A Dog`s Day.

It started the day before.  Although feeling non too festive, Kim and I went to an annual dinner of our handicrafts group. It was very pleasant, but very French, in that we spent some four hours at table and left, stuffed to the gills at after midnight. At that we were the first away, for all I know, the others are still eating! We fell into bed at one in the morning.
  During the night I kept hearing odd movements downstairs, and at four o`clock Jilly started to whine. Normally when she does this she needs to go out, it doesn`t happen often but it is better not to ignore it! I went downstairs and took the dogs into the cour but Jilly just walked round and round so I put them back in the entrée where they sleep. I noticed a damp patch near the door but thought nothing of it.
  When I came down at eight, I found Jilly lying near the door. She seemed unable to rise for a moment and had been dribbling, hence the damp patch. Then she got up and seemed normal but it soon developed that she was far from well, wobbling and falling over. I called Kim, and she soon asserted that the dog was having fits. She would suddenly convulse and lose her balance. Yet she ate her breakfast with her usual appetite.
  We decided to call the Vets, even though it was Sunday(it always is when there is a health crisis!) and Pierre, the Vet de Garde said he`d meet us at the clinic in Chef in half an hour, which meant a rapid dressing and 20 minutes drive. Jilly`s condition was the same, and when Pierre examined her, he felt she either had had a minor brain bleed or was developing epilepsy. He gave her some Phenobarbitone tablets to calm the brain, and we have a follow-up appointment on Wednesday.
  We took Jilly home, but the fits continued and worsened, so we rang Pierre again and he said to give her four more tablets, a total of seven, sufficient to knock out a horse. After a time she gradually improved, but she had given us a rare fright, we really thought she was dying.
   By mid afternoon she was more or less back to normal and went on he walk, on the lead, of course, without any more fits, and since seems to be her old self. She is still taking the tablets, until her vet visit tonight when we shall see what the Vet advises.
   She looks so normal that it is difficult for me to agree that she has suffered a stroke.  My theory, which the vet and Kim do not believe, is that she ate something the day before when she ran off during her walk as she sometimes does. When she returned her breath smelled funny as if she had eaten something rotten. Or perhaps some toadstools?  The only problem with my theory is the long delay till the symptoms appeared. Well, we shall see, the important thing is that she has now recovered. Long may it continue!!

   Bye for now.