Love

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/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

I know some of you are going to think I have well and truly lost my marbles so please feel free to skip this post if you hold no truck with the supernatural / ghosts / spirits what have you. I have to write about it due to what has just happened and I can’t ignore it any longer.

Ok so regular followers of my blog will know that we lost Frankie and Mollie within 7 days of each other ( 29th Dec 2018 and then 5th Jan 2019). Jay and I are not religious, although he was brought up in the Catholic faith, I guess he is atheist or agnostic. I have never asked him. I was brought up without faith and am atheist. However I do believe that we don’t just cease to exist when we die. Which I know for some atheists will be difficult to get their head around. The thing is I have seen too much, heard too much and had premonitions of events that I couldn’t possibly known about months or sometimes days before they have happened. That I just know that there is more to this world than what many of us see and hear.

For example for the month before my A-level results came out every night without fail I would dream about the letter C. Like on Sesame street this letter C would be huge and there would be 3 of them. It was bizarre and whilst dreaming I would try to change it to 3 B’s as I knew this dream was telling me what my A- level results would be. Low and behold exam result day I get 3 C’s. Pure laziness on my part, preferred earning money and going out to actual studying!

Before my driving test I repeatedly dreamt that I would be in a part of Plymouth called Little America and I would be asked to perform a reverse around the corner. As I was undertaking this the driving examiner would tell me to stop as he had under estimated how close the white car behind us was. Low and behold on my test – I am driving through Little America and I am asked to do the reverse around the corner. As I am doing it, just as had happened in my dream the driving examiner called a halt to it as a white car was too close.

I could go on and on and that would either serve to bore you rigid or for you to believe I am totally bat shit crazy. My premonitions come and go, I can go years without them happening. The last time it happened that I can remember was when Jay had his car crash in 2011. For around 3 months before I had the same dream over and over that Jay would be in a car crash and that our car would be written off. As I had dreamt it Jay did indeed have a crash ( caused by a drunk driver in a stolen car) and our car was written off.

So that’s the premonition side of things, I also see things. Not hallucinations but spirits / ghosts etc. I wrote extensively about the flat Jay and I used to live at in my post entitled “Haunted” (link here ). I can have feelings about places / people also. I also can hear things not as in voices but as in I can hear things like a dog jumping off the bed upstairs when Dembe is downstairs with me and the only dog that used to jump off Jay’s bed was Mollie. I have also heard a dog shaking his head and the collar jangling with the ID tag but Dembe is fast asleep next to me. 

The first dog I saw that had passed was our first Weimaraner Travis. The second litter of puppies had been born in 2007 and I had come in from work and was upstairs checking on them. I heard a dog behind me, I turned to look and assumed it was Mollie. I still remember what I said ” are you going to take care of these puppies or will I have to do it?” As I said those words I had turned my head back to the whelping box, when Mollie didn’t walk past me I just assumed she had gone back down stairs. I went down stairs and walked into the kitchen to find Jay in there with all 3 dogs. I was confused so asked him ” have these three been down here the whole time?” to which he replied “Yes”. I nearly fainted with shock, I knew that I had just seen Travis, a full body apparition of a dog that had passed away over a year ago. 

I am not the only person to have seen Travis. A delivery driver and his mate was bringing in some furniture and told me one of the dogs had escaped from the kitchen. I said no they are all in the kitchen. The guy went white and said I just saw a dog on the stairs . Travis used to sit on the bottom widest step and we had nicknamed it the sulky step as he would sit on it when we went to work. 

My mum has stepped over a dog in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom when she was staying with us and then realised all three dogs were in my room. There had been no dog in the hallway.

My cleaner ( years ago when I could afford one!) said she had felt a dog brush past her on the stairs as she was vacuuming them. When she looked into the lounge ( our stairs are in the lounge and have an open banister) she saw three dogs sprawled over two sofas all fast asleep. No dog had gone past her, well no earthly dog. 

So strange goings on in my house have happened for years. When family members or close friends pass I have problems with the electrics, things turning themselves on and off without us touching them. Since one friend passed last year my hallway light at the top of the stairs flashes on and off. It’s just flashed whilst I am proof reading this. Initially Jay never noticed so I thought I must be imagining things. Then one day the light went off completely for several seconds and then came back on again. It can go days even weeks without the light flashing and then all of a sudden it is doing it every time the light is on. I acknowledge my friend in my head but I have to tell you out of all the stuff that has happened here, that’s the only thing that can scare me. Especially if I am in the house alone.

