A very bad December

Now I can do a post about what happened during December.

Starting with the treatment, I did manage to be seen on the Friday evening. The nurse who had volunteered to stay behind on the Thursday also did so on the Friday too, so that was much appreciated. Clearly, this is proving much more difficult for him to organise than he first thought (especially as he’d been in the US for several days at a conference, running up to the treatment day). Maybe, if he is actually in the country, February’s session will run more smoothly. We will see.

However, as you will have gathered, the big news for December, was that Pippa died. She was absolutely fine on the Wednesday evening until about 9:30, when she took herself off to one of her favourite chairs, in the dining room, overlooking the back garden. I went downstairs to let her outside at bed-time, around 11:30, and found that she had been sick in several places around the house. I let her into the garden while I cleared this up, and found that she wouldn’t (or couldn’t) come back. She was lying on the grass, in the cold and obviously pretty unwell.

I picked her up, brought her back in and settled her into her bed.

In the morning, she was pretty much lifeless. She couldn’t stand and her breathing was laboured and shallow. I took her to the vet and waited outside with her until he opened. She was on the passenger seat of the car, and her breathing more or less stopped while we waited. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat and thought that she had died then.

On his surgery table, he heard a faint beat and I obviously left her with him. I kissed her on her head as he took her into the treatment room and she just about managed to look at me. She died at around 11:30. The vet thinks that she probably had a massive stroke on the Wednesday evening. She was only 9 ½ and she was a beautiful dog.

We will collect her ashes after the New Year holidays are over and take her up to Thurstaston Common, her favourite local walk. Lots of squirrels to chase for eternity up there. (Tears are rolling down my cheeks as I type this…)

The house is so empty. Yesterday, New Year’s Eve, was the first time in those 9 ½ years that I had been totally alone in the house. She was like a Philip Pullman daemon. She was always with you and I reckon that I spent more time in her company than Ann’s. Her loss has been terrible. I loved that dog.

So. We will need to buy another dog sometime this year – probably in the Summer when we get back from holiday. A 50^th Birthday present, maybe. The house and the family is now incomplete without one.