Harold

Harold has come to live with us.  Harold has the most disgusting bad breath.  Poor Harold I can hardly bear to be in the same room as him, because with my current tummy problems there is a real danger of me vomiting.

Harold is a sweetie though.  He is very loving and would love me to kiss him, but I really can’t right now.

He arrived at lunchtime on Thursday, which was a bit tough as I had to introduce him to the Westies, feed him, show him the garden and get him settled in all within only a couple of hours before I set off to school for one of my longer teaching days.  I didn’t know if I would find him alive when I got back at 8.15 or whether he would have been eaten by Westies.  He certainly did not like being left and just as I walked away from the house I heard him barking and scrabbling at the door.  He will acclimatise.

Harold sits with his new siblings in the Westie-mobile, our new mode of transport, especially for trips to the vet which at the moment seem to be very often.  You cannot smell his bad breath from here and the other kids don't seem to mind.

So my teaching day was clouded somewhat by dreadful gory thoughts every so often.  Not while I was actually teaching, but between lessons.  When you are teaching you think of nothing except what is in front of you.  ABCs, 123s, present continuous, past participles, colours of the rainbow and days of the week.  It seemed like a long day, but happily, upon my return, with Bev in tow for a much needed glass of vino, I found all the Westies and a joyful Harold delighted to see me again and even more delighted for the extra person to snuggle up against.  He is very needy right now, but that is understandable.  He has just been abandoned by his owner of ten years and probably simply does not have a clue what is going on.

On a theme of smells, the chestnut sellers have returned to the streets of Alhaurín el Grande.  With the temperatures we are having of late it hardly feels like autumn yet the smell of the chestnuts roasting fills my brain with thoughts of crispy brown and golden leaves piled high and beechnuts and chestnuts crunching beneath my feet.  It makes me think of woolly gloves and scarves, of misty mornings and damp earth.  It is one of the many smells of Spain that sends my thoughts into overdrive. 

Passing through the busy town now after school in the evenings I often catch the heavy scent of Jasmine or Dame de Noche or other olfactory delights that are not so beautiful, but equally evocative.  Diesel fumes from the back of rickety old scooters, the faint whiff of a blocked drain and occasionally the pencil smell of BO from someone who is not as fastidious as they should be.  And now I come home to the overwhelming smell of rotten dog breath.  A smell I will gladly forget as soon as I possibly can,

On Friday morning I had a zillion jobs to do, but managed to give Harold a bath.  He is another dog in my life who, it would appear, hates water.  I had to chase him and carry him bodily into the bathroom and firmly close the door.  It was then that I also tried to scrub his teeth.  What I saw in his mouth made me recoil in horror.  His teeth look like they are melting.  I think the brush hurt him, so I stopped even trying.  Instead I took him to the vet after lunch to book an appointment to get his teeth cleaned and the wobbly, disgusting ones extracted.  His appointment is not until the 31^st of October unfortunately, so we will have to bear the stench until then.  If only I could have switched his appointment with Looki’s, whose teeth are nowhere near as bad.  But his is too close now and he has already begun his course of antibiotics. 

On the whole Harold is a good boy.  I have had to tell him off for marking the furniture and I also had a bit of a battle with him today as he was staring at me while I was eating.  Something that is not allowed in our house.  Eventually he slunk out to the garden, no doubt to eat worms.  But he will get the hang of it.  He does not understand the command to sit, I wonder if it is because he speaks Spanish.  He seems to be getting the hang of The Westie Life here though, which is to follow mum around the house and then find a spot close by to lie down and start snoring, grunting or twitching in your sleep.

And now this morning I am cooking up a batch of food for the dogs.  The house is filled with the aroma of chicken and fish boiling away merrily with Mediterranean vegetables, spliced with the covering scent of incense burning in the front room to cover the underlying foul breath, which somehow does not seem so bad today.  Perhaps the boy is improving, or perhaps I am just getting used to it.