Oh Archie!

I have never known a dog like him. He has to be the clumsiest, most accident prone and most subject to bizarre illnesses. So this is the tale of his latest happening.

The dogs sleep in the kitchen. However in this house there is no door between the kitchen and the stairs, so there is nothing preventing them from coming upstairs. We know that they sneak up when we’re not around and eat the cat food. But generally they remain downstairs.

On Saturday morning we were late getting up. Suddenly there was a strange sound of claws tapping on the flooring near our bedroom door. To begin with I couldn’t work out what the sound was. Chris went to investigate and came back and said in a rather deadpan voice, ‘It’s Archie, he appears to having a fit’. I went out to investigate and sure enough he was lying on the floor fitting. It all seemed rather surreal. It lasted several minutes however afterwards he was very quickly back to his normal self. When he realised that the other dogs were going to the garden, he charged, well almost fell, down the stairs rather than be left behind. For the first few minutes he wobbled around the garden but quickly seemed to be able to run around as usual.

We rang the vets and they agreed to see him straightaway. So we took him to see them. One of the members of staff is clearly in love with him. Of course they hadn’t seen him since he was ill earlier in the year, they couldn’t believe the recovery that he has made. Anyway various tests and blood tests later the vet concluded that it was an epileptic fit. He was not over-heated from Friday, there was no sign of infection or any other physical illness. Apparently it could be a one-off, or it could be the start of him having problems. There is nothing to do at the moment, no changes in routine, food or activities, everything should continue as normal and just see what happens. We should however; watch him during thunderstorms because they could affect him. So it was a strange afternoon watching him whilst he was absolutely normal, or as normal as an excitable young Labrador can ever be.

Having agreed earlier in the week to go to a music event on Saturday evening we eventually decided to go. Archie seemed absolutely fine and there was nothing we could do. So we went. It was further away than we thought. One of the things about living in rural France is that everything is further away than you think. We had been there about an hour and were really enjoying the music when my mobile rang. The people staying in the gite had come back from dinner and there was no power. We had to go. We don’t know why the main trip had gone but it had, it was sorted in no time. We went home and watched a film.

So Archie is absolutely fine. There are absolutely no signs of what happened on Saturday morning. We are just hoping it was a one off and just one of those things.

Until tomorrow…