Pepper VS Wasp

Last Thursday after I walked and played with Pepper in the morning, Pepper was a bit muddy so I decided to wash his paws. I hung him outside to wait for me to get buckets of water. On the way to the house I saw one wasp flew pass me but I did not think of anything. I washed Pepper, dried him and put him into his crate to sleep as usual. At lunch time he got up and whined when I had my lunch which I thought it was a greedy whine, I told him to stop and go back to sleep which he did. About 2:30 pm, I took him out to pee he tried to scratch his face on his way to his toilet. Once he turned his face to look at me I saw a bit lump on his right eye. I was frightened. I thought it must be that wasp I saw this morning. I called HG and told him. I was crying because I felt so guilty that I did not do anything to protect Pepper. HG called the vet and she said we can give him antihistamine tablets to stop the swollen. HG stopped at the pharmacy on the way home. He left the office a bit early because he thought I was panic which I was a little bit. After we gave him the medicine, he tried to scratch the left eye which we tried to tell him that it was the wrong side but we were wrong. Because it was not only one stung he got from that wasp. It was another two on the left eye which was just starting to swell. He seemed to be normal apart from swollen eyes. He did not try to scratch his eyes as much. We thought it might be ok.

At night when we went to bed, we gave him more medicine. After about 5 minutes, he threw up. The first time was not too bad, it was more like his food and not too wet. I cleaned up and after I put things away he started the second one in his crate. This time was quite liquid. He threw up about 4 times upstairs and his crate was so smelly even him would not want to stay in. We decided to bring him downstairs to the other crate and I decided to stay with him. He threw up about 3 times downstairs which at the end it was yellow liquid and his mouth was foaming. At one point he lied down as he was so exhausted. We tried to call him to move to the mattress but he did not move. We had to shake him to wake him up. At that moment, he scared us. I was working downstairs to keep myself awake and Pepper was lying on the mattress next to my desk. He was ok until the morning. When HG got up and got ready to work. HG took him for his business in the morning but he did not do anything but peed. He went to his crate upstairs to sleep which gave me about 2.5 hours sleep before I had to get up. At first we planned to go to spend the weekend in Alva with HG's parents. His dad would come to get me and Pepper and HG would go from work and meet us there. HG tried to call his dad to tell him about the situation but his dad left the house already. So we decided to go and thought it might be good because I could get some more sleep during the day and dad could look after Pepper while I was sleeping. Pepper was so lively and was so good all the way from our house to Alva. His eyes were not too bad. When we were in Alva I cooked some rice with scrambled eggs for him. I gave him very little and he ate them all. I tried not to give him a little of water very so often, so he would not get dehydrated. He was fine and did #2 quite a lot when he went out for a walk with dad.

Saturday morning, I heard thud, thud sound. I knew it was the sound of pepper's tail hit something but it was usual to hear it in the morning. Then I saw our bedroom's door was wide open. Pepper went to mum and dad' bedroom. He wagged his tail again their bed. I told HG and he went to get Pepper back to our room. While HG was getting dressed, Pepper was about to throw up. HG managed to make him did most of it on the tray. I cleaned up the mess on the wall and the tray after HG took Pepper out. Since his sick were only yellow foamy liquid, we thought it might be about the acid in his stomach which meant he was hungry. It was because we could not give him a lot of food the day before but what I should have done was giving him a handful of his kibbles just before he went to bed. So we gave him just kibbles, half a cup and waited for 10 minutes and gave him more.

During the day he seemed to be quite hot. We thought he might have fever because his body was a bit hot and he drooled all the time. So we gave him more antihistamine tablet which seemed to help.

Sunday morning he seemed back to himself, lively and playful. On the way home we stopped at pet shop and bought him some toys and treats.

I am working as a local gardener...

Last Saturday, Charlotte's husband, Graeme came over to our house and asked if I would like to earn some money. He would like to hire a gardener to tidy up his whole garden before winter. I accepted his offer and started working for their garden on the following Monday. What I need to do in their garden are weeding, pruning, training some climbers properly and pots some winter flowers pots. I work only in the afternoon from 1pm for about 2-3 hours. I have been working for 12 hours so far. I reckon there will be about 4-5 hours more to finish it. Graeme and Charlotte seem to be impressed about what I did. Charlotte said she would rather hire me to do it because she wishes her garden will look like mine if I do it. Haha I think she has to pay a fortune for that. In the meantime I am also quite busy with the websites. I finished HG's company website on the first week of August. HG was very happy about his new company logo and website. He wrote some technical articles about Java and billing application. He managed to write 3 of them so far. I keep nagging him to write more. After I finished HG's website, I asked my friends in Thailand who own a software consulting company if they would like me to redesign their website and they did. I also designed their company's brochure and flyer. I just delivered everything to them along with two very detailed documents. They planned to launch this new website sometime in November or December. I also have another web design project for a charitable magazine in India. It belongs to my Indian friend's father and his friends. I am waiting to see the new edition of the magazine which will be published sometime this month. I am quite excited about it.

