Pigeon home

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Oh oh my poor old lady. She is home at last, but battered and bewildered. This thing has really knocked the stuffing out of her. She is a bit wobbly on her legs, swaying from side to side as if on a ship at sea. And she gives me the mute What the Hell is Going On look.

But she is no longer in pain. Her paws, which were stretched and stiff from what must have been an excruciating ache in her stomach, are now soft and relaxed. And she is sleeping, rather than doing the agonised staring into space of before.

We are not quite out of the woods. She is, after all, 84 in human years. We must go again tomorrow to see the vet, in case, as he says, ‘she goes downhill’. So I cannot yet quite relax.

Still, it is wonderful to have her home. The house felt all wrong without her in it. We are just going to go very, very slowly, together, and hope that the dog Fates are smiling on us.

It is probably not necessary, strictly speaking, for her to be all swaddled up like this. She is, after all, descended from generations of working dogs. But it makes me feel happier. So she gets the ancient vintage Welsh blanket on one side, and the rather naughtily extravagant new Johnstons of Elgin one on the other:

This one is completely out of focus, because there was not enough light in my office for my poor old camera, but I am posting it anyway because it is so amazingly sweet:

And this, with the slightly baffled look:

But at least she wagged her tail when she got out of the car and realised she was home. I am trying not to fall into a trough of sentiment here. It is bad enough that I appear to be recording every last detail of dog illness. But the game tail wagging did almost finish me off.