Friday was supposed to be a nice quiet easy-ish day after being in the childrens’ home on Wednesday and Thursday. We had a doctors appointment at 6pm, and people were coming around for an asado (BBQ) in the evening. So we spent the morning slowly, I walked the dog, did some shopping in advance of the evening, leaving the drinks and a few other things to buy later, had lunch, bit of a siesta…. At 4.30 we thought we’d make some coffee, do the washing up and start preparing stuff for the evening. At 5pm the dog arrived home squealing, with an absolutely massive gash in her chest, it was so big and deep and wide-open we honestly weren’t sure if she would survive, so Martin held her down and applied pressure, I phoned our usual vet, who gave me an emergency number for someone else, who in turn organised a different guy to come round. He turned our house into an operating theatre, put the dog out, shaved her, cleaned out the wound and stitched her up, she’s got three rows of stitches, one layer deep inside, then another layer a bit further out and then finally a third layer at skin level. Luckily it was her chest rather than the abdomen so her vital organs were protected by the ribs. We have no idea where or how she did it, but she’s always jumping over fences and walls, she’s convinced she’s a puma, so we can only assume it went badly wrong and that she landed on something, like a railing possibly, in mid-leap. We missed our doctor’s appointment, the vet left at seven leaving the house covered in blood and fur, and the dog still unconscious, with people due to arrive at eight and only half of the shopping done. So we did an emergency clean, an emergency shop, Martin lit the fire, I chopped salads and we were just about looking normal with the dog coming round kind of dozily when the first person arrived, which was luckily not till 8.30, this being Argentina and all. The asado went great in the end, Martin’s getting it off to a fine art, and he always receives lots of kudos for being a non-argentinian who has learnt how to do a good Argentinian asado. The dog managed to open one of her stitches slightly just as everyone was leaving soon after midnight, so we had to stop her bleeding, and then we kept getting up all night to check on her, but by the morning it seemed to have knitted itself, yesterday she spent the day lying around looking poor and sorry for herself but the wound’s only leaking slightly and she doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger. She’s still interested in food which is a good sign, although she’s so greedy I think it would take more than nearly bleeding to death to put her off her dinner!