Aren't pets fun? I've been having the most thoroughly unpleasant few days with the dogs. On Tuesday Ned noticed that the oldest girl had a lump on her bum. Now I'm sure everyone agrees that the very mention of the word 'lump' is enough to send a cold chill running down your spine. (Actually 'pumps' is another word that does the same, but that's my problem, and shouldn't really enter the story.) Anyway, back to Clover's bum. By the time we got her to the vet it had burst (the lump, not her bum), so it didn't need particularly high thought-processes to narrow down the possibilities, and an abscess was diagnosed. So I am having to spend my spare time washing and draining the poor girl's abscessed anal gland and infiltrating it with antibiotic cream.

As if that wasn't bad enough, one of her sons (not the sharpest knife in the drawer) has decided that Clover now smells 'interesting' and is all over her like a rash. She is understandably unimpressed with this, and tells him off in no uncertain terms. But like all young men he keeps his brain in his trousers, and because he has the concentration span of a subnormal gnat, life in our house is punctuated at frequent intervals by yells of "Pigletleaveheraloneyoustupidgit".

I do hope she heals soon. Apart from anything else, we are losing our voices.