A Flatmate He Did Not Choose

Furuq was going away for five days. Since I work from home and already go for long walks every day, it seemed natural to offer to look after her chow chow, Chico, and take him with me.

Two things happened across those five days. He slowly decided he could tolerate me, and I ended up in A&E on IV antibiotics. They happened within the same five days, so this is one timeline rather than two.

What a chow chow actually is

An ancient northern Chinese spitz breed, used for guarding and hunting long before anyone kept one in a flat. Almost everything about how it behaves follows from that, and almost nothing follows from what it looks like, which is a teddy bear.

Trait	Where it comes from	How it showed up with Chico
Aloof by design	Bred to guard property rather than to work alongside a handler	Spent most of five days on the balcony, facing away from me
Independent	Temperamentally closer to a cat than to a retriever	Left the room if I walked over, returned only on his own terms
Stubborn	Intelligent and not remotely biddable	Did things when he had decided to, not when asked
Guarding instinct	Watchdog breed, wary of strangers and of anything sudden	Growled at me from across the flat on the second morning
Low food motivation	Will not take food from someone it has not accepted	Refused every treat I offered until day four
Limited peripheral vision	Deep-set eyes and heavy facial folds	Bit me when I came at him from the side holding a lead
Heat sensitivity	Double coat built for northern China	Drooled through a London July, everywhere, non stop

The middle column is from kennel club breed standards and veterinary breed profiles. The right column is five days in a one bed flat.

Kennel club guidance is to approach a chow chow from the front rather than from the side, because it genuinely cannot see you coming. On the Monday morning I reached for him twice from the side with a lead in my hand, and the second attempt is what put me in A&E two days later.

Here is how the week ran.

gantt
    title Five days, two threads
    dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD
    axisFormat %a
    section Chico
    Keeping his distance    :2026-07-26, 3d
    Warming up              :2026-07-29, 1d
    Letting me near him     :2026-07-30, 2d
    section The wrist
    Ignoring it             :2026-07-27, 2d
    IV antibiotics          :2026-07-29, 3d
    Oral antibiotics        :2026-07-31, 5d

Sunday, he arrives

He arrived in the evening. I left the balcony door open and he took himself out there to sleep, which is where he slept every night after that.

Around 3am, I woke to a noise and turned towards my bedroom door. Chico was standing in the corridor, looking in at me. Once he saw that I was awake, he walked off and went back to the balcony. He did that a few times over the week. It felt as though he was checking I was still there, and once he had confirmed it, he wanted nothing more to do with me.

After that I left my bedroom door open on purpose. In the mornings I would call him from bed and hear his feet coming down the hall, then he would stop in the doorway, look at me, and walk off again. He never once came into the room all week. The doorway was as far as he was prepared to go, and that was clearly a decision rather than shyness.

Monday, the bite

I got the lead out to walk him before the gym. He would not have it. Every time I came near him he moved off, and when I finally got close enough he caught my right hand with a small nip. I did not think much of it. Second attempt, left hand, he bit properly and got the inside of my wrist. It bled.

Washed it with soap and water, put a plaster on it, went back to the lead. By then I could see the actual problem, which was a nervous dog in a flat he did not know with someone he had only ever met in passing. Chasing him with a lead was making it worse. So I sat near him and waited. Twenty minutes later he let me clip it on, and the second it was on he was fine. Good walk.

Dropped him home and went to the gym to start a new push pull programme. Could not hold a bar with that wrist, so I trained legs instead and told myself it was a minor thing.

Portobello in the afternoon, where he suddenly becomes a local celebrity. People stopped us constantly, which meant I ended up having conversations with all sorts of strangers. There are apparently at least two other chow chows around Lancaster Road, so half the people who came over were convinced he was one called Coco.

He also pisses on everything. Down Portobello that is a problem, because there is a stall or a shop front every few metres, and most of the walk is me pulling him off a table leg. He carries on lifting his leg long after there is anything left to give, including once inside Joe and The Juice while I was waiting on a coffee.

The wrist became increasingly sore through the evening and worse overnight. I slept, but kept waking up in pain. That was not ordinary inflammation. It was the infection setting in.

