Stupid Dog

Last Monday my female staff spent all day either clambering into and out of clanking, whirring machinery or being smeared with a kind of clear gel and then firmly rubbed with a phallic looking instrument while expensive looking TV monitors displayed her innards.  Presumably these images were being beamed live into the waiting room to entertain the folks there waiting to have the same done to them. Anyway I'm please to announce that the upshot of all this clanking, whirring and rubbing is that it appears that my female staff's cancer is confined to her right boob.  Better still, it's not very big.

Then on Thursday I went in spirit with my staff to attend a further scan before my female staff was admitted to hospital to have her tumour removed.  This time the scan involved my female staff being injected with dye which traveled to certain lymph nodes, which in turn showed up on the scan.  This was to locate the nodes and mark them so that the surgeon knew where to look for them, saving her the trouble of digging multiple holes in my female staff's arm pit in searching for the nodes.  Having found the centinal node (whatever that is) they marked it on her skin in indelible ink. X marks the spot. Dig here.  This done, my female staff was then free to go, but she still had three hours before she was due at the hospital, so she and my male staff decided to do a little window shopping at a nearby shopping mall. Anyway it was a hot, steamy morning and the mall was air-conditioned.

Whilst there they saw a funny little dog on a lead wearing an orange hi-vis coat.  He was happily leading a middle aged lady through the crowds.  He was something of a hybrid.  Maybe corgi/border collie/jack russell/stafforshire terrier or something equally unlikely. It was a small, scruffy creature, low slung and with a very smiley face.  A bit like my male staff really.  The thing is, dogs are not allowed in the mall unless they are assistance dogs and the orange hi-vis coat indicated that that is what he was.  My staff began speculating as to what sort of assistance he was rendering.  He was far too small to be a guide dog and in any case he wasn't wearing the usual guide dog harness.  Of course there are many other kinds of assistance dogs.  There are hearing dogs - dogs who tell there owners if there is someone at the door or if the phone is ringing, though if the phone is ringing and the owner is deaf I'm not sure what good that would do unless the dog is trained to growl "My owner is unable to hear the phone at the moment. Please leave a message and my owner will pop next door to get the neighbour to write your message down for him."

Dogs are almost as clever as guinea pigs in a subservient sort of way.  There are assistance dogs who can sense if there owner is about to have an epileptic fit and can warn them to get to a safe place so that they won't hurt themselves.  I understand that some dogs can even be trained to sense that their owner is about to suffer a heart attack.  It really is quite amazing what they can do.  Actually I think my male staff (and many other humans) would greatly benefit from having a "stupid" dog.  That's not to say that the dog is stupid. Far from it.  This dog, preferably something large and intimidating - a Rottweiler, Doberman or an Anatolian sheep dog for example, would be trained to sense when its owner is about to do something stupid, like buying his wife a new ironing board for their twenty fifth wedding anniversary.   The "Stupid" dog would then bark loudly to alert other people in the vicinity that someone stupid is in their midst and would then bite the owner's bum, thus reminding him not to be stupid.

I can see one or two problems with this.  For a start there would be so many "stupid" dogs around that their leads would be certain to get very tangled and it would take a non-stupid person to untangle them if one could be found, which is most unlikely and amid all the confusion, barking and stupidity the "stupid" dogs would almost certainly end up biting the wrong bum.  Not that that would matter I suppose.

Anyway, eventually it was time for my female staff to be admitted to hospital, which was duly done and my male staff returned home with the promise of visiting my female staff when she came out of the operating theatre.  My male staff was told that she would be in ward 4B and so later that evening it was to that ward which he returned.
 "I'm here to visit my wife Jacky." He said to the nurse at the desk.  She riffled through a large clump paperwork, made a puzzled face, picked up another large clump and riffled through that too before making an even more puzzled face.  At last she found a clipboard and ran her finger down the list of names thereon.
 "Ah! Here she is." She smiled.  "She's in the maternity ward..................Sir.........are you okay?  Sir?  Just stay on the floor for a moment and I'll roll you into the recovery position."

It turns out that my female staff had been moved to the maternity ward because 4B was full.  When my male staff had regained consciousness he was wheeled in to visit my female staff who was sitting up in bed swigging on what looked like water but could just have easily been gin or vodka.  Anyway, the important thing is that she was okay.  The operation had gone well.  The lump had been removed along with the marked lymph nodes and the surgeon had told her that the tumour didn't look too bad at all, but that she would go through the results of the pathology at their next appointment - Thursday - another seven days away.  Another seven days of limbo.  Still it sounded promising and now all my female staff has to do is take pain killers for the discomfort of the wounds under her arm and the upper half of her boob.  Everyone here in Piggy Paradise has their paws crossed for her.

BACI'S BALONEY 

Eye find it a bit hard to simputh simmpythy sympothighs feel sorry four Uncal Billy's female staff.  Afta all she and Uncal Billy's mail staff were like planning to send me to the hospiggle to have my testostricles remooved until reesuntly, so wen she came home and picked me up four a cuddal I like stuck my bum in her face and wiggulled it to show my displezyer.