Summer update...

It has been more than one month since my last update. I hope I do not lose my loyal readers again. I had so many things to do this summer. I went to bed about midnight almost every night. I redesigned HG's company logo and letterhead. I found out that HG is very fussy customer. I also designed his company website which I learned so much about XHTML and CSS. I think in the future when my new website finish I will share some of my knowledge that I learned so far to someone else who might find it is useful. Well, I think that might be enough for my excuse for not updating my blog for a long time.

:: Garden Update ::

Summer this year seems to be the best summer since I have been here so far. I am getting darker like I was when I was in Thailand. Some days I found that it was too hot for me to be in the sun. Our garden looks very nice now. I wish Lha and P’Lo were here at this time of year, so they could enjoy our home grown crops. We harvested all of the garlic we planted over winter. We have all sizes from big ones to small ones. The small ones have only one clove per head. We have 76 garlic heads in total this year. I gave some to our neighbours to try. We also harvested our first early potatoes, Red Duke of York. We got about 11 kg. Then we harvested more of the second earlies. There are two of them, Estima and Maris Peer. We had about 25 kg. Some of them are huge. I am glad we harvested them because the plants started to look ugly. It took us 3 days to harvest the second early potatoes because it was too hot. I gave some of our potatoes to our neighbours to try as well. Other than these main crops in our garden, we also have lettuce, beetroot (for the oldies), parsnips, carrots, pak choi, Chinese broccoli and courgettes (green and golden). We had some flat leaf parsley, coriander and wild rocket. These three I have in tubs. They are herbs that we use quite a lot in our cooking. They are very easy to grow. I like rocket leaves in salad and pizza. When you buy them from the supermarket, they were about 99p for a small handful. So far we used about 6-7 handfuls of them which were very good. They are now flowering at the moment which means there are not many leaves we could use but the flowers are very nice and we may get some seeds out of them, who knows. This year we have 4 courgette plants, two of them are green and the other two are golden. They were very slow to start with but once we started harvesting some of them they gone daft, like last Friday we took 10 of them to Alva for mum and dad and today I harvested about 8 of them and gave them to Charlotte. They are not my favourite vegetable but HG likes them. I think I will have them one plant each next year.

:: Pepper update ::

Last Friday was Pepper’s birthday. He is now one year and 2 days old. He got quite a lot of presents.

• Two chew toys from grandma and granddad. They came from France and were in the shape of bones.
• Educational soft toy, bouncy ball, more squeaky balls for the football field and (best of all) the elastic that went round an old fitted sheet. It didn’t cost anything but he could play with it for ages, putting his paw on it and letting it ping back to his (or HG’s) nose!
• A dumb-bell shaped toy and some treats from Sophie, Daniel, Auntie Fiona and Uncle Jim. He also got a thing to throw his ball in the football field. This thing is superb – it can throw the ball a long way, you don’t need to bend down to pick up the ball and (best of all) you don’t have to touch his wet, disgusting, slobbery ball!

