Today is an important day for Wilma. Two days ago she reached 15 months old and that means she is now old enough to have her hips x-rayed. You may wonder what on earth I\u2019m talking about, but it\u2019s all to do with whether she can get permission to be able to have puppies. You see, unlike humans, we are only allowed to have puppies if we\u2019re seen as \u2018good\u2019 enough. And I don\u2019t mean whether Father Christmas will be bringing us presents type of good either. We have to have a number of tests to make sure we are of good character, which rules out things like speeding fines, being in possession of drugs, you know the sort of thing. We are checked to make sure we look as our breed is supposed to and haven\u2019t suddenly become Beagles for want of anything better to do. Then there are the health tests. Humans want all our puppies to be as healthy as is possible, so they make us undergo lots of tests to see if we are healthy. You will notice at this point I did not get to have puppies, because I failed at the first hurdle, but this isn\u2019t about me. Today Wilma is having two tests done, one, hopefully a formality, will say there are no signs of any heart murmur. (I failed that one!) The other will be to see how good her hips are. Some dogs have bad hips. Some humans have bad hips come to that, but let\u2019s keep to the point. Wilma has to have an x-ray that is sent off to specialists for them to assess whether there is any misalignment of her hips. We\u2019re hoping, given she seems to be able to move them in every conceivable direction, and quite honestly in some directions you wouldn\u2019t believe, that her hips are good. Having this done at the age she is means hopefully anything that shows up will just be the part that is genetic and not do with her doing back flips! Our Mistress has not allowed her to do any agility until now, so Wilma is really looking forward to getting this out of the way so she can have a go at that. She won\u2019t get the results for a few weeks and our Mistress still needs to arrange her eye test and something called an ectopic ureter test, but I\u2019ll tell you about those another day. I\u2019m just crossing my paws that all goes well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can find short stories to read at www.alfiedog.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Alfie\u2019s Diary \u2013 the Book as well as our other books are available HERE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"