 That brings me nicely up to what happened today and surprised me so much I said “Oh my god” out loud and Jay said “did you hear that?” I was sat on the sofa that is opposite our stairs. Our stairs has three mirrors going up the side of them so I can see in the mirror opposite me the top of the stairs. What had caught my attention was the sound of two steps at the top of the stairs. I looked in the mirror as I always would have done when the Weims were alive only to see the back-end of a Weimaraner disappear into my room. I then said “oh my god” because I was taken a back not frightened. Jay had heard the steps but due to where he was sitting he couldn’t see the mirror. When I told him what I had seen he wasn’t surprised as we have both seen and heard our babies since they passed. It provides us with a level of comfort knowing that they are still with us, even if it’s in spirit only. 

Dembe has also seen them, I say this not because I pretend to know what he is thinking but because of his reactions. He has play bowed ( stuck his arse in the air and bent with his front legs on the floor) and rolled his ball to nothing. I was sat across the other side of the room and watched him do this, not just on the one occasion but on many occasions. He has taken toys over to what we have nicknamed for years the sulky step because that is where Travis and Frankie would sit sometimes. 

Jay has heard Mollie, Frankie, Willow and Travis accompanying him on his walks up the common when it has just been him and Dembe and not another soul in sight. Some days it is a comfort other days it just reminds you of how very much we have lost. Of course we wouldn’t be without Dembe but at the moment it still feels like we are all still getting to know each other. With Mollie, Frankie and Willow we had been with each other for years and we know all their little idiosyncrasies. So although the house doesn’t feel as empty as it did in those six days after Mollie passed whilst we were waiting to get Dembe, it still feels pretty empty compared to how it used to be.

I think that’s why what happened this afternoon really sort of shocked me. I wasn’t expecting it. It was nice to know that they are still around and they don’t feel pushed out with Dembe around. 

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Dembe

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while will know that sadly I lost, well we lost our beautiful Weimaraners 7 days apart at the end of last year beginning of this year. I let you know that we had also got ourselves a beautiful yellow Labrador ( he has a bit of fox red in him as well). I haven’t really spoken about him much here, not because he is some state secret but because mainly my blog has always been about the Weimaraners and because our lives have changed so completely with losing them and having Dembe.

 Mollie

 Frankie

Willow

Our lives have always revolved around our dogs and they always will. With the Weimaraners our lives were quite restricted, when left they would destroy our home ( chewing furniture, banisters, carpets basically anything they could get their teeth into) and sing to the neighbours. It meant if they were ever left we would have to pay for a dog sitter or beg friends to come and sit with them. They were fine as long as they had someone with them they just had awful separation anxiety when left alone. We could have taken the easy way out and given them up / rehomed them. If you ever look on websites for dogs you will always find Weimaraners on there 6 months to a year old who are being rehomed because they can’t be left alone without causing damage or noise. It breaks my heart. 

We decided as that as we had wanted them we would have to adjust our lives accordingly. It meant no going out together as one of us would have to stay home, ( they also destroyed the car if left in that with Willow eating the handbrake one day!). They dominated our lives for 15 years but although it may seem like a huge hardship they gave us so much love and so much companionship for me I never saw it as a hardship. We loved them dearly and due to that love we were prepared to put our lives effectively on hold for the time they were with us. Those years went past in the blink of an eye. The hardest part of those 15 years was some people just not understanding that our dogs would always come first and that we would miss events because of not being able to leave them. 

Now I am not slagging of the Weimaraners, a lot of their problems were caused by me and Jay. I fell ill 3 months after Frankie and Willow were born and due to the stress of me being ill and genuinely not being well enough their training was rubbish and so was their socialisation. They also got attacked several times when they were puppies by other dogs, so they became nervous aggressive. Walks became so stressful it was easier to walk them at 5am, which then became 4am which then became 3am. Jay would then be up for a few hours and then would go back to sleep getting up time would depend on whether he was working that day or not.  Evening walks would have to take place in dark on the common like the morning walks so that they wouldn’t bump into any other dogs. It was stressful, we were always worried about dog owners who had no control over their dogs who would let them get up in Frankies personal space despite us telling them he was nervous aggressive.

When Willow passed away in 2017 things got easier, mainly because there were only two dogs to control and the fact that she would whip the others up into a frenzy. We missed her greatly but it would be a lie to say that things didn’t get easier. Frankie no longer reacted to dogs out on the walk, he stayed well clear of them but you no longer had to worry that he would get aggressive due to his fear. Mollie was always really good with all dogs and we never had any problems with her. 

