Visiting the vet

Well, Bingley got his wish today and finally had a glimpse of what lies beyond those big backyard gates. But I don't think that it was quite what he'd expected, and instead of rolling green hills full of an infinite range of exciting and hitherto unimagined chompables, it was the back seat of a car waiting to take him to the vet.

On the way there he sat quietly in my lap, ears pressed flat and nose pushed up against the window as he watched a strange array of images flash past; but eventually he started to quietly whimper and moved himself away from the views. It was unusual and a bit distressing to hear him sound like this; I imagine that his distress was at least partly due to motion sickness. I know that when I was a kid I used to get very bad car sickness; I was one of those people for whom the coach always had to make unscheduled stops on school trips. Fortunately for Bing it wasn't a long journey and we arrived at the vets after a few minutes; but once in the waiting room he continued to make himself as small as possible in my lap. He wasn't even remotely interested in the two other dogs, or the mewing cat, who were also waiting. Mind you, they didn't seem interested in Bingley either: a visit to the vets is good for them I'm sure, but it can't be much fun.

This was actually Bing's second visit to a vet, but my first. In case you haven't picked up on it, Bingley is my first dog; my very first pet in fact: so it's a whole new world for both of us. But even though Jane's a dab hand at this, we both felt a little anxious about our visit: what if we'd been doing things terribly wrong and Bingley was too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, dirty eared, mucky pawed and neurotic?

Thankfully though, he isn't any of those things: the vet gave him a clean bill of health and pronounced him a very handsome dog. Then she stuck a needle in him.

Actually, he didn't even seem to notice that he'd just been jabbed with a syringe full of chemicals because at that point he was busy trying to lick up the residue from his ear-cleaning! Ah, the joys of ear-cleaning! Now we know how to do it and I've got another funny smell to get used to.

So the visit, on the whole, went smoothly; the vet was really lovely with him and I don't think that he'll feel quite as nervous next time. It's reassuring to know that we're not doing anything wrong, and it's good to confirm that Bingley is growing up nicely. Now we just have to wait ten days more before we can (at last, at last, at last!) start taking him out for walks. At the moment I think that we're all getting close to suffering from cabin fever.