Tuesday, ignoring it

I woke to find him on the far side of the flat watching me, and then he growled. Getting the lead on took another twenty minutes. I was far more patient by then, but also much more wary.

This was the pattern in the flat generally. It is a one bed and he spent most of it out on the balcony facing away, or sitting on his own in the corridor. If I stood up he would lift his head. If I walked over he would leave.

Food was the same story. I used to have a Labrador who would clear a full bowl in under a minute and keep going until he was sick. Chico gets his bowl in the morning and picks at it across the day, and I am fairly sure he ate most of it while I was asleep. He would not take a treat from my hand at all in those first few days, though he would come over and sit patiently every time I ate, without begging or pushing at me for any of it. One night I gave him some of my salmon and he loved that.

He also barely made a sound. Two or three barks across the whole five days, which is not what the breed notes led me to expect, since chow chows have a reputation for alarm barking. Whatever he was doing out on that balcony, he was doing it quietly.

The wrist had swollen by then and was too sore to train, so I skipped the gym. Two people told me to go to hospital, although I thought it was probably just normal swelling around the joint. At that point, I still was not taking the risks of a dog bite seriously, so I ignored them both.

Wednesday, 48 hours in

Day three, and something shifted with him. No growl in the morning, and when I went to the door he came over and wagged his tail. That turned out to be the signal.

flowchart TD
    A[Lead in hand] --> B{Tail wag at the door}
    B -- Yes --> C[Clip it on, takes seconds]
    B -- No --> D[Sit down within sight, no reaching, no eye contact]
    D --> E[Wait]
    E --> B
    C --> F[Completely fine once it is on]

Waiting is the entire technique. Every second I spent moving toward him with the lead reset the clock, and every minute I spent sitting still brought it forward. Twenty minutes on the Monday, seconds by the Thursday.

I went to the gym and did some light back work. A personal trainer saw the wrist and told me to get it checked immediately. Three more people said the same thing that day. Six separate sources across two days, all saying one thing, and I overrode every one of them until the last.

Walk in centre at St Charles, triaged at 09:11. Redness spreading up the forearm, measured at 10cm by 6cm, with pain and reduced movement in the wrist. They explained this was past what an urgent care centre could treat, wrote a letter and sent me straight to A&E at Chelsea and Westminster, where they found a deep puncture wound with spreading infection.

What they did there. Cleaned the wound out properly, IV co-amoxiclav and IV ceftriaxone, a tetanus booster, an X-ray that came back clear, and a pen line drawn around the redness so they could see whether it advanced or retreated. Then they wanted to keep me in overnight for observation, and I declined, because I had a dog at home who needed walking.

Came back, walked him, and then took him over to my dad’s, since he was cooking. My sister was there and a flatmate, and I had no idea how Chico would handle a room of people he had never met. The one thing I knew was that there was a balcony.

Lead off, he had a wander, then took himself out to that balcony. I told everyone not to stroke him because I could not predict what he would do. We ate, and partway through he came over and I gave him some chicken, then my dad fed him some as well. We were there about an hour and he was fine the whole time. Not aggressive, not anxious, just there.

The part that surprised me was leaving. I went to the door and he came over on his own. I held it open, he walked out, and by the block door he stood still while I put the lead on. Smoothest it had been all week.

Why the wrist went bad so fast

I had assumed a bite was just a cut. It is not.

• It is a puncture, not a slash. Teeth push bacteria several millimetres into the tissue and then the small surface hole closes over the top. A wound that bleeds freely and stays open flushes itself. This one sealed the bacteria in.
• Dog jaws crush as well as pierce. Damaged tissue has a worse blood supply, so immune cells and antibiotics reach it less well.
• The wrist is the wrong place for it. Barely any soft tissue, and multiple tendon sheaths running through that act as channels for infection to travel along instead of walling it off. Hand and wrist bites go bad fastest.
• The maths. Pasteurella multocida divides every 30 to 60 minutes, so 48 hours is somewhere between 48 and 96 generations.

Left another few days it stops being an antibiotics problem and becomes a surgical one, and flexor tenosynovitis at the wrist can cost permanent finger movement.