With Dembe it has been a clean slate, training started from the minute he arrived home and has been consistent. We don’t get dictated to by him when he goes out for a walk, where as the Weims would start crying and pacing due to being creatures of habit. For Dembe we have deliberately kept his walks unscheduled, so he doesn’t know and therefore doesn’t start acting up demanding a walk. He fits in with us not us with him. We don’t love him any less or any more than the Weims, we just decided that we wanted some of our life back.

The change in both of us has been immense. Jay used to suffer terribly with fatigue, we put it down to his methotrexate for his psoriasis and the stress of looking after me and the dogs. In reality now we know that it was night after night of broken sleep. Being awake for a few hours in the middle of the night from 3am until 5am then going back to sleep was destroying him. He never wanted to do anything or go anywhere because he was always so exhausted. Who can blame him he was dealing with extreme sleep deprivation. What I haven’t said is that when he was on an early shift ( quite often he would have had a late finish the night before so he wouldn’t have gone to sleep much before 11pm) he would get up at 3am and that would be him up until he went to bed that evening. 

Jay is now up every morning by 7am, 7.30am at the very latest. If he is on a late night we get to do stuff all together before he goes to work at 12pm.  We have a cup of tea and have a chat and then we will take Dembe out. Depending on how I am feeling or where we are going means that sometimes I can join the boys using my mobility scooter. Dembe is limited at the moment as to how much exercise he can have so that we protect his joints . Currently he can have 20 mins a day in just over a weeks time he can go up to 25 minutes as it is 5 minutes for every month of his age. 

Jay and I would be lost without him but we have really struggled to accept over the last 10 weeks that he is actually ours. That probably seems a really weird thing to say but I think because he came into our lives during one of the most traumatic periods we have lived through, although we loved him immediately there was almost this feeling that he didn’t belong to us. I would forget he was in the house with me and he would bark and I would jump out of my skin. His care was never, ever compromised it was just we were overwhelmed with grief and all this love we had for this little ball of fluff. 

He seemed so very little when we first got him home at 8 weeks, despite the fact his weight has increased by at least 10 kg and he has got so much bigger he still seems very dinky to us. After having three huge Weimaraners for over a decade I am guessing anything would seem tiny.  He is a very affectionate dog, he loves cuddles and kissing. He really loves Jamie and they have a little routine that when Jay gets into the car he looks into the back and Dembe smothers him in kisses. For me Dembe is my little shadow, I can’t go anywhere without being followed. He has also started to pick up on when I am unwell and adjusts his behaviour accordingly. We are not at the stage yet where he will happily lie on the bed with me all day but he will snuggle up next to me on the sofa. When I had a migraine Sunday afternoon and went to bed at 6pm he came up with me and settled down with his head over my feet. Just like Frankie used to. He also likes sleeping curled up on the top corner of my pillow. He gives me a little kiss goodnight when The Archers theme tune comes on at the end of the programme and settles for the night.

Without him Jay and I would have fallen apart. We have both really struggled mentally and physically over the last three months. I finally have started feeling more like my old self again but I am very quick to tears. Anything about Rainbow Bridge and I am gone. If anyone posts that their dog or cat etc has passed away I break my heart. The pain is still very raw but I am able to function in the world where as initially I felt so disconnected and as if I was trying to work on autopilot. 

I have neglected a few friendships because I have just been overwhelmed by the grief of it all. I know some people just wont understand at all how you could be so upset by an animals death. Believe me you can. I wish every night the last image in my head wasn’t Frankie passing away or seeing Mollie unable to walk or lift her head due to the catastrophic stroke she suffered. I had to stop watching this weeks episode of the walking dead when the heads on spikes mouths were moving despite them being dead. Frankie’s mouth muscles twitched for the whole time I lay on the floor with him after he passed away. It was too much and sent me straight back into flash backs of losing him. I was quite proud of myself being able to write all this without sobbing but I have fucked that up now.  I hope some day those horrific images stop waking me from sleep and stop being the last images in my head before I fall asleep because I do know happiness despite being so sad.

Without Dembe I wouldn’t be here, it is as simple as that. I could not have carried on under that weight of grief. I am not saying that to be melodramatic but for a few days there I wanted to die myself. My heart hurt and no one except Jay understood what I was going through. I have never seen Jay look as ill as he did during those 6 days that we had no dog in the house. When Dembe came home the colour came back into his face and it forced us to start living again. He is our miracle boy and our saviour. Even when he is being a wee shitebag.

