Diary of an emigrant

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Ozzie

Ozzie isn’t very well at the moment. We still haven’t managed to get him clipped (but hopefully today we will), and he has now been introduced to fleas and carrapato, which I reckon are somewhat similar to sheep ticks. So he’s bitten and hot, and feeling a bit sorry for himself. Hopefully by the weekend we will have improved things a bit. And we daren’t let him run around the garden yet, for fear of him running off into the jungle and getting eaten by something (or eating something, I suppose). This week we hope to fence off the worst of the jungly bits and treat the grass for carrapato, so that should help. I took him into the pool the other day (I thought it might drown the fleas), but he really hated it. Interestingly, his instinct for the doggy paddle kicked in as soon as his back legs were in the water, so even though his front paws were out of the water they were still doing the paddle. Amusing, except for the fact that in the absence of any water, the end result was my chest getting a good clawing (yes I know – serves me right – but he did stop scratching after his bath, so maybe we did kill off a few of the fleas after all). So at the moment Ozzie is moping about the house looking like a disappointed pig, but I’m really hoping that the next time I write he will be fully back on form.

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