The Dreaded Lurgi

During the past fortnight everyone in our house has been struck down by illness.

The first to succumb, somewhat predictably, was Beanie. One day, shortly after her morning walk, she vomited up  her breakfast and promptly lost her appetite for food and water. Usually loss of appetite in a Beagle is a sign that something is very wrong, but Beanie has a history of being very sensitive to sick tummies so we bravely delayed any vet action for 24 hours. It turned out to be the right call because the next morning she had a drink and a little nibble of chicken. From there she rapidly returned to her normal self, whereupon Biggles did a couple of highly unpleasant barfs in our bedroom. He never lost his appetite though, and to be fair his bout of sickness could simply have been an attempt to make the carpet smell right after I’d given it a thorough wet clean at the New Year.

Once Biggles was back to full health we had maybe two days of normality before it was our turn for illness. Thankfully we didn’t get a vomiting bug, but we did get a really vile cold. Borrowing terminology from the camera world, I’ve been referring to it as a “bridge” cold; in the same way that a “bridge” camera sits between a point-and-shoot and a DSLR,  this cold was way worse than normal sniffles but didn’t quite have the knock-you-on-your-arse power of full-on flu.

Susan got it first, and a few days later it got its claws into me. Things were OK while at least one of us was feeling on top of things, but inevitably there was an overlap point where we were both suffering, and that’s when the house became a bomb-site. In our weakened state we got lazy about putting things away and tidying up after ourselves, and Beanie & Biggles took full advantage. At one point nearly every square foot of floorspace had some kind of Beagle-generated debris in it. There was ripped up mail and Amazon boxes , bits of socks and assorted underwear, and lot and lots of shredded tissues. Quite why a snot-filled, screwed up tissue is such a prized item for a Beagle I’ll never know, but it is.

Of course for every five (or maybe ten) naughty things they did, they’d each do something really endearing. One morning when I had the shivers, Biggles climbed into bed and reverse parked himself into my arms. He pushed his back against my stomach and tucked his head under my chin, warming me way better than any hot water bottle. I dozed off, and when I woke up he’d moved so that his arse was right under my nose. And yes, even with my cold, I was able to detect his farts.

On another occasion I was so choked up with mucus that I couldn’t get to sleep in our bed at all. I figured that the best way to get at least some shut-eye was to stay in the lounge watching the TV and deliberately try to stay awake. Typically this is a recipe for snoozing, for me at least. Sure enough I nodded off a few times, and the next morning I was very gently woken by Beanie. She’d moaned at Susan to let her out of her crate then trotted through to find me and check that all was well. No other dog in the world does greetings as sweetly as the Beanster: there’s no licking, she just reaches up to put her front paws on your shoulders and ever so gently touches her nose against yours while wagging furiously.

Anyway, despite this attack of the lurgi I still managed to get a few shots of the pups that are worth airing..

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2 Replies to “The Dreaded Lurgi”

  1. Julie, JB & Cassie's Mum

    If it’s any comfort, we both had colds before Christmas and we’ve STILL got the cough! We both have a chest infection and were sent for chest x rays and blood tests last week. We’re on antibiotics but the infection’s proving incredibly difficult to shift. The beags have also had snuffles so there’s been a lot of beagly cuddling in our house!

  2. Paul Post author

    Yep we’ve been hearing similar stories locally. There have definitely been some nasty bugs doing the rounds this winter!

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