When events overtake you!

And they certainly have done that, with a vengeance.  There is no way to sugar coat the thing, George died on the 3rd of October.  We knew he was ill, and his arthritis had progressed despite all the best efforts of the vet.  Worse though was the tumour in his mouth.  That had grown to the point where he bit it every time he ate, and it was in danger of falling back and blocking his airway.  He was fine in himself wanting to go for walks and to come upstairs to sleep with us.  It was just that his joints were so sore that he struggled to do it.  I could watch him screw up the courage to climb or descend the stairs and walks required regular stops and sit downs.  I carried him up and down when it was too much for him.  Yet we never heard a whimper or a squeal from him.  We bought him a dog trailer that could be used as a dog pram so we could take him to the park and let him have a short walk there before wheeling him home again.  He only got to use it half a dozen times.

We took him to the vet thinking he would have some treatment options to offer, but when he examined him, he told us it was time to make the hard choice.  We were given the chance to take him home and return the next day, but we knew we wouldn't be able to handle that, and more importantly it would have upset George.  So, he was put to sleep that day after we had sat with him for a last time.  Mrs E and I were allowed to stay with him to the end which was mercifully fast.  We were both in bits and cried all the way home.  I collected his ashes this afternoon which had me in bits again.  Our other dog, Barney, seems to be coping better than we are although he keeps looking in all the places where George used to lie.  He even put two dog biscuits on the sleeping mat George used and has refused to eat the second one, almost like it is there for George.

He was the dog we didn't plan to have.  He was a rescue from Spain who came over to a family in Lancashire at same time Barney came to us.  The original adopters found he was too much for them to cope with and demanded that he be taken back off them with immediate effect.  The charity asked us to foster him while they found a kennels to board him in pending a new adopter.  Within a couple of hours of him turning up on our doorstep we knew we wanted to keep him.  Brittanys are a handful but if you stay firm (but kind) they respond really well to training.  At heart they want to please their humans and this was very true of George.  Indoors they are snuggle monsters while outdoors the hunting instinct takes over and they become rugged individualists!  All that said he was a pleasure to have around, a real dog's dog, the only dog I have ever known to actually bury bones and dig holes.  He made dens in the shrubs around the edge of the lawn and even stole cushions to take out to put in them.  Every evening a 6.50pm we would be barked at if we were not already getting collars and leads on for walkies.  He was a dog that liked things to happen on his timetable.

I never thought losing a pet could be so traumatic, made worse by the fact that he was only nine.  In normal circumstances he might have lived to be anything up to seventeen or eighteen, in fact we worried that he might outlive Mrs E and I or at least still be active when we no longer were!   He has left a very large cheeky Brittany shaped hole in our family, and it is all a bit raw at the moment.  

RIP George Dog - April 2013 - October 2022