Belgian Shepherd Dogs in Britain since 1974

Delator Tervueren & Groenendael

June into July.

Spring becomes Summer. Tervueren becomes Malinois. Coat becomes history.

14th May 2010. Disaster strikes.

We will never know how she did it because we didn't see it happen. Heidi suffered an injury to her left front upper leg. The chances are that it was a broken or cut branch in a hedge and that she ran onto the end of it. The result was an external skin laceration which produced a hole the size of a 2p piece but didn't penetrate deeper than the outer skin, so the muscle membrane wasn't damaged and there was no blood loss at all. The problem was that whatever had caused the injury had travelled down inside her leg creating a tunnel, so it was necessary to subject Heidi to general anaesthetic so the cavity could be thoroughly flushed and sterilised before the outer skin was stitched.

Heidi didn't bother about the injury at all, it didn't seem to cause her any pain and she didn't even fiddle about with it. It was only because she sniffed at the area that we had a look to see what was attracting her attention, even then it was necessary to part the thick fur to see that something was wrong. She spent the day at the vet's but not overnight (thankfully) and we were able to collect a very dopey girl at tea time. The vet did a magnificent job, after 10 days the stitches were removed to reveal a perfectly tidy repair with hardly a tiny scar. During June most of the fur grew back - just in time for Heidi to have a full double-coat moult in July!

At the start we blamed barbed wire (wrongly) and it has made us much more wary of hedges and fences to the extent that we researched our rights under the Highways Act to get barbed wire removed from roadside hedges. But the injury wasn't caused by barbed wire, it was a danger faced by every dog who runs in rough country. We reckon the value of running free far outweighs the risk of such a fluke injury so Heidi was running again as soon as she was fully recovered. Only porcelain dogs should be kept in cotton-wool.

During the recovery period Lady Luck smiled on Heidi and she won a 2-flavour chewy bone from Purina. Heidi was clever enough to take the special code from her Bonio box and type it into the Purina website. A day or two later the Postman delivered Heidi’s prize!

Heidi’s grooming session requires two sets of teeth: The teeth of the brush and the teeth of the laughing dog.