If you would like to find out more about Dembe he has his own blog at http://www.thedembediaries.com 

The guilt at being happy

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

Those of you who read last week’s blog post will be happy to know there have been no further Sula Drop “incidents” since the one described by last week’s post.

Guilt is something I deal with on a daily basis. I feel guilty about most things. I feel guilty that I can’t do as much as I used to in the house due to my medical conditions. I feel consumed with guilt that our lives haven’t gone the way that we had planned them to go. At the moment I am being eaten up with guilt because for the first time in week’s I feel happy. I worry that people will think that I didn’t love Frankie and Mollie or didn’t love them enough because now I love Dembe.

I catch myself sometimes in a negative cycle of self talk telling myself that it is not possible to love another dog so much already if I truly loved the other dogs. I know that what is amazing amongst human beings is our capacity to love even when in the depths of despair. The love I feel for Dembe is different to the love I had for Travis, for Frankie, for Mollie or for Willow. Each of those dogs I loved differently but with the same intensity. I never felt the guilt of having Frankie and Willow after Travis passed away because they were born in the house, although Frankie was sold and came back to us. So I don’t get why I am struggling with the guilt of having Dembe?

Is the guilt stimulated by the fact we had to go out and buy him from another breeder? Rather than him be born in our spare room? I feel it acutely at times. Just looking at Dembe on occasion will reduce me to tears because looking at him reminds me of what we have lost. 3 dogs in the space of 55 weeks. That is a lot of loss to deal with, on top of the human losses we also suffered. 

I also feel guilty because my anxiety levels have dropped since Mollie and Frankie passed away. I knew that they weren’t long for this world even though you hope in your heart they will last just a little bit longer. Frankie had rapidly declined over the space of the 12 months and I am now pretty sure that the inner ear infection Mollie had in the summer was her first stroke. Purely because the symptoms the day before she passed were exactly the same.  Both dogs were spoilt rotten in the last 12 months of their lives. They really enjoyed themselves. We had hoped Mollie would have a good six months after Frankie passed but it wasn’t to be and that breaks my heart. In the days after Frankie passed I made such a fuss of her, plied her with sausages like they were the elixir of youth. I feel guilty that perhaps I didn’t see how much she was grieving for her son. The vet certainly felt that the grief was a contributing factor in her catastrophic stroke. 

My anxiety levels have dropped also because Frankie was having some quite bad mobility issues. At night I would never sleep very deeply because I was always listening out for him in case he fell or he couldn’t manage getting back upstairs after going down for a drink or to let himself out into the garden. Because Dembe is younger he doesn’t get to roam around the house at night or even during the day. He can’t yet manage the stairs so he is confined to my room at night by a baby gate.

I would talk about the day that we wouldn’t have the Weimaraner’s anymore and it always seemed like some mythical date in the future. Even though I could see them ageing and losing condition I must’ve practised cognitive dissonance because on another level I couldn’t believe we would ever lose them. They would live forever in our little bubble, being loved and returning that love tenfold.

Now I get anxious about loving Dembe too much in such a short space of time. I still look at him at times and have to remind myself that he is mine. I wouldn’t be without him, he is a devoted pup who loves Jay and I equally. Today at a friend’s place Jay was training Dembe in the garden and Dembe was so totally focused on him. All this little dog wants to do is please us, be loved and be fed the occasional piece of cocktail sausage when he has been a good boy. If we had tried to do the training with the Weims they’d have put two fingers up and walked away. We loved the Weims for that, they were so independent, free thinkers, the hooligans we used to nickname them – in a loving way. The relationship we have with Dembe is so totally different, he lives to please and be told he is a good boy.

He has a lot of traits like the Weims had, he is almost like a mish mash of all their characters. He reminds me a lot of Frankie the way he is such a mummy’s boy, the way he herds me ( nudging the back of my leg with his nose) when following me into another room. The way he has to be with me the majority of the time, although Frankie would have never climbed into the shower with me, Dembe does this frequently. The girls however would regularly poke their heads around the side of the shower when I was in there. Willow was the most adventurous and would come in and have a drink! She was the water baby out of the three, she would run to the pond on the common and dive straight in for a swim. She always looked like a human when she was swimming due to the way she held her head out of the water. I always imagined her with one of those 1970’s  swimming caps covered in flowers. 

