We finished our day in isolation with a walk to the top of the road. Since the arrival of summertime, the sun was still high in the sky at 7:00 pm.
Unusually we then pushed on a further few yards. As this road is normally a busy road, being the main road into the village, I kept Buttons on his lead and we stuck close to the verge. The walk was uneventful for the first hundred yards. Then we walked past a hedge that bordered the road for some distance. Suddenly Buttons yanked the lead and leapt headfirst into a small gap in the hedge. That was all it was, a small gap just large enough to take his head. He couldn’t get further in despite his hind legs manically driving forward and raising a hail of dust and stones.
Taken completely by surprise it took me a few seconds to react. I pulled hard on the lead and dragged the struggling dog back onto the road. There was blood gushing onto the tarmac from his mouth.
“He’s got something in his mouth” exclaimed Mary and with that he dropped a hand-sized rat which lay twitching on the road.
It wasn’t obviously bleeding but it lay there shaking a leg but unable to move further. Meanwhile, Buttons, our black part Collie part-King Charles, stood jaws open and dripping blood. I thought he’d been bitten by the rat as it tried to escape him.
A trail of blood fell from his face as we turned on our heels and headed for home. Glancing back I saw the rat had ceased any movement and lay on his side, his long tail limp, his eyes staring into the distance.
We made plans as we walked and we stopped again to check Button’s mouth. He looked fine but still, blood hung from his whiskers. Our black rat killer trotted along obediently and appeared even to have forgotten the bloodletting from minutes earlier.
When home I tied him up to a table leg. We gowned up and I slipped on a pair of disposable gloves. We gave him water which he drank eagerly and then I prized open his mouth and examined it expecting to see a cut lip or an absent tooth. No, nothing. He looked fine. We gave his mouth a disinfectant rinse and sacrificed a toothbrush and some toothpaste to boot. Finally, we threw a bucket of water over his head and dried him off.
So we own, not just a soft lap-sitting dog who is good with children but an
