Another sad day

Barney passed over the rainbow bridge this afternoon.  He was the first of our rescue dogs, arriving from Spain with George but coming to us before George needed a new UK home.  He had been unwell for a few weeks but nothing serious.  The vet gave him a course of Steroids to deal with an abscess in his ear where another dog had nipped him when playing.  He then developed a stomach but and was prescribed a course of antibiotics.  While he was on these he started to loose weight.  That didn't seem like a major issue as we were restricting his diet to cut out a lot excess calories from treats, in fact we were really quite happy as he came down to his target weight.  

Barney in the sun

The problem was that he continued to loose weight. We knew he had a liver problem which was responding well to a dietary supplement (with milk thistle extract what ever that is). It was when he started to be very quiet and not want to climb the stairs or go for walks that alarm bells started to ring. He was still eating though. In fact last night he ate a large part of my Pork Chop! What was really worrying was that he started to loose coordination in his back legs. Nothing major just occasionally skittering rather than standing straight up. That was until this morning when he didn't want to stand up and most concerning he had a nose bleed. So off to the Vets he went. They kept him in for some tests the results showed his liver function had improved, but his heart rate was high, he was running a temperature and his blood sugars were through the roof. we got a call to say that they were extremely worried. To carry out further tests would need him to be anaesthetised and they didn't think he would be able to cope with that. The incipient diabetes could be treated but the biggest issue was that he was probably had some sort of tumour in his nose or head which was causing his nose bleeds and general lethargy. We were given the choice of a lot of unpleasant tests he may well not survive and which probably wouldn't help or having him put to sleep. Not a great situation.

We drove over to the Vets, a drive of 30 minutes, and when we got there his condition had deteriorated even further.  His nose bleed was worse, he could only just manage to turn his head to look at us and couldn't summon up the energy for a tail wag.  His gums were very pale (which they hadn't been that morning) and generally he just wasn't in a good state.  The decision was as easy as it ever can be and he was PTS after we had time to say our goodbyes and give him a last cuddle.  He slipped away very calmly and quickly.  He was ten and a half years old.

Mrs E and I are very upset as you might imagine even though we know it was the right thing to do for Barney.  Whoever said 'Grief is the price you pay for love' knew what they were talking about.

A walks not a walk without squirrels

 A dog related tale or possibly tail (woof woof).  

Since George’s death Barney has been an only dog.  While he has missed George, he hasn't been pining.  In fact, he seems to be a more 'cheerful' dog as he gets longer walks now that we don't have to take George's arthritis into account.  He gets a long walk to the local park every day and is able to have a good run, off his lead, while there.  The real bonus is that he isn't barking at other dogs as George is no longer there to start him off.  Even better he has been playing with a few of them which wouldn't have been possible with George along.

Now that Barney can be allowed to roam free he has discovered the joy (and frustration) of squirrels!  It is a very mild autumn up here in Humberside and the squirrels in the park are still very active even in December.  Barney has taken to stalking them and then making a final mad dash over the last ten yards to try to catch the little grey devils.  To date he has been unsuccessful because of trees.  Squirrels climb them you know, and Barney considers this unsporting rodent behaviour.  This does not stop him trying though and he does seem to be considering tree climbing lessons as an option.

So, life goes on without George.  We miss his cheeky behaviour and the way he always came to greet us if we had been out, clutching something in his jaws with his little stumpy tail wagging ten to the dozen.  We don't miss his choice of things to bring to greet us with quite so much, I actually liked some of those cushions.  The local hedgehogs are sleeping more soundly as well, now that he isn't getting up in the wee small hours to chase them around the garden.  So to finish here are a few pictures of George in his last year, cheeky until the end 😛.

George (like Snoopy) considered the saddest sight in the world to be an empty dog dish

Faster my good women I must be at the park before 2.00pm

George hoping that there is food on the table

I have tagged this post under 'George and Barney' at some future point I suppose I will have to change that to something like 'Our dogs', but not just yet.

 

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

 

George Dog is unwell!

Sad to say he has a tumour under his tongue and bumps, lumps and sore patches elsewhere as well.  He seems OK in himself and the Vet is of the opinion that for the moment there is nothing to do other than keep an eye on how things develop.  Although it is quite a large tumour it isn't interfering with his ability to eat or breath so until it does we wait.  At that point it may be possible to remove it without too much trouble but we wouldn't know at that point if it was malignant or not, and if the latter if it has spread.  Bugger!

