Henry to the rescue

Yesterday I was having a bad pup day.

It seemed that for days Badger was on a mission to wreck the house and cause as much mess and destruction as possible. He has ruined my kitchen, removing and chewing all the Scandinavian hearts that are on the unit doors, thereby completely wrecking the entire theme of the kitchen, he's wee'd so many times on the laminate flooring that it's now starting to de-laminate itself in areas, he's scratched the paint off the wall in one place and has really chewed the bottom of the solid oak kitchen table.

Put this with his mysterious ability to actually remove anything from the kitchen table, despite being still very small, and dragging whatever is on the table about the floor, chewing it and then weeing on it, and then pulling his bed through the wee as well and you have a very stressed dog owner.

I think I'd be much more tolerant had it not taken 10 months to house train Henry, which was on top of a further 10 months of problems with dear old Fergus who had started to have accidents in the house and previous to that I had the same problem with dear Bonnie.

So for literally three years I have been cleaning up dog accidents in my house and just when I can see a good 12 years of clean floors along comes Badger, who may look cute but will not ever keep still and goads the other two into constantly playing and rolling around and fighting and generally wearing me out.

So I shout at Other Half for bringing a puppy that I didn't want into the house and tell him to do more with Badger so he has started walking him at 7am which should help.

Anyway, yesterday, in a rage of anti dog feeling I decided to take them all out for a walk in order to tire them out. Badger was off the lead as usual and also as usual being a real pest, constantly jumping up at Henry and Molly and biting their faces.

For a change I decided to walk round the field which has a river running along the side of it. It's a nice walk and puts me in a good mood so things improved the moment we got through the field gate.

Once we reached the bottom of the field, we stood by the part where the river meets with a second river and I stood looking at the view while Henry and Molly paddled in the river. Badger decided to have a go at paddling too, he's never been in this field before so this was the first time he'd seen a river.

The paddling and looking at the view was going very well, until Badger decided it would be a good idea to jump in the water. Only to get instantly swept away as he jumped into the deep bit.

Instantly I was in the water after him, he was paddlign furiously with his little paws and whinining and crying and going round and round in circles.

I was in up to my waist, dragging poor Henry behind me, who was having to reluctantly swim, while Molly sensibly jumped onto the bank and was following on her extender lead.

I was wading as hard and fast as I could through the water but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't reach Badger who by now was in a complete state of panic as was I.

After what seemed like ages I realised I was never going to catch him as the water was going to fast and I had to get out before Henry and I also got swept down the river. I decided that the only thing I could do was get out of the water and try and chase Badger from the bank and hope that there would be a shallow area where he'd be able to catch the ground and I'd be able to get him - I also knew there was a good chance he'd be pulled to fast and far down the river to ever be seen again but there was nothing I could do, it was truly an awful situation to be in!

I started to drag poor Henry out of the water, only to realise we were on the opposite bank to Molly, so I had a puppy being swept away, a frozen wet dog half in and half out of the water and a dry but unable to be let off dog on the opposite bank - agggghhhhh!

By a huge miracle at this moment Badger got swept to the same bank as us but further down. I yelled at him and he seemed to get caught on the edge which somehow got him out of the flow of the river. He straight away started to swim towards me, while I waded towards him. As soon as he was within reach I grabbed his scruff and pulled him close, giving him a hug that nearly squeezed the life out of him. He was shaking and cold but I had him back!!!!!

Then I had to negotiate getting back over the river to Molly so I kept wading until I found a shallower part past the point where the rivers meet and yet again poor Henry had to get back into the water to get over, while I carried Badger.

Molly was really pleased to see us and she and Henry sniffed Badger all over and then we started our soggy walk back home, my wellies were completely full of water and even though I emptied them out they kept re-filling from my wet clothes!

I realise that jumping into a swollen, fast flowing river after a dog was really quite a silly thing to do, but looking back it was just second nature to wade in and try to grab Badger but before I knew it we were way down the river.

Still, we are all safe, warm and dry and I'm not feeling so anti-puppy any more!