I’m worried about my Master. He tends to take up a hobby and spend hours and hours doing it, to the point we all get annoyed with him and then he moves onto the next thing. He has collected stamps and he’s collected model trains and more recently he has played World of Warcraft. He has reached a lull and is wondering what to do next. He enjoyed being in the pantomime so much that it is a shame he can’t do something else like that. My Mistress was trying to persuade him it could be something useful like gardening, but I didn’t see any spark of enthusiasm there. I did wonder about suggesting he learnt to play an instrument so that he and my Mistress could play together, but he would probably learn it much more quickly than my Mistress and that would put her off. Besides, he’d be playing it late at night and I can see us all objecting to the noise. If you have any suggestions perhaps you could let me know and I’ll pass them on to him.
I was going to talk about fertility treatment and dogs. It follows on from what I was saying the other day about restrictions on us breeding. With humans, if they are going to have an operation which means they can’t have children afterwards there seem to be processes to collect eggs or sperm and keep them for future use. Why wasn’t I offered that facility? I know that I was denied the right to breed because no one wanted me to pass on the problems I have, but when I asked about it there didn’t even seem to be the facility to preserve my sperm for future use. I suppose the real issue is with dogs that clearly don’t have a genetic condition and who shouldn’t be denied the right to breed. What happens if they have difficulty? Are they offered an IVF programme for pets? I know that cows use artificial insemination, but is it available for dogs too? I’m guessing that these things can be done if you are willing to pay enough money, but what about making them freely available to dogs of normal breeding age, where they have problems conceiving naturally? I guess the argument would be that as most puppies are sold, then the treatment should be paid for, but that brings me onto a whole separate issue of the selling of our puppies. What about when the mother wants to keep them. I’ll save that for another day.