usual beagle dynamics x 1000

As Millie is on the mend - the leg is obviously quite itchy but very sensibly when she is restrained from doing anything about it she seems able to put it out of her small but actually quite orderly mind - she is finding it more and more frustrating to be cooped up inside, where she has to be mainly because she has to keep her wound dry so it continues to 'scab up' and crystallise or whatever other gross terms the vet can come up with. She is 10 but she is a pretty lively 10 (I am not thinking about Bo Derek - stop putting your tawdry sex fantasies onto my dogs). It's not that she doesn't love the idea of sleeping most of the day, it's just that when she's awake she wants to be really awake. It suxs. About this time next week she should be fine to do whatever she wants, apart from busting through the fence and being hit by another car. What I would really like to do at the moment is wash her, as she totally stinks.

Charlie meanwhile has ramped up her anxiousness into full-on antisocial behaviour, monster-puppy basically. Frenziedly ripping things up. It's going to be a gruelling week.

I was lucky enough to get a late birthday present from my inestimably talented and marvellous friend Toby. It is a painting of Charlie and I have to say it captures her angst stunningly.



He didn't ask me to and may even find it embarrassing but I want to tell you you can commission Toby to do a portrait of your pet at a very reasonable price. Have a look at some of the others he's done here. I couldn't imagine a better kind of pet painting. They are beautifully composed but spirited, so they're not tacky or maudlin at all, which I am sure is usually the danger.