We had to take Dog to the vet today. She's developed a bad limp and can now hardly bear to put weight on one of her back legs. Unless a rabbit pops out of the hedge, that is.

Usually we book an appointment to minimise the chances of the small waiting room being full of dogs that she can attack, but today it was the drop-in appointment. At first it seemed like mayhem would ensure; the room was full of dogs and cats. But either Dog has mellowed or she was just too hot to bother. So she sat at our feet and watched the other dogs. I must admit it made me realise what fun we'd missed out when we'd had the waiting room to ourselves on appointment days.

All the dogs seemed to have just three ideas in their head; number one was escape. Every time their owner stood up the dog rushed towards the open door. Number 2 was try not to catch the eye of any of the cats. So some pretended to be asleep; some pretended to read the notice about fleas and the majority worked on their strategy for idea number 3. Number 3 involved sneaking around to inspect the backside of the next dog. No dog wanted to be 'It' though. So they had to resort to sneaking under the chairs, thus entangling their leads and bring their owners up short when they stood up. There was more noise from bunches of car keys hitting the floor than at a swingers' party. (Or so I'm guessing.) Dog watched it all disdainfully, making sure her back was to the wall. She knows what goes on behind the Green Door...

Sure enough, it wasn't good for Dog or us. We thought the hot weather was aggravating her arthritis. Turns out she has damaged her knee, a cruciate(?) ligament. Normally it involves a long (and no doubt expensive) operation. But the vet said (callously, I thought) there's no point doing it on a 14 year old dog. He also yanked her knee so hard she yelped and whimpered, but that was nothing to the insult of calling her 'him' or 'he'. As soon as the door opened, Dog bolted with the OH in tow.

I don't know whether to be relived or cry; we feared worse. But Dog was quite joyous when we got back into the car. For one ghastly moment, she must have thought she was doomed to spend the rest of her days in a kennel with a terrier with an insatiable bum-hunting habit, a slobbering doberman, a huge Boxer who sounded like a steam train at full speed and a black cat with an evil expression.