George last year, before he became ill

Still happy especially with a new toy

He is about nine years old now, I say about as he is a rescue from Spain so we can't be certain as to his exact age.  He has slowed down a bit in the last couple of years but still loves his walks, although of late he's struggled with the stairs and doesn't always want to come upstairs to sleep at night.

We knew that there would come a time when health issues would arise, we just didn't realise how quickly that was going to be upon us.

Barney on the other hand continues in the same old way, barking at every passing dog cat, squirrel or hedgehog and generally lording it around the house and garden.  No signs of slowing down with him.

Barney doing cute

Random Thoughts #2 - home thoughts from, well, home

With this period of enforced lockdown restricting access to news (when was the last time there was anything of substance reported that wasn't Covid-19 related) I have begun to realise how life must have been before the mass media.  While I still turn on the news I don't actually miss the lack of the details of latest events in some far flung ex-outpost of empire or the inability of some people to realise that shooting large numbers of other people is not a sure fire way to solve problems.  I suppose it's the curse of news programmes having a set length, they have to find something to fill the bulletin with even if it's pure drivel (or Donald Trump as it is more commonly termed around here).

It's almost like we have moved backwards in time to the long ago days of my childhood.  The skies are bluer, the birds sing more loudly and sound travels without being drowned out by the incessant rumble of passing, planes, trains and automobiles.  All that is missing is the sound of passing Blackpool trams in the distance and I could be back in Anchorsholme, in my grandparent's garden in the early 1960s.  For me at least the pace of life has slowed too, as I'm working from home, so no mad rush to get to the office, no worries about travel delays and very few frantic calls from clients.  I'm begining to see the attractions of my retirement next year.

Strangely I don't seem to have as much free time though.  The absence of work related time loss means we (that's Mrs E and I) have the time to take on those bigger jobs around the house and garden we had put off until we had enough time to start and finish them at one go.  So the extra free time bizarrely means I have less free time for the things I spent that time doing before.  The real bonus is that Mrs E and I haven't spent such a long and uninterrupted period of time together since we were students.  I don't disappear for a couple of days at a time to go to visit clients  and we are both home all day everyday.  It's a wonder she hasn't done me some serious harm for being underfoot all the time (only joking).

Even George and Barney seem to be enjoying us being at home all the time. Although they are not getting as many walks as before they are getting more time with their favourite humans.  We get time to play with them in the garden and if we are doing gardening things they amble around out there taking in the smells and hoping to catch a hedgehog (which we disapprove of much to their disgust) or a small crunchy rodent.  George has signed up as apprentice hole digger, he will move up to journeymen status once he learns to dig where we actually want a hole.

George (L) and Barney (R) say stay indoors like this.

While the cause of this temporary slow down is not a thing to be happy about in any way, shape of form, if you look hard enough there are some silver linings.  With clouds as dark as these it would be horrible if there weren't.

Stay safe everyone and I hope you and yours are all virus free.

Ambush Markers

ADLG uses some hidden deployment rules which need markers for the rough location of the unit in ambush, or blinds where they could be (but aren’t).  As I had some H&R figures that were not being used for anything I thought I could use them on the markers.  I wanted something a little better than a simple square with a ID number on it so I started to think about what might stop the other side being certain of what was in the potential ambush location.

What I came up with was the element of doubt, the 'are those troops or just bushes in the shadows/mist/gloom' factor.  To recreate that I decided that a simple paint job of Vallejo sky gray, with a black ink wash was enough for the troops it gives some detailing but overall keeps the idea of not quite being able to see what it is you are looking at idea going.  I based then with my usual fine sand textured base but painted some random gray patches rather than adding flock.and then added something to represent mist.

As luck would have it (not saying what kind of luck) George our Brittany had decided to disembowel a dog bed and I had tufts of stuffing material all over the place.  Clearly no one was going to miss a bit of that when it came to restuffing the bed so I grabbed some and added it to my bits box.

George, my able assistant and destroyer of dog beds

With a bit of teasing out it became thin enough to look vaguely like mist and a drop of glue was enough to hold it in place.  I wrote a code letter on the underside of the base and done.  I'm not claiming them as great works of art but they are good enough for a game marker.  

What's that coming over the hill, is it a dog bed, is it a dog bed?