It’s Aristotle here and I’m feeling a little down. Some of you will realise that I have elbow dysplasia in both my front legs. Our Mistress doesn’t know if it was because I was so tiny when I was born and then had such a growth spurt later, or whether it was injury related from when Mum wanted to make sure that if I was staying I knew who was boss, so she slam-dunked me across the patio outside. Every time I got up she slapped me down again, at least until our Mistress was able to get between us and scoop me up out of the way, but the damage was done one way or another. It’s really unusual in our breed but there you go. Anyway, it’s been well controlled so far. I had physiotherapy when I was little and then that’s when I started swimming to build the muscles. I was only allowed quite short walks on grass for a very long time, but by using my wobble ball and doing all my exercises my legs were strong enough that for the last year or so I’ve been able to go for a half hour walk every day, even on rougher ground without and ill effect. Anyway, I’m having problems again and I’ve had to go back to grass walking and more rest. I hope Alfie doesn’t mind going swimming less often as I really need to go to build the muscles up again. When I was very small they talked about operating on me, but it would be a very big operation and not necessarily successful so we decided management was better. It’s just leaving me feeling a bit down about things really. I’ve enjoyed thinking of myself as more normal, despite the crooked way I learned to walk to compensate. Our Mistress says if I work hard again she’s sure we’ll get things back to normal. I do hope she’s right.
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