Dogsnots and Fur - Adventures in SandieSitting

For the past month, we've been looking after a little doggiewog.  Her name is Sandie and she belongs to my sister and my godniece Lulu.  They fecked off on holidays to Spain for a couple of weeks (where Little Sis managed to get herself engaged - hurrah!) and we agreed to mind their fluffy mutt Sandie.  You may have seen the odd picture of her on Instagram where I refer to her as Sandie the WonderDog.  Now we had Sandie, live and unleashed in our house for a whole month.

Look at me, I'm CUTE!

Collecting her was a bit traumatic as she basically cried and roared all the way home in the car which freaked me out no end.  Did I also mention that the smell of dogfood and wet dog make me heave?  By the time I parked the car in the drive, I thought I had lost my mind but after an afternoon of sniffing everything in the house, Sandie had settled in and I had started to relax.  Sandie is a little Shih-tzu and to be honest, she's not the sharpest tool in the box so she wasn't that much trouble.  Until bedtime.  That dog howled, yowled and cried like a werewolf once I put her into bed and closed the kitchen door - unbelievable sounds from such a small bundle of fur.  But I was the boss of her, so I just turned up the tellybox and studiously ignored her, she'd have to stop sometime, wouldn't she?.  Wrong.  She entertained us with her soprano voice every sodding night apart from once, when she refused to go into the kitchen and I had to physically lift her into bed.

The infamous bed and a treat shoved in her mouth for peace

Shih-tzu doggies are very snuffly and sniffy by nature but Sandie was something special.  She sneezed all over me on a regular basis and I soon learned not to wander around the house bare-legged as chances were my lower limbs would be coated in a layer of dogsnots.  Yuck.  In order to disguise her shortcomings as a one dog snot machine, I started posting photos of her daily activities on Instagram with #sandiecam as the hashtag.  To be honest, all she ever did was sleep, eat, sneeze, look for tummyrubs and follow me to the loo.  Yes, Sandie was my own personal stalker.  If I was foolish enough to lock the bathroom door, she'd batter it down until I could take no more and let her in, where she'd lie on the mat and sneeze on my legs or lie on the mat for 40 winks.  She wasn't a big fan of being washed as you can see from the pictures below, but she loved the hairdryer which returned her to her regular fluffy self.

Hate bath, love hairdryer

Very clever doggiewog

The funniest encounter (apart from her regular mad half hours when she'd race around the house like a dog possessed) was when I had a Skype video call with Little Sis.  To be honest, she only rang to talk to Sandie, who promptly ignored her for the duration of the call.  Ha.  But all too soon, it was time to say goodbye.  Little Sis was home and demanding the return of the furry beast.  So that was the end of long walks on the end of her pink lead, sniffing everything that moved and discovering she doesn't like noisy minibuses, jumping up behind me on the sofa and kicking me off onto the floor so she could sprawl across the cushions.  Cheeky beast.

Walking and sniffing

Trying to eat the grass

Sulking in the sun

Now that she's gone, the house is oddly silent and the sofa belongs to us again, but she's left her mark with clawmarks all along the sitting room floor from her mad half hours, and clumps of her hair everywhere...  We've also kept her bowls for when she comes back on holidays or just a quick weekend visit.  Having her was wonderful but it did reinforce that we're not the right people to have a dog full-time.  I've been wheezing like mad because of her fur and trying to make sure one of us was home every night was very tricky indeed.  But she does have a very special place in our hearts.  And on our bed, when she was given half a chance.