Living With Gladys Full Time

We didn’t know that our walk through the woods with Laddie on sunday would be Laddies swan song. We didn’t know that when Kirt brought his little kitten Duke Catti to visit us in Gladys on Sunday afternoon it would be the last friend Laddie made.

Laddie was a great animal minder, and true to form, when Duke Catti arrived Laddie made it his job that evening to stay as near to Duke as he could, gently nudging him with his nose in an attempt to get Duke to play and eager to not let him out of his sight.

It had been the same with all the other pets and animals that we had kept over the years. When we lived in the cottage and kept hens, the first night home with them Laddie stayed in the coup, minding them! He took his job very seriously, not wanting anything to happen on his watch and he continued to either mind them or try to round them up for most of the time that we had them. When he realised that Kirt had a Bearded Dragon in the glass aquarium, he stayed there rooted to the spot, watching the Dragon all day long! And the same with the cats Brian and Nitten.

I remember writing in a previous post back in June that Laddie had been poorly and diagnosed with a tumour near to his spleen and a significant heart murmur. We decided there and then that Laddie would let us know when he had had enough and promised ourselves that as soon as that time came we would honour that promise and do the right thing for Laddie.  And, Im so very sad to say that that time came in the early hours of Monday morning. Laddie had been cough cough coughing on and off for a couple of weeks but on Sunday evening the coughing got worse and after Duke Catti left he just couldn’t seem to settle. He kept pacing up and down and looking for either Alistair or me, going back and forth to the bedroom but not going in and turning round and looking for us ( remember, we live in a bus, its a very short distance from front room to bedroom)! I wondered at first if he was looking for Duke Catti but I think that was my last attempt at wishful thinking, my last thread of hope that the inevitable was not now reality.

He did manage to settle for an hour or so next to our bed but then would just came round either side of the bed looking for us, panting, pacing and stretching his neck out I think in an attempt to breath better. It took us an hour or so to find an emergency vet hospital and to also in the quiet of both of our minds , without speaking it out loud, acknowledge the truth that if we took him along we would not be bringing him back home.

Alistair and I bought Laddie 12 years ago just before we moved in together and although all the children grew to love him, Laddie was our dog, he was a significant part of our new life together. He was there almost from the very start and so Alistair and I had to be there for him, together, at the very end to make the ending of his old life as comfortable as possible and to give him the best start in to the beginning of his new life. I asked his Animal Guides to be with him and for him to be welcomed into the Lower World of Spirits in Animal form to begin his new journey. We spent some precious quiet time with him and at 3.30am on Monday 21st October he journeyed from this world  to the next ready to begin the continuing chapter.

So now we have to do that thing called adapting! We both keep expecting to hear his nails tapping along the floor, or his big nose coming out from underneath the awning door to greet us, or the rugs to be all crumpled up where he scooted along them rubbing his face on them in delight of having eaten his tea or for me to be woken at 6.30 in the morning for him to go out ( so here I am this morning, blogging instead of being out with Laddie).

Its been a tough year and a half since moving in to Gladys in terms of pets! And in the pain of the moment and using our logical heads we thought no more dogs- but then, as we say to our clients if we made decisions based on logic we would all drive Skoda’s! (No offence to anyone who drives a Skoda by the way, they are great cars). To be honest, a home just isn’t a home for us without a dog. So once we have given ourselves time to heal from our loss of Laddie we will begin again and no doubt we will know in the quiet of our own minds, without speaking, when we are both ready.