My Life with 20 Dogs (Sputnik)

Sputnik was never meant to happen: But we got home one day to find a maggoty ball of scabs curled up in a state beyond caring ... or even knowing. The entire night spent in my arms, the next day we were both scratching and scratching and scratching. This lasted for 2 months.

In the meantime Sputnik began to live again - and now we sometimes wish he was not quite so lively.

(Well, that was at least until last week when Sputnik came down with Biliary - a dangerous illness carried by ticks that attacks dogs. Poor Sputnik was ill for 5 days, no longer attacking shoes or bottoms of trousers - instead invallided to bed with a brain splitting migrain, and other terrible aches and pains. Dr Rens with two days of injections soon saw Sputnik over the worst, and he is now back to his spirited self.)

Recovering from a deadly migrain - do I or don't I!

Part Jack Russel, part Maltese, he has the worst and the best of both. There is nothing more fun that a game of "Moley-Moley" or "Hunt the Rodent"...

Since becoming human, Sputnik has progressively developed aliases - from Sputnik to Nik for short, then to Nicholas!!**! when he is bad, and St Nicholas when he is good - which is not very often.

Nik is self-assured and confident to the point of being cheeky. He is always ready to do more than his duty - at night choosing to sleep outside the fowlhouse, disciplining our insomiac and raving roosters into an uneasy nocturnal quietude.