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Christmas Holidays can be hard for many; those who are working, those doing the seasonal hosting and also for those who have recently lost one of their beloved four-legged friends during the year. And it happened to my family.
The first one was our family dog Buddy. A Fox Terrier cross, we were his fourth home. He was handsome and very energetic, loved walks, herding the unimpressed cats and eating anything he snuffled out with his super-olfactory senses and terrier persistence. I could not fault his temperament around people and many wary of dogs were soon fussing and patting him enthusiastically. But there were many incidences where he redefined gross! Vomit, poop and dead anything were on the menu. Then we had the things dogs shouldn’t eat like Christmas pudding, liqueur chocolates, rat bait, grapes, the treats in the puppy packs in the clinic and the jam in the sealed jar left in a bag in the hall. I still haven’t worked that out, and the jar wasn’t even cracked!
With his unstable appetite weight gain was a constant struggle but kept under control by Barge Park walks and waterfall excursions. He was (mostly) popular at Whangarei Rowing Club training sessions eating eight sausages in a single sitting at the annual prize giving barbeque one year. The young rower who fed him thought he was still hungry, so kept feeding him! His talent for locating the smelliest dead carcass for miles around and returning to the shed tail happily wagging cleared the place quicker than any fire drill. We chucked him in the river after one, the ‘worst dog ever.’
Buddy was a healthy dog and supplied many blood samples to calibrate the older blood analyser machines in clinic. His first lump was a particularly awkward sarcoma on his left foreleg wrapped around his cephalic vein which I could not completely remove. When the histopathology report returned with ‘incomplete excision’ I thought he had a few months to live at the most. But some patients don’t read textbook and it never returned – at least not in that location. Just as we were thanking our lucky stars, Buddy developed snoring and sneezing that was very marked after his daily swim. But when his left upper nose swelled up, we knew he was one of the unlucky 15% that had spread to another body part. For several months he was happy, as the mass was inoperable, he was put on pain relief medication. Sight deteriorated in his left eye early on but he coped. It was the suddenness with which he lost his sight in the right eye that made the decision. He was trying to climb the compost heap, both disoriented and distressed. The time had come to euthanize and just like that, he was gone after 13 and a half years.
Custard, the ginger ninja started his life with us as a snotty flu-ridden kitten found dodging traffic and highway 5 in Auckland. A kind client brought him into the clinic I then worked at and my acerbic colleague scheduled him for the SPCA to pick up. He was a friendly, if unattractive kitten and so I persuaded my landlord and the SPCA to allow me to take him home. At the time, cats and kittens were euthanised in Auckland so we saved him from death. He loved perching on our shoulders, deafening us with a loud rattly purr and sneezing green snot into our ears. He devoured many human foods with spaghetti Bolognese a favourite. The ninja part was as a result of an accident on my elder daughter’s 8th birthday. He became trapped on a waratah fighting off two attacking Jack Russell’s. Although the nerve damage led to the death of his right hind leg over a few days needing amputation, the dogs needed multiple vet appointments for their wounds. Hence, he earned his ninja belt.
Custard was a very easy-going cat, and a most excellent rat catcher. He had a few health issues including multiple pancreatitis flare ups. Several times I thought that it was the end for him with the loss of appetite and vomiting everywhere. But he always rallied. Arthritis plagued him in his later years as it does most amputee animals, but the new Solensia injection maintained his mobility very well.
He sort of faded away in the end, became thin and jaundiced hardly eating or moving around much, life was a burden on those thin 19 year shoulders. We all made a fuss of him and he drifted peacefully away as I gave him the final injection. Not easy to do that for your old feline friend, but a responsibility I owed him. It was 2 months after Buddy. So now there is no 5:45am meow call to feed the old tripod, no wet dog nose shoved into my hand in the morning. There is little animal hair in my vacuum cleaner and I have to mop my own kitchen floor more frequently as the floor hyenine specialist is no more. And it’s the little things I miss as well as their companionship, but both of them had a good life and we were privileged to have known them both.
Written by Dr Jane Nichols
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