Zane and the Spider!

Hi All,

OK - anyone who knows my dogs and I well enough are aware that they are big, soppy furballs who are generally extremely well behaved; although being very young dogs they do have moments of madness and play up from time to time.
Well aside from those times, we also have the times that are most memorable - like when Zane got his head stuck in the garden fence and we had to call the fire brigade to get him out! Or when Yiannis stood too close to the gas fire in the living room and singed his tail. He didn't move though even when he'd filled the room with the smell of cooked dog!

Well, we had an "incident" with Zane and a spider last week. I thought it was a one off but tonight he did exactly the same thing.

Zane was outside on the patio with Yiannis. They were playing for a while then just pottering about. Since what happened to Yiannis in September none of my dogs go out onto the patio without me being able to see them all the time. Maybe I'm going OTT but better safe than sorry IMO.

Anyway, I decided I could still watch them fool around whilst cleaning the kitchen a bit so I left the back door wide open for them to come in when they wanted to and started wiping down cupboards, mopping the floor etc.

About 10 minutes later Zane came limping into me, whimpering. Now I did think to begin with (as I thought last week too) that he may have something stuck in his foot because he was holding it off the ground and not putting any weight through it at all. I've had incidents of my neighbours throwing broken glass etc over the fence deliberately to hurt the dogs so I was preparing myself for more or less anything. But I wasn't prepared for what I found.

Last week he backed off a few times but tonight Zane came straight into the living room when I called him. Yiannis being the nosey sod he is came to see too. Zane held his paw up for me and when I looked, I saw the perfect form of a spider stuck to the bottom of his foot. Not a little dinky spider - but one of those HUGE garden spiders you get where you can almost see the hairs on their legs. I'm sure they wear DMs and have guns too!

Now usually between the dogs it's a team effort when it comes to spiders. Zane usually does the first splat but not enough to kill it, only enough to pass it onto the others where eventually Ellie finishes the job by eating it.

So I'm sure you can all imagine this - a 2 year old GSD, who stands 103cm at the withers, weighs 59Kg, whimpering and limping because he's splatted a spider more than he expected to and couldn't get it off his foot! I know he's a real Mummy's boy, but really!!

Sometimes I think there's no hope!!

Laura xx

oh, that made me laugh!! brilliant they all sound like such characters

Hi,

Glad you enjoyed reading about it. Yes they are all great characters. They do drive me absolutely nuts at times but they're so funny. I wouldn't change anything about any of them (except Ellie can be a really nasty bitch when she wants to be).

I must admit, I'm really proud of the dogs they're growing up to be in terms of their characters. Admittedly it's been a lot of hard work, (overstimulating Zane last year in obedience, setbacks with Yiannis after he was attacked etc) but a lot of fun, filled with surprises and silly things happening sometimes.

I felt I just had to share the "Spider Saga"!.

Laura xx

Oh aren't you brave! I would have screamed the house down!

You reminded me of an incident I had with a spider a while ago. I had put the dog's breakfast dishes down and walked into the garden to throw the dogs water from the bowl onto the plants before refilling it. BUT there was a huge web on the washing line and I walked right into it and SCREAMED and SCREAMED!

Parker, who is the world's greediest dog, left his food and came straight outside and stood next to me till I had calmed down! My hero! Cherry just ignored all the commotion and carried on eating!

Parker is my hero dog!!