Before his dinner time, I prepared a birthday cake for him. (see the photos at the end of the post) It was made of his normal food and some treats. I mixed his dry food with some tinned food and Kong stuffing so I could bind them together. I packed them in a small dish and put them back into the middle of his bowl. I put 8 bone biscuits to support around it and put some more Kong stuffing in the top and covered with some Choc Drops. They are a specially formulated chocolate substitute for dogs because normal chocolate can be harmful to dogs. I put one dental stick in the middle so it could look like a candle. Pepper was beside me all the time drooling while he was waiting for me to finish his cake. He got to lick the bowls and spoons that I used to prepare his cake. When it was his dinner time we were all gathered around in the kitchen. I put down the bowl in front of him and we all sang happy birthday song for him. It took me about half an hour to prepare his cake but it was gone within 2 minutes. I was very happy that he likes my cake. We gave him more freedom in the house in which he could go to lie down in the lounge and play with all his toys. He has a toy box where all of his toys are kept tidy at the end of the day. During the day, he could take any toy out of it and play with it. We did not yet train him to do tidy up. We also let him hang around in the garden where he was very good. I showed him that he should walk on the path around the garden which he seemed to understand very well. He likes to lie down on the grass and played with the onion skin which came off the onions that we hung up to dry. He sometimes tried to chase the flies and bumblebees. But just about a week or two before his birthday, he started acting strangely. He was a bit quiet. When I said “quiet”, I mean he was not very playful, kept himself to himself and only came to see us when there was food involved. At his dinner time, he would lie down in the garden until he heard us prepare his food and he would come in to lick the spoon as usual. After he finished the food, he would go back to the garden and lie down by himself. I noticed that he was quiet but as he did not do anything wrong so I did not pay much attention until one night when I took him out to pee before bedtime in the back garden without the leash. After he peed he decided to lie down outside on the grass and ignored my command. I called him to come to me many times but he did not come. I crouched down at his level, showed his some treats but nothing seemed to be successful. I was very upset and I had to kind of drag him to the house. I could tell that he was upset too because he went straight to his crate and did not come out to drink before bedtime as usual. Next day he was normal during the day. When I had to take him out at night, this time I put him on the leash. After he peed, he resisted not to come with me to the house. I had to pull him hard to the house. Again he was upset and went straight to his crate. The next day he made me so angry because he did not want to come out of the crate to go to pee. I was tempted to close the crate and leave him there overnight without taking him upstairs. I put the leash on his collar while he was lying in the crate ignoring my call. I had to pull him but he resisted and his collar came off. I had enough and HG had to deal with him instead. That night I was so worried about his behaviour. I read the book “The seven ages of your dog” by Jan Fennell. She mentioned in the fifth age (18-28 months) which is not yet Pepper’s age but it seems to fit his behaviour, that at about this age some dogs can be a bit too confident and might be preparing to challenge for the leadership of the pack. She talked about the ultimate sanction to encounter the challenge. Her concept is in the wild the leader of pack may physically eject a younger wolf from the den or force it to live on the outskirts of the pack and it would only be allowed to rejoin the pack once it showed it had learned its lesson. Once I read I thought I would give it a try but I had to convince HG to cooperate. He thought it was too tough and he did not think he could do it. I told him that this method will only work if he and I were on the same page. It took him a day to think about it. Finally he said he would give it a try. On the “Pepper’s sanction day”, in the morning HG gave him food as usual but Pepper did not finish the food and went to lie down by himself in the lounge. The food was taken away and put in the fridge. I came downstairs later and I did not talk to him, not even have eye contact with him. We pretended that he did not exist. It was very hard but his ignorance of the call command in the house was my biggest concern because if he did not even come when we called in the house, would he come to us when we were outside. That’s unacceptable. Almost all day Pepper kept himself quietly in the lounge. Pepper came to his food tray looking for food for a couple times during lunch time, so we decided to let him have his food and he finished it. There was no walk and play on that day. At dinner time, he finished his dinner and went to the lounge. When we had our dinner, we closed the door in the dinning room, so he could not join us. We tried to talk and laugh louder so he could hear. It got his attention that he was not allowed to join our dinner. He came to the dinning room door and lied down at the door for almost the whole time we had our dinner. I felt like I could see the light at the end of the tunnel when I saw that he could feel something different. He normally sleeps upstairs in our bedroom but not that night. We put him in his crate downstairs to sleep away from the pack. I went to bed that night with a hope that he could learn his lesson very fast so we did not have to continue this sanction. In the next morning, we decided to try if he had learned his lesson or not by calling him to come to us. He responded to our command enthusiastically. He came with his head down, like he normally does when he did something wrong, his tail was wagging so much and he put his head on my lap for a long time. We thought it was the sign that he had learned his lesson. He was getting better after that day. It took him a couple days to get back to his normal and we were pleased to have him back.

Pepper and football...

