A sad Good-bye

After a lot of soul-searching and discussion, Chris and I came to the very difficult decision that it was time to say Good-bye to our beautiful Chico. He has had a short life, and a difficult one and we like to think we made it as happy for him as we could. Since his accident eighteen months ago, which resulted in the amputation of his front leg, he has not been the same dog. He made good progress on three legs, and ran around our flat, hard surface yard with relative ease, but he was starting to stumble more, and seemed to be finding running more hard work. We know the blow to his head also caused partial or complete blindness in one eye and he bumped into things, and people, which sometimes made him snap. Added to that was his size and strength. He had to carry a lot of weight for his size on three legs, but he was still massively stronger than the other two, and we had reached the point where not even Chris could hold him securely, and I certainly couldn't. He was a dog who needed to have long runs, but the terrain here is far too uneven for him, so we couldn't take him to the campo. This wasn't very fair on the other two, as they didn't get taken out very often either. We knew Chico barked non-stop when ever we went out without him. He was leader of the pack, and was becoming too dominant so that the two girls were becoming very wary of him, and because he could snap I didn't trust him when anyone came to the house. He always had to be shut away round the back. He was a lovely dog , and no trouble when it was just us two, and there were no distractions, but the situation was getting worse and we knew that we couldn't go on the way we were. He was also showing signs of some pain in his hips which would eventually get worse. So all in all we did not think that it was a real kindness to keep him. We took him to the vet and she agreed that it was the right thing to put him to sleep, so sadly today we said Good-bye to him. We will miss him so much. He was a part of our family. The girls are very quiet today, and are probably wondering when he is coming back, but they still have each other for company, and we now intend to start taking them out regularly again, so their life will be better.

I decided to do a blog post about this as many of my followers have been out here and met Chico, and have followed his trials and tribulations through these pages. I will link it to the boys e-mails too just to save me saying the same thing over and over.

Good-bye lovely boy. I am sorry we couldn't do more for you, but we did the best we could.

A good job or just a pain!!

From Chris's point a view - A good job - ; from mine - just a pain! Those of you who have visited us here will know that outside our kitchen door there is a narrow paved area, used mainly for hanging washing and feeding the animals, and it is divided from next door's orange grove by a big bougainvillea, which has gradually spread all along the fence. This is a vigorous grower, and local folk have told us that November it the time to prune it. Usually we just trim it when the long shoots get in the way, but this year we decided to be more brutal and cut it back hard. I hate cutting off all those lovely purple flowers, but it opens up the centre so all the brown, dead ones that have settled inside the branches can blow away, and it will be a mass of colour again in a couple of months. As this will need to be done at least annually, Chris decided to buy an electric hedge-trimmer to make it easier, so last Thursday being a beautiful sunny day, he made a start on it. He had taken the first layer off the front and top and then he went over the fence with the ladder (the house is empty and the gate is kept locked), to cut the far side. My job is usually to do most of the clearing away of all the debris. Luckily we have a big bin just outside our property, but bougainvillea has wicked long thorns so it is quite a task, and I have to chop it down into shorter lengths so I can get it into a plastic dustbin and lift it over a low side fence, and then out the front gate to the bin. While deciding how to tackle this, I picked up the 'loppers' and idly snipped at a few high branches that Chris had missed first time around, but unfortunately one was thicker than I had realised and I couldn't cut through it so the lopper jammed and sent a shock wave up my arm. Apart from 'ouch' in my head I didn't think anymore about it and together we cleared the branches ready to give it a second cut the next day, but by bed time I knew I was in for a stiff left arm. By Friday I was in agony with a pain I recognised from when I tore my right bicep a few years back, and my ham-string last year. By the evening I was shaking like a leaf, my teeth were chattering and the pain was severe, so I took my strong ibruprophen and went to bed. We even got out the duvet for the first time this year as I was so cold. On Saturday I toyed with the idea of going to an Urgencia (a kind of A&E unit that you find in most towns), but I know from last year that unless you have broken something they won't do anything, so instead we went to our local farmacia and bought the strongest dosage diclofenic tablets. (It's amazing what you can buy over the counter out here!), and they did the trick. The downside is they make me feel like a zombie, but it was worth that to feel more comfortable.(When I said that to a friend at choir practice today, he said, "Really. Do you actually mean you stopped talking?" Cheeky!). Chris strapped my arm up for me just to give it some support. It is heaps better now. I still have a tubigrip on it, but I've done away with the sling, and I don't need the tablets in the day now, though one at bedtime ensures I can lie in enough comfort to get a good night's sleep. In future I'll leave the lopping to Chris, and I'll stick to the clearing away! We've had a bit of rain since then so he hasn't got out there to do the final cut, but he will soon. Already it looks heaps better, and it makes a huge difference to the amount of light I get in the kitchen. It also means I won't get drowned feeding the dogs, everytime it has rained.

I would like to add a quick welcome to one or two new followers, who have stumbled across my ramblings via my, or mutual friend's, crafting blogs. It is great to have you aboard and I hope you enjoy reading about everyday life in sunny Spain.

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