Oh no! Not the lampshade!

Retrievers are rightly famous for their ability to eat just about anything.

I should have been suspicious yesterday afternoon when Porridge started desperately trying to snatch at grass in the garden. The dressing on her operation wound seemed to be loosening and some of the compresses were hanging out. So I snipped off the excess and hoped for the best. We are talking about an enormous dressing here… about 9 inches by 5 with lots of padding inside it.

When I woke up this morning, it had completely disappeared. She had eaten the lot.

She was panting and restless and desperate to eat grass, but she still managed to down her morning biscuits before I realised this. Her tummy was absolutely enormous.

So…off to the vet. And we came back with…yes …you have guessed…a lampshade.

Now a lampshade takes some getting used to. It is hard to get through doorways.It got caught on a kitchen chair and she just stood there until I showed her how to reverse out.

She was so depressed that we took her out round the block, in hopes that natural functions might relieve the terrible abdominal pressure. Would she explode like Mr Creosote after “one wafer-thin mint”?

It is hard to get at things in a lampshade.

But it seems to work as a smell amplifier. And things got very exciting around our favourite rabbit warren. Look at the tension on that lead. She wanted to race into those brambles and sniff them out.

But no….

So we were a bit depressed again when we got home…