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If you're worried about your pet's health, please speak to a vet or qualified professional.

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If you're worried about your pet's health, please speak to a vet or qualified professional.

The doghouse

I'm missing 'my' dog and just wanted to tell someone about him

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AllTheNewsINeed · 12/03/2013 22:38

First post here in the Doghouse and have name changed as this would be recognised in real life.

Late last year I found a little terrier roaming around and in a bit of a state. He had managed to wander inside a hospital where I'd gone for an appointment and he was very dirty, thirsty and stressed but also very friendly. He'd just run across a car park and was almost hit by a car, then trotted in through the doors I was leaving by and down a corridor, so I went after him.

I picked him up and tried to find his owner but there was nothing on his collar and after half an hour of waiting with him nobody seemed to be looking for him, so I left my name and contact details with reception, they agreed to put up a notice to tell the owner to go to reception for my details, and I took him to the police station, which is where I had taken a lost dog a few years previously.

It turned out they don't take lost dogs now but they gave me the number for a dog warden and I took the dog home and called them. They didn't answer and never called me back. I kept calling for three days and left a lot of messages.

In the meantime, the lost dog was getting on well with my dog and with DS, and I gave him a bath to clean him up and booked him into the vet on the same day I found him for an appointment the next day. They scanned him for a microchip but he didn't have one, and there was nothing on his collar. They said he seemed a little on the thin side and had bad teeth.

I took him home, put up posters in the area around the hospital to say I had found a dog, and kept him. Nobody ever rang, not from the note in reception, the posters on the street or in reply to all the messages I left for the dog warden.

We had him for seven weeks and I loved him. He was a happy, active, lively dog, very affectionate and gentle. He liked company and I got used to having a little shadow following me around the house.

Then there were a few days where he seemed very tired, took to his basket to sleep a lot etc. Nothing seemed wrong, I thought it was the snowy weather and him being and older dog wanting to stay warm and comfy. And then we woke up one day and he was not walking properly, he was hunched over and walking as though he was in pain. I took him to the vets the same day and she examined him and found a large lump above his eye, hidden mostly by his long fluffy eye brows.

It turned out he had bone cancer and the vet said that he had probably been living with it for some time. I asked about treatment and but she said the cancer was so established, and in such a bad place above his eye, that all they could do for him was pain relief until it was time to let him go. She said that would probably be just a matter of a week or two.

It was actually just three days. The injection she gave him seemed to help for the first 24 hours and he was like the dog we had first found. The next day he was 'alright' but obviously back-sliding and starting to feel ill again, and by the third day he was pacing up and down the length of the house with his head down, not eating or drinking and seemed to be looking for something. He wasn't responding to his name and he didn't seem to know where to put himself.

I rang the vets in tears and got the first appointment they could give me, for an hour and a half's time. But they did say that if he got worse within that time we could go straight in to sit in a private room and one of the vets would try to see us between appointments.

Twenty minutes after that phone call he collapsed and we went in. We waited in the private room for about half an hour and he was curled into the crook of my arm the whole time. He actually seemed happier and more peaceful there than he had been in days. When the vet came in she thought he had already died but when she checked him he was still breathing.

She said that they could give him a painkiller and I could take him home to die, as she thought it would be soon, no more than another 24 hours and it would mean he wasn't in pain after the injection, but that he would very likely deteriorate further before he died and that it might be distressing for him and for us.

We both agreed it would be kinder to let him go there and then, and I got to stay with him while she gave him two injections and he fell asleep and then died very quickly. He had his blanket that he liked in his basket with him, I'd wrapped him up in it to take him to the vet, and I spoke to him the whole time. I hope he knew at the end that I loved him and that I'd have done anything to make him better if I could. I promised him that he would fall asleep here and wake up somewhere better, with woods and a field and a boy to throw a ball and a girl to feed him cheese and a sofa to sleep on whenever he wanted (he had seemed very surprised when I first brought him home and patted the sofa to invite him up with me and our other dog, but after that he made the most of being allowed on it).

But I've never had to do that for a pet before and even though we had only had him with us for seven weeks, I've taken it very badly and still can't seem to come to terms with it.

The vet seems to believe that his previous owners turned him loose because they knew he was ill. She says it happens a lot when people can't or won't pay for care and treatment.

She also tells me that even if we knew about the cancer at the time we found him, it would have been too advanced to treat and that we couldn't have saved him.

I just feel we somehow could have done more for him and I'm very paranoid now about our other dog getting cancer as well, I keep checking and checking her for lumps and bumps now. She's twelve so getting on a bit, and is also a terrier very similar to the one we found, and I'm not dealing well with the thought that she's off an age where she might start to get ill or be an 'elderly' dog.

I'm not sure what the point of posting all this is, as it's been a few weeks now since he died, except I was looking through the camera card earlier and found some photo's of him that I'd forgotten we took, and it's upset me and I'm having a cry.

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fanoftheinvisibleman · 12/03/2013 22:44

So sorry for your loss.

But I am so pleased for your little dog that he found someone who cared to spend what time he had left with.