OK. This could get boring for those of you who have followed the complete background, as I'll be repeating myself from other threads! Thank you again for all the input and feel free to ignore what's turning into a v v long thread!
Re. the natural swimming pond - there's no graduated edge, so if he fell in, he couldn't haul himself out. There's pipework and planting round the edge which he mustn't dig up and electrics too plus wire, just under the earth, for the natural pump system - all dangerous for a notoriously digger-dog like Rollo!
Re. cat poo, the vet found a type of unusual worm in Rollo's diarrhoea at one point that they said had come directly from cat poo - which at that stage, he'd eaten in vast quantities. They told me to stop him eating cat poo particularly and as the neighbour cats consider our garden to be their main toilet in the area, I stopped Rollo accessing any soil areas.
The vets have also said DON'T let him drink any water from puddles, ponds and never never go near the sea or salt water, as his sensitive tummy will produce vomit and diarrhoea galore! (Gone are my fantasies about taking Rollo ever to the beach). Again, I feel I daren't risk going against the vets' advice but I realise some of you think I should.
I had spent a lot of money and 2 full days, putting up temporary fencing for one area of the lawn that I thought was dog safe. However, all he did when he was out there was dig massive holes and eat the earth and grass and dandelion and daisy roots in massive quantities, which made him ill again (that was last year). Where he weed, the grass went yellow and died and then he'd dig more very deep holes there. Obviously the garden now looks terrible and it WAS my main hobby and joy, pre-dog. But more important than the destruction of the garden was that it became yet another hazard for Rollo. I could never leave him there unattended.
I then tried only letting him out in the large fenced part with his muzzle on - but all he'd do was scrape his face against the ground and then dig, dig dig massive holes in frustration. So then I only let him go out there when I was free to play with him and supervise - but the time I have for that is desperately limited.
So then someone on here - or in RL - said, look, you don't have to give him access to the garden if you give him 2 good off lead walks a day. This I did - till his recall went a few weeks ago (obviously still working on that) so he only now gets on-lead walks. Haven't found anywhere at all locally where I can know he can't escape under a fence etc and across fields and roads. So currently trying to increase the time of on-lead walks, given he's getting much less exercise than before.
Re. barking: he's NOT a barker. He mostly only ever barks if he's got diarrhoea, to signal he needs to go out. He was brilliant at toilet training and other than when he's ill, never had more than 2 small wee accidenys in the house at all, since coming home at 7 weeks old! But as you can see, barking equalled diarrhoea. So for ages, I stopped feeling able to ignore it and 99% of the time, he did indeed only bark to signal urgent toilet need.
As he got better, he stopped barking at all except on a few occasions when spooked by things like horses in the field backing onto our garden. On that ONE daytime occasion when he barked for 20 mins in fear, immediately my horrible, horrible neighbours telephoned to complain and said he was always barking! Total lie, as I work from home and he never barked normally and I would know. But this again made me totally fearful of letting him bark at all (we've had to go to the police in the past about those neighbours and their house isn't even attached to ours).
So that 'trained' me to become paranoid about him barking. Either it meant he was ill, in which case it woke the DCs too - or it merited nastiness from the neighbours. It's in this context that we all got worried the other night when he barked. We thought - is he ill again? Will the neighbours come round (they can be v threatening)? However, there's been a v v long period, whilst Rollo was fully well on antibiotics (and then coming off them) from August last yr to recently, when he both barely ever barked anymore and I was always able to ignore it, knowing it'd be brief and wasn't signalling illness.
That changed for me when he became ill recently. But of course I'm re-training myself to ignore it again!
Re. metronidazole, it's the antibiotic least likely to cause resistant to other ones and it only ever induced Rollo's poo to go nice and solid! The vets have said it's the lesser of two evils and warned me much more about steroids.
I am looking into getting a dog walker and have a contact possibly. There IS an issue about me needing them to pick up and deliver back Rollo at exactly a certain time, related to my type of work - but it may be possible still, to have a dog walker.
However, it really isn't the dog walks that are the worst of my stress. It's the having to get up so early to get him across the road to toilet first thing in the morning and the need constantly to be aware of his needs and exercise etc etc and never being able to follow through a task, in the incredibly limited time I have to do anything, because of Rollo's needs added to the DCs needs. However, this is clearly the area I can work on most, given all the helpful advice here - and stop worrying so much about Rollo's needs!
You'll be pleased to hear that last night I had a bath for the first time in 8 months (I shower every morning, I hasten to add), leaving Rollo barking and howling downstairs - and ignoring him. He did eventually stop, although it wasn't exactly a relaxing bath - but I DID it!! Major luxury for me!
We have 2 cats who are house cats and virtually ignored. I think I've considered a dog to be much more like another child than a cat but perhpas my attitude should be leaning towards some healthy neglect. I think I'm confused - or certainly have been - because pre-dog, when I read this forum, there was so much about the hours and hours of input a puppy needed with training, walking, interaction. I think I'm still influenced by all that stuff and still get aghast at RL friends who have a new puppy who spends most of his time in his crate, doesn't get walked every day at all and the 2 adults in the house both work more than fulltime (they do have a housekeeper though who I think lets the pup out into the garden). They say it's easy having a pup.
Maybe they're at one end of the spectrum and I'm at the other!
Rollo has just been picked up again by his trainer (I hear you all sigh!). I do admit to feeling masses and masses of relief, knowing that although I'm working tomorrow morning, I can sleep in till 7am, don't need to think about fitting in dog walks and can have some continuous time, between child care too, to do a few urgent household tasks.
Is that a sign that really I can't truly cope with having a dog, if I feel such immense relied that he's not here? He's going to have a brilliant time with the trainer as usual as she has 3 dogs he adores playing with, has nothing else to do with her life other than dogs and training and has loads of friends with dogs who love Rollo too...
Perhaps I should start a dog-blog or make an X-rated horror version of "Marley and Me"!