned to the vet’s.

Poor Harry was a little puzzled at being starved for the day, especially when he scampered in after his morning walk and stood waiting, expectantly, for his non-existing breakfast. It was a necessary precaution but one, fortunately, that wasn’t needed as the vet, when given the opportunity to talk by a chatty Chiara, thought that if anything of the seed did remain in the paw it would dissolve. He gave Harry a further injection and gave us some more antibiotics for him and a buster collar. As if going twenty-four hours without food wasn’t bad enough, Harry now had to suffer the indignity of looking like the HMV dog swallowed by the gramophone trumpet he finds so fascinating. It was his own fault though, as he has continued to lick his paw, and the collar is needed to give the wound a chance to heal properly. In an interesting side note – well, to those of us with dogs – Chiara suggested that next summer we shave Harry’s paws so that nothing harmful can be caught in the hair and subsequently work its way beneath the skin. I can just imagine how impressed he is going to be with that particular look.

Elsewhere, it was, as I said, a pretty quiet week. Tuesday night we popped to Marco and Maddalena’s after dinner as they had a gift for us from their recent holiday to Sardinia: a fabulous set of retro cork coasters, stencilled with Sardinian images. Wednesday we treated ourselves to aperitivo at Totò, it being a fine evening. Thursday Stephen wandered Porto San Giorgio market, picking up several folders as well as a pair of shorts all at a knockdown price while I had my lesson with Michele. The good news there is that while his mum (with his agreement) wants to up the lessons to three a week for the next fortnight until school starts, they will be back in their home in Magliano, only ten minutes away.

Which brings us to today and another cancelled beach walk due to a dodgy forecast. Again, the morning was not too bad, and Stephen was able to get some judicious pruning done on the almond tree. We were also expecting our friend Max, the gardener, in the afternoon to cast his expert eye over a couple of our plants that, despite following the advice he gave on his last visit, are not looking overly happy. In the event, he was unable to come as by mid-afternoon he was busy running around trying to protect his plants from the battering rain that was driving almost horizontally across his garden as it was around LCDDB, so strong was the wind. This was a tempest of quite extraordinary ferocity, though Bella seemed to think that barking vociferously at every clap of thunder would scare it away. Harry, on the other hand, took things a little more in his stride (forgive the pun), but having a tender paw, an unbecoming buster collar and lost calories to catch up on, you can appreciate that he might have considered he had more serious matters to contend with.