A very, very dear, sadly departed, friend always said “no good deed goes unpunished”. Sadly I often find this to be true but never more so than last Sunday ! Following the death of someone in the village we felt duty bound to take on his elderly German Shepherd dog. Uncastrated and normally I would have got him ‘done’ but due to his age and possible heart condition I didn’t. Then I had a call from a lady saying she had gone on holiday, left her little dog tied up in the garden and would I go and get him and look after him until she came home ! I was in fact in UK for the weekend so the poor thing was tied up for two days. At first all went well, the GS was fine with all the other dogs and cats, then he took against the other little dog (also not castrated). To cut a long (boring) story short the GS finally went for the little one in a nasty way. He had him in his mouth and was shaking and shaking him. I was screaming and trying to get the poor thing free but as old as he is the GS is very strong. The little dog had his head thrown back, also screaming, then he saw something to bite. And he bit. Don’t blame him. Only thing was, what he saw was my leg. Luckily Ernst heard all the noise, ran over and delivered a swift hard punch to the GS’s nose. Little Caramel was dropped and scurried away, thank goodness only bruised. He has since spent most of his time in our bedroom coming out cautiously to pee. The GS is in solitary until the guy’s family find a solution. As for me, well I have the mother and father of bruises plus a nice little row of teeth marks. It was flipping Mothers’ Day too, so no chance of staying off work – in fact I had to do a 12 hour shift ! Got to the Doctor, finally, who said that the leg won’t have to be amputated (bummer, could have given up work !).