The whole time
we’re in the bedroom treating Rita’s hypo, Spangles the morbidly obese
Chihuahua wheezes around our ankles, checking us out. He’s an unprepossessing
creature, Peter Lorre’s head grafted onto the body of a pig and then shrink-rayed
to the size of a cat.
‘Don’t pay him no
attention,’ says Rita, thickly.
‘Good! You’re a
bit more with us now,’ says Rae, checking her pulse. ‘Keep eating the
sandwiches.’
Rita shudders
down a bolus of bread, takes a sip of lemonade, pulls a lemon face, then asks
me if I’ve got dogs.
‘Two. A lurcher
and a terrier.’
‘He can smell
‘em on you,’ says Rita, pointing a crust at me and nodding sagely. ‘He’s got a
good nose on ‘im.’
‘A real cutie,’
I say, glancing down at Spangles, who immediately bares his teeth and then click-clacks
away across the parquet floor to stare at me from the dresser.
‘I expect he’s
after scraps,’ I say.
‘Well he’s not
allowed,’ says Rita. ‘The Vet keeps telling us off about it. When we took him
off our neighbour he didn’t weigh no more’n a rat. It’s difficult not to feed ‘em
up when they look like that. Especially when they’re so quick if you drop
anything.’
Spangles has ventured
back out again. I can feel him sniffing around my boots.
‘Guess what his
favourite snack is’ says Rita.
‘I don’t know.
Salami?’
‘Nope.’
‘Toast?’
‘Nope.’
‘Chicken?’
‘Dust.’
‘Dust?’
‘He crawls around
under the furniture eating dust.’
‘Dust? How can you like eating dust?’
Rita picks up
another sandwich and studies the top and bottom of it without enthusiasm.
‘I don’t know. I
think he just likes all the crumbs you get in it.’
4 comments:
Peter Lorre,now there's a blast from the past.
My dog as a puppy went through a stage of eating hair in the shop,until he worked out it kept making him sick.
So then did he just sweep it up like everyone else?
Well that's strange. I really dislike obese dogs, especially the little ones. The wheezing freaks me out. I feel like they're gonna keel over on me any moment.
I do, too. They're more like little Dogbots than dogs. Wheeze. Clack. Clack. Clack. Wheeze.
And eating dust! *shudder*
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