This is Tom's Beach

... and don't forget it!

I put Tom in the car this afternoon and took him down to the beach (a journey of about 200m). We take the car because sometimes he is too tired to walk back these days. He is a fifteen and a half year old black labrador and spent thirteen of those years running everywhere! His legs don't work very well any more.

So we went to the beach, I let him off his lead, he had a few little pees (never one big pee), said hello to some other dogs, then made a bee-line for the water.

He likes to paddle/swim in the Biel Burn and have a drink at the same time, but today it just got too much for him. I called him out of the water with the offer of a biscuit and then noticed he had completely lost the use of his back legs!

They were just dragging along the ground behind him, and then he keeled-over. A lovely woman helped to wrap him up in a blanket and we covered him in coats and rubbed him but he seemed to have lost the use of his front legs as well by this time.

So I carried poor old Tom back to the car, still wrapped up in the now gift blanket and brought him home. Linz and I had a talk about what we should do while Tom lay shivering by the radiator, still wrapped-up in his blanket.

We had just about reconciled ourselves to a final trip to the vet hospital in Edinburgh, when the old bone-bag got up and came to sit by me, walking quite normally and wagging his tail!

Still king of the beach, Tom, but perhaps no more winter swims, eh?

Big Tom.