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25 Jan 2006 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
curiouswombatI’ve been meaning to write some more family stuff, since D-d and I have had my Mum talking about her youth recently, but today’s post, though Mum related, is rather sad. Mum’s fifteen year old, little, blind terrier, Scamp, had a massive stroke last night, and today the vet and Mum decided no more could be done for her, and she was put to sleep. My Mum is 79, and has had a stroke herself, so Scamp will have been her last dog in a long line of dogs.
I went up to Bride this evening for an hour (my Mum’s village is half an hour’s drive from our house) just so that she would have company for a while, and the house is quiet without Scamp bumbling around. Mum still has three cats, but they are all pretty ancient as well, yet I cannot imagine a time when her house will have no animals.
Scamp was an ‘emergency replacement’ for Mum’s Yorkshire terrier who was savaged to death by a neighbour’s ‘guard dogs’. My sister felt the best thing was to find a pup quickly, who would need care, and keep Mum’s mind off the terrible way Joey died, and despite Mum’s protests sister found this tiny, mixed terrier, rescue pup and left it with her.
She was never a big dog, but until she lost her sight over the last couple of years she loved to play with one of those rubber ‘pull’ things and would hold on so hard you could lift her off the floor with it, or she would happily spend ages chasing after balls. She helped motivate me to lose some weight, when I realised that if I took her for a walk, when Mum couldn’t after her own stroke, I could only manage about 200 yards from my mother’s house before I was so out of breath that we had to stop, then head for home, and the fact that it was uphill was still no excuse – I was only in my forties and I couldn’t walk more than 200 yards.
Walking her on a Saturday was still one of my major bits of exercise, and last week we did about half a mile – not because I needed to turn around, but because Scamp had got to the stage where it was far enough for her. It is nice to think that she was still enjoying her walks right up to then, but it will be odd not to take her out when we go to visit Mum this week.
This picture was only taken about ten days ago - if I'd realised it would be the last one I would have tried harder to get her to face the camera - as you can see, no matter how often she was washed, brushed, or even visited the grooming parlour, smart was not Scamp's style.
I went up to Bride this evening for an hour (my Mum’s village is half an hour’s drive from our house) just so that she would have company for a while, and the house is quiet without Scamp bumbling around. Mum still has three cats, but they are all pretty ancient as well, yet I cannot imagine a time when her house will have no animals.
Scamp was an ‘emergency replacement’ for Mum’s Yorkshire terrier who was savaged to death by a neighbour’s ‘guard dogs’. My sister felt the best thing was to find a pup quickly, who would need care, and keep Mum’s mind off the terrible way Joey died, and despite Mum’s protests sister found this tiny, mixed terrier, rescue pup and left it with her.
She was never a big dog, but until she lost her sight over the last couple of years she loved to play with one of those rubber ‘pull’ things and would hold on so hard you could lift her off the floor with it, or she would happily spend ages chasing after balls. She helped motivate me to lose some weight, when I realised that if I took her for a walk, when Mum couldn’t after her own stroke, I could only manage about 200 yards from my mother’s house before I was so out of breath that we had to stop, then head for home, and the fact that it was uphill was still no excuse – I was only in my forties and I couldn’t walk more than 200 yards.
Walking her on a Saturday was still one of my major bits of exercise, and last week we did about half a mile – not because I needed to turn around, but because Scamp had got to the stage where it was far enough for her. It is nice to think that she was still enjoying her walks right up to then, but it will be odd not to take her out when we go to visit Mum this week.
This picture was only taken about ten days ago - if I'd realised it would be the last one I would have tried harder to get her to face the camera - as you can see, no matter how often she was washed, brushed, or even visited the grooming parlour, smart was not Scamp's style.
