To all those who disapprove of dogs on the bed, please avert your eyes! Triar was not only on mine this morning, but IN it, as you can see. It’s not as cold now as it was in midwinter, but he’s still much better than a hot water bottle in the depths of the night.

I am finally moving on from the horrors of the Farm of Doom. It has taken me all week to do the paperwork, but I sent the last lot in late yesterday afternoon and felt lighter for it. I will likely get it back for amendments (my new Veterinary Advisor is lovely, but the opposite of slapdash) but the hardest work is over. I have sorted out all the photos into different folders for different dates.

I think it will go to court, so I will have to prepare a statement, but I can face those images now, even if some still pain me to the point of tears. There’s always a great big Why? in my head as I contemplate these things. How did it come to that point? But I guess that’s also something I hope never to know, because I hope I would never reach the point where I could neglect a living animal without reaching out for help or ensuring someone else steps in, but surely everyone normal thinks the same?

On Wednesday, I was tired. Good sleep is still intermittent, but I went to a church meeting in the evening with the possibility of writing group afterwards. At the end of the church meeting, I decided I would drive home while it was still light. I was rewarded with a beautiful sunset as I drove back down the hill near Torthorwald and I stopped to take photos.

There was, I noticed (bottom right in the top photo) an old road sign, telling the distances to Dumfries and “Lockerby” so I took a picture of that too. It happens quite often when I stop to admire something beautiful, that I notice something else to enjoy, that I would otherwise have missed.

I was unexpectedly rewarded, last thing on Friday, with an early, negative test result (work related) which means that a large body of work I thought I was going to have to tackle next week is no longer necessary. There is still routine work booked in (another welfare follow up, but I know it won’t be harrowing) and evidence shuffling from the Farm of Doom. However, I will now (hopefully) have time to tackle a task I will enjoy much more – building towards a training module for an aspect of TB case handling.

Not sure if I’m odd, but I love writing Standard Operating Procedures or instructions that are clear to follow. It seems intuitive to me to explain things, step by step, in easy to understand language.

I had the experience in Norway of taking many courses and doing a lot of training. There are few things more frustrating than having to go back and listen to three minutes of semi-comprehensible speil attached to a PowerPoint slide, over and over to catch the last few phrases that were quickly slurred and not written on the screen. It means that training that should take twenty minutes, takes an hour. Working in a language that is not your mother tongue has many unconsidered complications.

As we have many new starting vets who have (as I did) done slaughterhouse work until their language skills improved enough to do something a bit more challenging, I think understanding that will be very useful.

Anyway, I suppose I should get up and do some painting. The new bedrooms are not going to paint themselves and work has stopped until I do them. Hopefully this weekend should see that particular job completed. I’ll leave you with a couple of shots from Blackbird Lane. Have a lovely week all.