Ziggy the Nutter?

Buster here again, folks.

Phew! It looks like Ziggy forgot the bit about me describing him as a nutter at the beginning of his story, so I’ll fill you in on that myself.

Well, to start with, it’s a little unfair to call him a nutter as such. It’s just that he has these fits. The first time I saw it happen, I really had no idea what was going on. He was sitting down and then suddenly started glaring at his own bum. Then he started this low, rumbling growl which eventually turned into a bark.

He barked at his bum a few times and by now he was standing up. Then he suddenly started whirling round and round looking exactly like he was trying to bite his own arse. He was really going for it and looked like he could do himself serious damage if he actually managed to connect.

He was barking and growling all the time and as he spun, his saliva flew all over the place. In fact, some of it hit me on the nose as I watched and I thought, ’Urgh.’ Anyway, the fit lasted four or five minutes and eventually he began to calm down. By now he was totally exhausted.

I’ve got used to Ziggy’s fits now and so have the others and we mostly ignore it and just let him get on with it. Sometimes he has better days than others but even on a good day he has at least a couple of fits.

We’ve overheard the humes talking about Ziggy’s fits and they’ve taken him to Petros, the dog-doc, loads of times for all kinds of tests and things. They’ve also tried various drugs but nobody really knows what Ziggy’s problem is. We don’t really like to ask Ziggy himself and the humes obviously can’t. They think he probably had his tail cut off when he was very young and that it was done badly - something about cutting too short and through a bone rather than between bones.

Poor Ziggy. When he’s not having these fits he seems quite happy and he’s a good laugh. We all hope that the humes will find a cure for him one day but who knows?