that'll be me one day, and you

Judy has this pathetic old dog's cough that will not go away. She breaks out in it every couple of hours. It is rather revolting and very irritating but how can you get angry about it? The only really annoying thing is when she scratches herself aggressively at the same time. It's kind of like 'well, I'm awake with this coughing thing, I may as well make the most of it'. She sleeps about 23 hours a day.

I am intrigued by her vision. Even though she is clearly almost completely blind, she also obviously has quite good spatial perception. I don't know if she's got peripheral vision or a very very good memory. She does have a good memory, I know that from past instances (I have long thought it would be very interesting to take her to Sydney, where she hasn't been for ten years, and see if she still has her old prejudices against certain places - in particular, certain vets - but of course there's no chance of doing that now).

She smells awful, like some kind of rotten liniment. But apart from the silvery eyes she looks terriffic, and her personality is absolutely serene - she is in many respects the charming dog I was hoping for when I originally got her, with no violent outbursts or wilful ways. However, she stinks and can't go anywhere and makes this revolting coughing noise. I hope people are as nice to me as I am to her when I'm at her stage of life.

Speaking of people, and stages of life, and niceness my sister Nicola had her baby on Saturday. I heard this information third hand from someone at the party on the weekend and was quite pissed off that Nicola hadn't told me about it. So I took a rather offhand view of the whole thing. Last night I missed a phone call on my mobile and listened to my messages, and discovered there was one from Nicola on Saturday to tell me about it. Now I feel awful but at least I have Telstra to blame. Oh who am I kidding. I'm off to a bad start with this kid, and the other two nieces and nephew. I'll just try and catch the next one. Due December.