a warning to us all

This is Tusia, a calm, brown, slightly overweight dog. And that black blur is her 5 month old son Atom. As in the bomb.


That's not just a bad shot, he always looks like that. A fuzzy blur with a wildly wagging back end.
Oh, ok he does stay still occasionally. On those rare occassions he looks likes this.

Don't let that sweet face fool you. He is Marek's sister's dog and as she is in China for 3 weeks and Marek's parents were asking Marek to sell the little bugger on the internet before she gets back, we decided it was time to do a good deed. Atom came to Warsaw on holiday for a couple of days. Oh yeah.

The first evening was a laugh. He explored, played with a nut (beats a stuffed doggy toy every time) and fought with us. Oh yes, there was a little 'naughty puppy!' moment too. But the real fun began when we went to bed.

Atom usually sleeps in the kitchen with his mum. This was the first time in his short life that he had ever been left alone. We waited for the crying to begin. He whined and scratched at the door. Leave him a little longer, he'll settle down we told ourselves. He whined some more, and after long long minutes of this gave a couple of tenative little barks. I'll put him back in his bed and see if he settles down I said, worried about what the neighbours would think about a barking dog at 1am.

As I loomed out of the darkness towards him, he was so terrified he let out the most godawful noise I have ever heard from a creature that small. A mixture between a continuous bark and a repeated howl, mixed up with a splash of raw pure fear. Marek rushed in and picked him up, trying to calm him down, while avoiding the puddle on the kitchen floor.

If he were our dog we'd have made him stick it out, but for a couple of days, it was just not worth the sleepless nights. Or the evil looks from equally sleep-deprived neighbours.

We ended up sleeping on the sofa-bed, with him curled at our feet. Worse than a baby I tell you.