Dougall’s my brother.  Most people have trouble telling us apart but I have a white lip and chin and only a little white on my body, and Dougall has a brown face and a white bottom and white band round his middle.  I was a big strong boy when I was born and he was scrawny and skinny and Auntie Vikki wasn’t sure he’d make it.  He made it all right!  We’re four years old now and for most of that time he’s been even bigger than me.   Trouble is, while I’m big and lean, and muscly, Dougall was fat.  Well, tubby.  Overweight.  Had love handles.

Had.

Sometime in the last few weeks he started losing weight.  Mummy noticed, of course.  She’s good at noticing these things.  We even went for a check-up with Dr Sally to discuss it and although she found some other problems she just said to keep an eye on things.

Then last week (or was it the week before, now?) Mummy realised that Dougall was finding it difficult to eat.  She looked at his teeth again, but couldn’t find anything wrong, but he started losing a lot of weight so he went back to Dr Sally who gave him some pink banana-juice and some metacam, and Mummy added some bio-brew.  Dr Sally thought he might have something wrong with his front teeth because they’d gone a bit crooked and there was some blood on his gum.  And the next day Mummy could smell a nasty smell which she said was an abscess.  Well, Dougall still wasn’t eating and he was pretty miserable, so I just kept an eye on him and cuddled up to him, and took the food away before it got manky, ‘cos it’s not nice sitting in front of manky food you don’t feel like eating.  It was very tasty, mind.  And Mummy started giving Dougall Victor’s special tubefood, called Emeraid, which is quite tasty, although it does get stuck in our hair if we drip it down our chins.  I used to help Vic clean his off.

Anyway, so far the food is helping and Dougall’s abscess isn’t smelly any more and Mummy’s hoping he’ll be okay.  She says he might go back to see Dr Sally again tomorrow.

Poor Dougall.  I hope he feels better soon.