Lately we did not take Pepper's pulling seriously, so Pepper’s pulling on the leash is getting worse. We decided to tackle this problem now. It is better to do in summer when leaving the house is not as a big deal as in winter. By which I mean no hat, no boots, no gloves and no 3-4 layers of clothes. So we started from getting out of the house. Normally Pepper would stand up and ready to take off when we touched the door handle. What we tried to train him is he has to be calm and let us go out of the door before he could follow. On the first day, I had to close the door about 3-4 times before he got the idea. Sometimes he sat quite close to the door and when I tried to open the door wider it would hit him if he did not move. So he tried to move without lifting his butt off the ground. When we were outside, every time he tried to be ahead of me, I turned back towards the house and we started off again. I found that he started to understand things quicker than he was before. He walked brilliantly with me to the wood. Then I let him off to do his business and once he finished I called him to walk beside me off the leash. When he tried to be ahead of me, I turned and said ‘go home’. He turned and followed me towards home. Then I stopped and turned, he would sit next to me and look at me. Then we started walking again with him on my side. He tried so hard to maintain the distance between us. I feel much more in control. Pepper is very trendy dog. It is world cup season and he decided to play with football instead of Frisbee. He never liked to play with football before. When he met Sophie and Daniel in April, Daniel played football with his dad in the football field. Pepper did not go for it. He played with the Frisbee with Sophie all the time. It started about two weeks ago when there was a football had been left in the football field. We played with him and left the football where it was hoping no one could see. We could only play for two days before someone noticed it and took it away. Yesterday I met Jonny, Charlotte’s youngest son. I asked him if he has any old football that he is no longer play with. He said he has a lot and gave me one. Pepper loves it so much. Now the Frisbee means nothing to him at the moment. Pepper could put his teeth into this football without bursting it but he could not drop it by himself. It was sunny and warm so I let Pepper sat in the garden with me. He chewed his rawhide and I read my book. It was very good that he could settle in the garden with me.

Lha's visit (Part 7 and 8)...

I had a little chat with Lha yesterday. She said she was looking forward to reading the next part of her visit. So here they are. On Friday we left the house immediately after Joanna came to get Pepper in the morning. We went to Stirling via the Forth road bridge. From the starving experience on the day before, I brought some apples and cereal bars in my bags just in case. HG stopped the car at the art shop in Tillicoultry. I wanted to buy a painting-by-numbers kit for my friend in Thailand. It was just a quick stop and we went straight to Alva Glen. From the map of walk in Alva Glen, I had only been as far as Alva Dam (F). On the way up to Alva Dam we saw some baby robins walked on the path. I took a good picture of one of them. We decided to go up to the zig-zag path and we ended up at the Smugglers cave. From Alva Dam to the cave, we needed to walk in the single file. There are breathtaking views down the Glen but I tried not to look down as the path is narrow and right on the edge of the cliffs. We stopped and took some photos at the cave for a while and then walked back the same way. By the time we were at the car it was about 1pm already. We went to Stirling and had some burgers at Burger King for lunch. After lunch we went up to Stirling Castle and spent time there for an hour. After had some ice cream and walked around the old town we went back to the car and drove home. I cooked Spicy Cajun Chicken with garden salad with my spicy dressing and some chips for them. We harvested lettuces and radishes from our garden. After dinner we went out for a little walk in the wood with Pepper. Lha and P’Lo took lots of photos of the plants in our wood. I felt a bit sad because that was their last night staying with us.

On Saturday morning I made chicken congee (rice soup) for them. HG said his left elbow was very sore and he did not know why. We thought it might be because of too much driving. Lha tried to tell him that we did not have to go to Botanic garden as we planned but HG insisted to take them. After Joanna came to get Pepper we were ready to leave the house. We planned to go to Botanic garden and have lunch and take them to the airport. While we were at Botanic garden, HG’s elbow got a bit worse. It swelled so much and hurt when touched. He said he would walk to the pharmacy. I could not find my mobile in my bag, so I told him that I would be around the rhododendrons area or the rockery area. After HG left for the pharmacy, I had to look for Lha and P’Lo. It took me a while to find them because they went to the toilet. When we were at the rockery I found my mobile phone. It was in the small pocket in front of my bag. I called HG and he said he was on the way back. He said he had an appointment made by the pharmacist to the nearest hospital at 1pm. It was about an hour from that time and we did not know for how long it would take in the hospital but we could not take Lha and P’Lo to the airport and came back in time for the hospital. So we all planned to go to the hospital and see if it was going to take longer than we expected we would get a taxi for Lha and P’Lo. We had hotdogs for lunch. HG did not want to eat anything but water. We went to the hospital after lunch. It seemed to be too painful for HG to drive, so he had to drive mostly with one hand. It took about an hour at the hospital. The doctor said his elbow seemed to get infected but she did not know how because there was no cut. She gave him some painkillers, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory. We went to the airport after that. We were at the same parking space as we were when we came to pick them up last Saturday. We were there about 40 minutes earlier before they could check-in, actually they had already checked in on the internet but they needed to drop off their luggage. While we were waiting P’Lo looked around to find a free Scotland map but he could not find one, so HG bought a small one for him. I went upstairs with Lha to Boots and I got something like support bandage for HG’s elbow. After Lha and P’Lo checked their luggage we took them upstairs so they could get into the departure area and we said goodbye to them. It was quite sad I tried not to cry. Lha and I hugged each other (we don't normally do this in Thailand), Lha and HG hugged each other and P’Lo and HG hugged each other. HG was impressed that Lha and P’Lo would try to eat everything. They tried to help us in the house, cleaned the dishes, cleaned and tidy the table, gave HG neck massage, played with our Pepper and etc. It was such a wonderful week having them as our guests. We hope they will come back again.

