Tag Archives: guard dog

Dexter is our dog and an integral part of the family.

He is a bonkers dog. Today is his 4th birthday although to be honest we’re not exactly sure of his birth day only that he was probably born in February 2013. There are a lot of unknowns with Dexter. We got him from Battersea Dogs Home when he was about 6 months old. He is a mix of breeds. Battersea think he has a large chunk of Staffordshire Bull Terrier in his genes along with a fairly big chunk of Labrador plus a little bit of Lurcher thrown in. He also had the bollocks from a Giraffe. Boy, he had big balls. They made him walk like John Wayne after a long day in the saddle. They’re gone now though. He also has more energy than a nuclear power plant and he takes his self imposed duties as a guard dog very seriously. He barks at everyone who comes to the door and he barks at people walking down the road. When the family are home and some are downstairs and others are upstairs, he sits half way up the staircase on guard. Before he was restricted to the kitchen at night, he would lie at the top of the stairs watching the front door or lie down between two bedrooms but positioned so he could see the top of the stairs. As he is primarily black, it was dangerous to get up in the middle of the night to pay a visit to the toilet as he was impossible to see and easily tripped over.

His favourite thing though is walkies. He loves it. I put on my walking trousers. “Yay, it’s walkies.” I put on my old coat. “Yay, it’s walkies”. I get his lead and he goes bananas. We get to the fields and I let him off his lead and he goes nuts. He tears about all over the place.

“Yay, rabbits. Chase rabbits.”

“Yay, pheasants. Chase pheasants.”

“Yay, a leaf. Chase leaf.”

“Yay, fox poo. Roll in fox poo.”

He runs and runs and runs.

Then he’ll spend some time sniffing about. He never goes too far away. Having been abandoned as a puppy, he has abandonment issues still and likes to keep me in sight.

Eventually, we get home again and he collapses on his bed and sleeps for hours.

Unfortunately, before Christmas, he tore the cruciate ligament in his left rear leg. It made him limp but it didn’t slow him down. Not knowing what was wrong and because he would only limp about for a few hours, we continued taking him out where he would tear arse about as usual. Eventually, we took him to the vet and the damage was diagnosed. Complete rest for a month. It drove him nuts. He’s been back for x rays. He fought against the anaesthetic and looked like he’d downed 10 pints of Stella with all the staggering around he did before finally succumbing to the drugs.

The x rays confirmed the diagnosis. Of course once we got him home again, he milked all the sympathy possible.

The vets had warned that his thermal controls would be affected for a good few hours so we had to ensure he didn’t get cold.

So on the 9th March, Dexter goes back to the vets for an operation that will hopefully solve the problem. Another two months of complete rest and recuperation follow the op’ and it will do two things. First and foremost it will drive him mad. Secondly, he’ll become a fat bastard dog. The latter won’t be a problem as once he is ok to go walkies again, he’ll  burn it off in no time. In the meantime, Dexter occupies himself by chasing his tail. Mad bugger. I’ll let you know how he gets on.

Have a brilliant day.

More Dick soon.