Changes in my life

I’m facing a couple of issues I’d rather avoid.

Firstly, me and pointy nose dog will have to stop going to the picnic place exercise area. We were there last week and she was doing her thing on the hill. A passing farmer stopped to watch and then reversed to me and asked if I would call her off the hill. Very reasonable and well tempered. Thankfully, she came the instant I whistled.

On Monday this week we were there again and she caught a pheasant. Not much to it really as it was all hunched up at the side of the river and didn’t respond when she pointed at it. She was showing it to Norma when a passing farmer, different one, stopped. He came over and checked the bird without saying anything at first. He realised it was warm and then said we were poaching and the dog had to be kept on a lead. He mentioned something about the week before so we had obviously been under suspicion although we were in the public area and not up on the hill as previously.

We had a small debate without any unreasonable words. He stuck to the poaching. My attitude was that we had not gone there to catch birds and what happened was sort of fate anyway. Bird may have been on point of death when caught. The birds are bred to be shot as sport in the prime of their life. In the end, we agreed to differ and he went off with the bird. Decent bloke who made his point well and listened to what I had to say.

I’ve been thinking about it. Sable does hunt on his land. Very enthusiastically and is quite often lucky. He does not raise and maintain birds for our amusement. What we used to do was not poaching but might just as well have been in light of end result. There is no way to exercise her on the lead so only solution is to strike the place off the list of exercise areas. Mind you, any of his birds that stray in front of the car are certainly dead ‘uns from now on.

I’m now on track in respect of the warfarin dosage to get my blood factor to a suitable range. This has meant that I cannot use the ibuprofen tablets to deal with the arthritis pain. I have to use Tylex but the number I can take in a day is limited. The pain has not gone away and whereas ibuprofen and Tylex used to work, the pain still gets through now there is no ibuprofen. I’ve never been one to worry about maximum dosages (I’m a big lad and the stated safe limits have a safety factor built in) but the risk is that excess Tylex can cause internal bleeding. Therein lies the rub. I suppose I might get very soggy insides before the clotting kicks in – if at all.

Oh well – things are sent to try us, worse things at sea etc. It is just that immobilised with the dreaded lurgy, I’ve had more time to think and brood.