What Candles?

I was woken with a start very early the next morning. At 5.00am to be precise to a morning chorus of the howling bark and lots of jumping style movement so I decided to go downstairs to see what was happening.



As I gingerly opened the living room door the first thing that hit me was the new dog. He literally threw himself at me and being a rather large skinny boney dog it was rather painful.



As I tried to make my way into the room I was accompanied by a bouncing dog throwing himself at me and almost trying to climb onto me as I walked.



It was then that I realised that he had needed the toilet, both types. The living room carpet had taken a beating and whilst trying to fend the dog off I realised that he would tread in it if I wasn't careful and dog poo on your PJ's is not a good mix.



I put my big winter coat and wellies on and put the dog on his lead and took him outside to walk around the garden to see if he needed the loo. He did. Where was it all coming from? He'd only been a few hours before when we went to bed and again during the night. It must be nerves.



We went back in and after removing the big coat I set about cleaning up and I then realised that it was not only poo and pee on the carpet but little metal things all over it too. It took me a moment to realised what they were. They were the chewed up metal covers to tea lights without the candles in them.



Where were the candles? I kept a basket full of tea lights on a low shelf as we get a lot of power cuts out here in the sticks and never gave them a thought when we went to bed. I could see the teeth marks in the metal pieces but there were no signs of the wax candles. Then I realised.......the candles were in the dog.....



I hurrily started to try to piece together the metal pieces to try to establish exactly how many candles had gone, all the while the dog was intently watching me. After five I started to worry. I got to 14.



Sitting there at 5.10am I really didn't know what to do. The dog seemed fine and the candles weren't scented to it was just solidified parafin wax that he had eaten so surely it couldn't do him much harm? It was too early to call the vet, or at least it didn't seem much of an emergency to disturb the vet at this time of the morning so I decided to wait and see and got on with the poo cleaning.



Once I'd cleaned upI fed the dogs their breakfast which was wolfed down, took the dogs into the garden again and then I decided to get some breakfast. At the time I used to get a bowl of ceral and perch on the sofa in the living room and watch early morning tv while I ate it. Not any more!



As I came out of the kitchen zebedee started again. He was actually walking and jumping up on his back legs trying to get the cereal out of the bowl even before I had sat down. It was impossible, as I sat he climbed all over me to try and get the food, he was so hungry he didn't care what he did to get food , undertandable if you've been starved, a complete pain if you haven't and you are trying to eat breakfast to GMTV.

I gave up and went into the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind me and I ate breakfast in the kitchen at the table for the first time in years..



Shortly after breakfast it became aparent that new dog wanted to go to the loo so once again I pulled on the big winter coat and took him into the garden and found out just were the candles had been hiding.

It was interesting scooping the poop later that morning, it was more like scooping poop shaped candles and that was really what was coming out of the rear end of the dog and the cold air was solidifying it. I can now say that 14 tea lights had no effect whatsoever apart from giving him a bit of a clear out and making the garden poop scooping slightly more interesting and less smelly than usual!