Doctor Tosh....

As may of you know, the typist has hurt his leg falling off his bike....

.....re-enactment of almost-fatal incident......

.....well, this morning I was just enjoying some of the last of the Autumn sun with him in the garden whilst he drank his coffee when....BEEP BEEP....a little alarm sounded  and we realised that it was time to adjust his protective boot....

.....this is it....it had a big wedge inside that keeps his heel up and his toes pointing down to make sure that his achilles tendon is not stretched too much and can heal nicely....however, every two weeks he has to reduce the size of the wedge so that his ankle is taken back into a more normal alignment and the tendon is gently stretched...today was the day to remove the first of the wedges....

....I consulted the medical journals to make sure we knew what we were doing.....its a nerve-wracking moment because it would be easy to re-rupture the tendon and go back to square one.....

....i called in Doctor Tosh for a consultation....and for some added strength.....we made a careful survey of the equipment.....

....and student nurse Lola watched on.....

...Doctor Tosh began to undo the straps which held the boot in place.......

.....and once the leg had been careful extracted he dove in to retrieve the wedge.....I could not hear exactly what he was saying but I think he might have been asking for some smelling salts......

....here is the wedge...can you see that its made up of three pieces? We have to remove just one.....

..Doctor Tosh was able to carefully slice away one layer using his delicate surgeon's paws.....we put the part carefully aside in case we might need it again....

....the second stage of this operation was to reinsert the foot into the boot.....here is one we made earlier.....Typist has asked me to say that it's a clean foot and its just the shadows making it look grubby....

...I had to turn away whilst Doctor Tosh reattached all the straps and doo-dahs.....

....once the operation was complete we careful checked the strapping again to ensure the foot was firmly encased and properly supported.....

...and once he had come round the patient was allowed to take his new leg for a test drive round the kitchen.....being careful not to put too much of his enormous weight on it....gently does it....

....Doctor Tosh and I are pleased with progress so far....we will keep you posted as the day progresses....we must not stretch that tendon too far in case it snaps again...

...and we hope to have the patient back to work in the next week or two....

Clapton Md, Border Terrier Memorial Hospital....

Stormy weekend....

Hello my friends...this weekend was supposed to be the weekend of the Big Storm in the UK so we were very careful about what we did...

....we got supplies in from the shops in case we were cut off from civilisation by fallen trees....at least that it was the typist told me....this is the full extent of his culinary skills....

....Miss Lola said we should snuggle together to share body warmth if power supplies were cut.....

.....and she said we should try a practice run at fitting into very small spaces in case we had to flee to the Emergency Shelter at the bottom of the garden....

....I kept a firm eye on our sophisticated weather-warning system....leaves still on all the trees....

....I helped the typist to improve his mind by reading to him from this lovely book by @lucyinglis who is part of the staff of @bridietheborder our friend from London....

....I took pity on the typist and helped him make some emergency sandwiches.....ham, cheese, mustard, mayonnaise and tomatoes....Yum

....we thought about taking Miss Lola for a walk....but i said it might be best to stay close to the house and so we just did a virtual dog-walk.....

Miss Lola said she would need to go out for short breaks......

....I made sure that I had a good view of the whole garden in case she needed rescuing......

We decided that Miss lola might be a bit smelly if we had to spend any significant amour of time in the Safety Bunker and so we gave her a storm-bath....and she made sure she was fully dried off afterwards....







We went to see Cousin Tilly very briefly to see if she had anything we could use in the bunker.....

...she had only a vital tennis ball for exercising during prolonged periods of isolation.....

..and Miss Lola was eventually sounding the Wind Siren....



...and we were soon down below making the best of the primitive conditions....

....hardly room to swing a cat....a very large cat....

.....and this morning we emerged to Wind-mageddon...!!

I do hope our friends are all OK and safe and well and without any damage to their houses. We know this storm stuff is no laughing matter for many....


Woof...Clapton, BT HQ Secret Bunker....

Wordless Wednesday

Paws at rest....

As many of you know, the typist fell off his bike whilst he was doing this a couple of weeks ago...

....up the Dales in Yorkshire...typist taking photos rather than cycling at this point as he had already fallen off.....

...the damage was rather worse than it seemed at the time and he has ruptured his achilles tendon ad has had to have an operation to fix it....

....so he's been stuck at home with his paws up, staring disconsolately into his espresso....

.....i have helped him be selecting some movies to watch....here we are catching up on Django Unchained....

...Miss Lola has helped him out into the sunshine when it has peeked through the clouds....

...and has leapt on him as soon as he attempted some pilates to prevent further injury....the middle bit of him is the only bit that works at the moment as he also broke one of his handpaws.....

...I have had to improvise to keep up with BT posse administration....my friend @guidedogbliss thought he was using me to clean the screen!!

....I tested out his new iGloves....good for phones..not so good as oven mitts....

...Miss Lola applied some gentle heat to the affected areas.....

....and brought his breakfast to him in the morning.....

.....I took receipt of this lovely silk scarf from @pasikas....we won it at the #NC24 pawty......

....he's been a bit happier since the cast came off and the Big Boot was fitted...Miss Lola taste-tested it but declared it not fit for nibbling...

...we worked together to keep the vermin at bay..."Its a Mouse!!"....*groan*

....all the additional responsibilities have been a little much for Miss Lola....

.....today I finally persuaded him out of the house and up to Box Hill for lunch.....in the wind....*clings on to table*

...which meant Miss Lola got a walk between showers....

I hope you will all be careful as you go about your day......

Clapton, Border Terrier Hospital for the Broken & Bewildered.....