Going back through the photos on my phone, the moment is obvious. Twenty four hours in, my forearm was redder than the bite itself. Redness that has moved away from the wound is not bruising and it is not irritation, it is infection travelling, and that was the point to go. I had the evidence in my camera roll and read it as a sore wrist, then gave it another twenty four hours.

What I should have done

• Let it bleed. NHS guidance is to squeeze a bite gently so it bleeds a little, unless it is already bleeding freely, because that flushes contaminated blood out rather than sealing it in. I stopped mine early with a plaster.
• Wash it for far longer. Five minutes under running water with soap, not the thirty seconds I gave it. That single step does more than anything else available at home, because you are diluting the bacterial load before it takes hold.
• Go the same day, for antibiotics rather than for stitches. Puncture wounds to the hand or wrist are treated as high risk on sight, and the standard response is a preventative course of co-amoxiclav. Same day that is three to five days of tablets. At 48 hours it was IV antibiotics and two hospitals.
• Draw a line around the redness. The hospital did this with a pen so they could see whether it was advancing or retreating. Doing it yourself on day one turns a vague feeling that it looks worse into something you can actually measure.

None of that is a guarantee. Hand and wrist bites get infected at a far higher rate than bites anywhere else, and a share of them turn bad despite immediate washing and despite preventative antibiotics, because the bacteria are millimetres deep before you have done anything at all. Doing all four shifts the odds rather than removing them. What it does remove is the two day head start I handed it.

A dog bite is not a cut that happens to be round. Go the same day, even when it looks like nothing, and especially if it is on a hand or a wrist.

Thursday, the turn

I woke up with much better movement and far less pain. The redness looked a little lighter, but it had spread beyond the pen line, so I was not sure whether it was actually improving.

I took him out twice before hospital, once at first light and again just before I left. There is a park near me where I had started letting him off the lead, something I would not have risked during the first three days. He runs himself out, then comes back when he has had enough and stands there while I clip the lead back on. Chow chows are not known for reliable recall, so him choosing to return was not a small thing.

Before I left, he took a treat from my hand. Roast chicken at my dad’s the night before was not a fair test, since almost any dog will take that, whereas a plain dog treat is the one he had turned down all week. Going back to the point about food above, this is something I might have missed if I had not read about the breed. A chow chow refusing food from your hand is not fussiness. It is a verdict, and taking it means the verdict is changing.

He also came over while I was working, lay down beside my chair and stayed there.

Back to hospital for more IV antibiotics and repeat bloods, and another four hours of waiting. They soaked the wound, re-dressed it, and plastics came down to look. Same answer as the day before about staying in, same answer from me.

Came home from all that and he was pleased to see me, which was new. Lead straight on, no hesitation, none of the sitting on the floor waiting him out.

Portobello on a summer evening is the best version of that walk. Heat off, everything winding down, no rush anywhere. He does have a habit of stopping dead in the middle of the pavement and refusing to move, and there is nothing you can do with that other than stand there and wait. Eventually he starts walking again like nothing happened.

Later on he was back out on the balcony facing away, and I called him. He came straight over, let me stroke him all over his face, then laid down, rolled onto his back and let me rub his belly for a good five minutes. Then he got up and took himself back out to the balcony.

Three days earlier he had bitten me for approaching him with a lead. A guarding breed rolling over and showing you its stomach is not a small thing, and after four hours in a hospital chair it was the best part of my week.

The other thing I had worked out by then is that I liked having him in the flat, which is a separate matter from him wanting anything from me. Most of the time he was out on the balcony with his back to me while I worked or watched something, and the place was better for it. Presence turns out to be most of what a dog actually gives you, and none of it requires the dog to be interested in you.

Friday, the last day

Woke up and the redness had pulled back inside the pen line for the first time. Wrist moves close to normal now.

Out at 6am to the local park. I took the Sony a6700 with me because I needed a photo for this post and wanted to catch him properly in motion. Really, I wanted the moment after he goes, when he kicks the soil out behind him with his back legs hard enough to tear up a decent patch of ground. I set the shutter speed to 1/2500 to freeze it.

Sony a6700 at 1/2500, quick enough to freeze both back legs mid-scrape.

