Who needs posh dog toys when you can play with plastic water bottles - of course I would've prefered Evian

RIP Ethel - aka The Shar-Pei

I have to admit I didn't tell the whole truth in my profile: yes I suffer from Ailurophobia (an irrational and persistent fear of cats); yes I have a penchant for all things nylon and yes I'm rarely out of bed before midday. The fact that I live with my Humum and her French boyfriend is also true; I simply failed to mention that, at the time of creating this blog, there was somedog else living with us - Ethel, the 12-yr-old, blind, arthritic, maloderous Shar-Pei. Shar-Pei's were originally Chinese fighting dogs, but you probably know them better as the big cute wrinkly dogs commonly featured on the front of greeting cards: They normally say something along the lines of 'Another year, another wrinkle' and feature a picture of an unamused canine or two - you know the ones.

For the first seven years of my life I'd been an only-dog. Then one ordinary day in August Humum brought home The Shar-Pei. Turns out Humum had inherited her from a family member who didn't know anybody else who would be willing or able to look after his dog after he'd gone. My humum may have been willing, but what about me? Nobody asked me (or the Frenchman judging by the look on his face when he got in from work). The smell hit me before The Shar-Pei did (being blind she had a tendency to walk into things, me included). Granted, us dogs are partial to smells that most humans find heinous, but The Sharpei's smell was enough to make even the most hardened butt-sniffer queasy. Think yeast, think sweat, think infected skin folds. Think dog bums. Think of all of these things rolled into one big fat stinking ball of smell. Humum spent a small fortune on scented candles and air freshener during the brief time The Shar-Pei was with us. For it was brief. Sadly, Ethel only survived another two months.

Though it was tough at first - and yes I admit my nose was put out for a while (as far as a brachycephalic's nose can be displaced) - I developed a fondness bordering on sisterly affection for The Shar-Pei and I'm sad she's gone. Ethel was a stoic, loving, brave old bitch, who didn't let adversity stand in the way of her food-bowl. Though it took her a lot of time and effort (and probably some pain) to walk from her bed to wherever she needed to get to, not once did she whimper or complain, not once did she mess in the house and she never stopped wagging her tail.





Humum claims Ethel had a new lease of life in the short time she was with us. She certainly seemed content, using her specially made wooden step to climb onto the sofa for evening cuddles, finding her way up the garden steps to the patio to sunbathe; chewing and masticating her way through impressive amounts of rawhide. I even managed to get a few tug of wars out of her, which - ahem - she won (not surprisingly; think mini-hippo). My only wish is that she could have stayed longer.