Episode 16: Hobbit Feet

Seeing as I’m currently enjoying the best 28.6% of the week known as ‘the weekend’ I thought I’d post you another little update. Nothing in particular, just life. Life is never boring!

It’s one of those wonderful Saturdays where you have a lie in, leisurely eat your breakfast and drink your tea in your dressing gown and read your book. Then sit wistfully think of ways to pass a pleasant afternoon and decide what to wear for your plans in the evening.

Well I haven’t gotten as far as deciding what I’m wearing out to dinner yet with a fellow Scientista (meaning a fabulous female scientist) but I did manage to make myself some nice wheaten bread and pate and a nice cup of tea in my Snow White mug to have alongside this week’s New Scientist. Feeding the brain and the belly. Today’s a win so far!

 A better day than it was night anyway, my 7kg Miniature Daschund Belle ate two 200g bars of dark chocolate and a bag of marshmallows she stole out of a cupboard which was left open. It’s not just a rumour, chocolate at certain doses is extremely poisonous to dogs, symptoms leading from vomiting to coma and death.

Plain cooking chocolate is the absolute worst, Belle had some Bournville which isn’t great either though, milk chocolate is a lot safer as it has less cocoa. The toxic effects are actually due to Theobromine poisoning. Cocoa beans contain about 1.2% theobromine by weight, so darker chocolates with higher percentages of cocoa solids contain higher concentrations. Humans metabolise theobromine much faster than dogs so would have to eat an unimaginable amount before reaching any levels of toxicity.  However, levels as low as 20mg/kg can harm dogs. The caffeine content is also a problem and can lead to increased heart rate as well as lowering blood pressure.

So not a great night was had by all, staying up on the phone to the vet making sure our fat sausage dog didn’t die, it was like watching a drunk person, hoping they don’t boke on themselves. By some unknown miracle/mystery she is completely fine but we are eyeballing her constantly to make sure she doesn’t end up with pancreatitis from sugar overdose either. I can only think that by eating the whole bag of marshmallows first she has somehow avoided the effects. It’s been about 24 hours now though and she’s running around trying to scrounge food off everyone who is eating so I’m optimistic and the vet said the symptoms would onset quite rapidly. See, life is never boring, if you think your life is boring then get a sneaky sausage dog. Just don’t feed it chocolate, ever, just to be safe.

 

To amuse myself during the evening and night I started reading a new book. I’ve just started a new book series – Game of Thrones – after recovering from the Sookie Stackhouse (True Blood) hangover. I have heard great things and am enjoying it already so I’ll post an update on here on how it goes if you’re curious.

In other news, I thought I looked acceptable today in a relaxed sort of Saturday afternoon-esqe style...

 

... until mummy said ‘your feet are creepy, you look like a hobbit’. And worse, the sausage looks like she agrees.

 

I’m quite delighted actually, I love Lord of the Rings, I’m glad I could make a subtle tribute with my hobbit sandals. As for Belle's opinion, I'm not going to take fashion advice from someone who has no shame about stealing and eating basically their own bodyweight in sweets.