That is not him tidying up after himself. Dogs have scent glands between their toes, so the scraping spreads the smell around and leaves an obvious visual mark on top of it. Given how much of the week he spent marking Portobello, it was entirely on brand.

Then I put him in the front seat of the car and took him to Holland Park, first time I have been there right as it opens at half seven. He ran around properly, and that was the most energy I had seen out of him all week.

He also walks into shops. Not past them, into them. Today it was Tesco, and he went in like he had a list.

The drooling is the other thing that I find hilarious. It goes everywhere, all over the passenger seat on the drive back, and in a couple of shops he left a puddle big enough that I apologised on the way out, and offered to clean it up.

I looked into why, because I had assumed it was a jowl thing. Dogs do not sweat to cool down, they pant, and panting means an open mouth with air running constantly over a wet tongue. Hours of hard panting burn through a lot of saliva. Chico is carrying a dense double coat built for northern Chinese winters, so he overheats faster than most dogs would in a London July, pants harder to compensate, and the drool follows from that. A mastiff drools because its lips are loose. This is a cooling system running flat out in the wrong climate.

Heavy drooling alongside fast noisy panting, bright red gums or reluctance to keep walking is heat stress rather than a quirk. Shade, water, and early walks rather than afternoon ones.

Back at hospital in the afternoon for the third time in three days, and more bloods.

Marker	Wed 29th	Thu 30th	Fri 31st	Reading
CRP	9.6	7.3	6.0 mg/L	Down again, still above the ceiling of 5
WBC	8.4	8.6	6.7	In range throughout
Neutrophils	5.6	5.4	4.2	In range, now falling

Two consecutive drops in CRP alongside falling neutrophils is the shape you want. It is the inflammatory response winding down rather than holding steady, which is what would have suggested the antibiotics were not reaching it. White cells never left the normal range at any point, which is the line between localised cellulitis and something the whole body is fighting.

Waiting on the doctor now, and it turned out to be one more IV dose and a five day course of tablets to take home.

Furuq came to collect him in the evening. I buzzed her up and told her to let herself in, mostly because I wanted to see what he would do. He was out on the balcony cooling off after the walk. The second the door went he was up and moving down the corridor at pace, and when he saw her he lost it completely, which after five days of a dog who would not cross my bedroom doorway was quite something to watch.

Before they left I got a proper chest hug off him. Best thing that happened to me all week, and I had been in hospital three days running.

A week later

Five days of oral antibiotics and it cleared. I was back in the gym seven days after the bite, wrist still bruised and a bit sore, but working.

Someone at the gym reckoned I never spiked a fever because I am fit and look after myself. That is not really it. No fever means the infection stayed local to the arm and never got into the bloodstream, which is a fact about how far it had travelled rather than how healthy I am. The part he had right is the sting in it. Fever is the alarm most people actually respond to, and I never got one, so nothing ever forced my hand. The redness climbing my forearm was the alarm. I just was not reading it as one.

Looking back

It took six people telling me to go, and the only reason it stayed a few hours in A&E rather than an admission is that I got there at 48 hours instead of 96. Next time it is the same day, whatever it looks like.

Furuq told me something after she collected him. I had been clipping the lead to the ring on top of the harness, the one that sits between his shoulder blades, which meant reaching over his head and down behind his neck every time I went near him. The ring I should have been using is on the chest strap below the neck, where he can watch your hand the whole way in.

Deep-set eyes behind heavy folds, a thick ruff, a neck that does not turn far. A hand arriving over the top lands where he cannot see it and cannot turn to follow it. Approaching from the front would not have saved me either, because the clip point was behind his neck, so the last part of the reach was going to be wrong whichever side I started from. Five days of sitting on the floor waiting him out, and the answer was a different ring on a harness he was already wearing.

None of which is his fault. He was a nervous dog, cornered from the side by someone he had met a handful of times, at seven in the morning, by a man holding a lead he could not properly see. Five days of feeding him, walking him twice a day and clearing up after him, and he gave nothing back at all until the fourth one. With any other dog I have known that would read as a bad deal. With Chico it felt like something I had actually earned, which is the thing I keep coming back to. He does not treat you like an owner. He treats you like a flatmate he did not choose, and by the end of the week he had decided you were alright.