Lha's visit (Part 6)...

On Thursday Joanna came to pick up Pepper around 10am. We left the house immediately after she’s gone. We went to Craik Forest in Borders. We did not know how far it was and we did not plan very well about where to eat for lunch. When we were at Hawick, we thought that we would come back to have lunch there. But on the way to the forest there were so many sheep and lambs on the road, so we could not drive so fast. Once we got there everyone needed the toilet. We did not read the sign properly so it took us a while to find the toilet. After that we started walking to find the waterfall. It took us a while to work out about the sign and the map. It took a long time that we thought to get to the waterfall. We were so hungry by the time we got there. P’Lo had some chocolates and he shared them with HG who was so hungry. I was hungry as well but I do not like chocolate. I told HG that I had some dog biscuits and if I was so hungry I might eat them. He said he would be upset if I ate them. We did not spend a long time at the waterfall because we wanted to eat so much. The way back seemed to be faster and we went back to Hawick to have lunch. HG ordered all day breakfast which he said it was very good. Lha and I had bacon rolls with eggs. P’Lo had Fish and chips. He said it was ok but still could not beat the one in Eyemouth. Then we drove home. We all slept in the car after lunch except HG. It took a long time to get home because we were behind the cars which were driving so slowly and the road was not easy to overtake. When we got home, Charlotte brought Pepper to us. She said Joanna could not open our door and so did she. So Charlotte took Pepper and let him stay in her garden waiting for us. Pepper was so tired again. He was very quiet and did not bother anyone at all. He had his dinner and went to sleep by himself in the lounge. That night we had Thai style barbeque chicken with sticky rice and carrot salad.

Lha's visit (Part 5)...

Monday afternoon when I was having my lunch in the lounge, there was a bird flew into my patio door again. Yes when I said “again” I mean this was not the first time. I went outside to check on that poor bird. I was not sure what kind of bird it was. It was lying on its side and still alive. I saw it kind of choke and the blood came out from its beak. I picked it up and tried to make it be on its feet. I was terrified that it was going to die. I kept telling it “Please don’t do this to me. Don’t die and don’t even think about dying in my hands”. I put it down to the grass. At first it could not be on its feet yet so I waited for a while and helped to turn it a wee bit so it could be on its feet. Once it was on its feet it got a lot better and finally it flew away. I don’t know if that bird is going to survive or not but at least it did not die in front of me which was good. Ok back to Lha’s visit (Part 5). It was Wednesday. We got up a little bit later than on Monday because we were going to Edinburgh which is not too far from our house. We planned to leave the house around 9am. Joanna, the lady who runs doggie daycare, came to pick Pepper up about that time. We left the house immediately after they left. HG took us to Arthur seat. It was not quite cold that day. Lha and P’Lo walked up the hill so quickly. I was the last person who reached the top. My legs were sore. We took a lot of photos up here. Lha used her sophisticated camera to take panorama photos from the very top of the Arthur seat. We did not spent a long time there because there were many places to go after that. We met two Springer Spaniels there and one of them held a stone in his mouth. I told him to drop it but he did not and his owner said he would never dropped. Then I showed him Pepper’s biscuit which I always have some in my pocket and told him to drop the stone and he did. Haha. That’s easy. I gave him half of the biscuit and another half to the other one. After we came down from Arthur seat, HG dropped us off at the Palace of Holyrood. HG took the car to park at the car park somewhere. He told me to walk up the Royal Mile and he would meet me there. We walked along the Royal Mile to the Bridges and then walked to the Chinese restaurant called Jimmy Chung where we were going to have lunch. It was Chinese buffet. After lunch we walked to Princess Street garden and walked up to the Edinburgh Castle. Lha decided not to go into the Castle because she is not interested. We walked back to the Princess Street for a little shopping. Lha had an order from her friend to buy some bras from Marks and Spencer. After the shopping we walked up to Carton Hill. HG said he had never walked up there before. It was quite nice up there. HG told us to wait here and he would go and get the car to pick us up. While we were waiting I met another Springer Spaniel puppy. She was the same age as Pepper. Her owner was an artist. He was painting there. I went to talk to him and played with his dog. We stopped at Sainsbury’s on the way back to buy some food for that night. P’Lo and Lha bought some chocolate and Pretzel. Pepper was so tired and he did not play as much that evening. Joanna said he did not even sit again. He tried to play with other dogs all the time.