I am glad that we decided to change breeds after the Weimaraners.  Weims will always have a special place in my heart, too many years involved with them not to. I have owned 4 plus 18 puppies were bred from Mollie over two litters. Life without them is strange. However my eyes have been opened to the world of Labrador’s now and although I know each dog has a different character, I love Dembe’s character. I can’t get my head around the differences in breeds of dogs. I was quite ignorant before and just thought all dogs were pretty much the same. We have gone from hose pipe / shower averse Weims to a dog we can’t stop getting wet at the slightest opportunity. In the shower no problem I’ll join you mum, got the hosepipe on ? I need to chase that and bite the water. He has us in stitches every day.

I guess guilt is just part of my makeup, I have always been this way. I feel guilty about stuff I haven’t done. I think it comes from a sense of always being in the wrong, even though that is untrue I always felt that way. I always doubt any decisions I make for fear of getting it wrong. Now I am trying to break that habit, I know the guilt is just a stage of grief. I have been through it with every dog I have ever lost. With Travis for years I felt guilty that we had given up on him – despite being told his kidneys were failing and that he had less than 12 weeks to live. I felt the same way about Willow, not noticing how poorly she was quickly enough – neither of us did and the vet told us how stoic our dogs were and didn’t show any signs of illness until at death’s door. I felt guilty after Willow had a closed Pyometra despite taking her to the vets in the preceding weeks saying that there was something wrong with her. I felt the same guilt when she had breast cancer, even though the vet told us he was surprised that we had felt such a small lump.

See how the guilt eats at me. Even when I make the right decisions for my dogs or discover something early the guilt starts that I could have been better, spotted it sooner. It is a pattern I am trying to break but its hard when this has been your thinking pattern for over 40 years.

Although I was terrified of what people would say about us buying  Dembe so soon after Mollie & Frankie passed away, even though I knew it was absolutely necessary to preserve Jay and my sanity. Unless you have lost two dogs within a week you aren’t in a place where you can judge. You never know what you would do until you were in that position. I now no longer care what people say about it. 100% it was the right thing for us. 

Whilst I struggle with the guilt of loving him so much,  I am a work in progress. I am learning to deal with the guilt of being happy again.

Getting back to normal, if there is such a thing.

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

Around two days after I wrote my last post “Washout” I ended up contacting my doctor and was prescribed antibiotics. I had been running a temperature for around a week and I just wasn’t feeling any better. 

 
Wednesday morning (30th January) I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like someone had smacked me in the face with a shovel. My sinuses hurt, my teeth hurt and I felt violently sick. As I quite often get migraines like this I decided to try to get back to sleep, it didn’t work. As the morning wore on the pain was increasing where as my migraine attacks last 12 hours at the same intensity I had to concede that this wasn’t a migraine, I had sinusitis and probably a chest infection. When I described my symptoms to the gp she agreed and I was given a 7 day course for amoxicillan. No wonder I had been feeling so awful.
 
After 3 days on the antibiotics I was feeling almost human again. However as usual the antibiotics did a number on my innards which required me to take at least 6 imodium a day. The diarrhoea was so bad it left me feeling drained and triggered off very painful spasms causing me then to have bowel adhesion pain. I stuck with them until the end of day 5, after that I just couldn’t do it anymore. 
 
I could cope with the exhaustion levels if my pain levels hadn’t suddenly just ramped up. Out of nowhere I am back to having extremely cold legs which have to be warmed up by a hot water bottle or by sitting on my electric throw. When going out in the cold and believe me it’s not that cold for this time of year, yesterday it was between 6 and 7 degrees Centigrade, I was in agony with my hands despite having my arthritis gloves on and my legs were aching despite having leggings on under my jeans. I had just gone through a really good period, pain wise and had barely been touching my oramorph which I use for breakthrough pain but as of two days ago, I am taking it every 4 hours when awake to try to knock down the pain levels I am currently experiencing.
 
At the moment there seems to be no happy medium temperature wise. I am either hurting due to the cold or stripping off my layers because I am suddenly boiling hot. So hot that I am sweating. An hour later I am back to freezing again and this cycle repeats itself throughout the day. I wish I knew what I could do to combat it. It’s not like the flushes I was getting before taking the red clover, black cohosh and the sage leaf supplements which have done wonders for my hot flushes. This is a temperature regulation issue. And temperature control is part of the autonomic nervous system. I guess it’s just adding in another element of fun.
 
On a happier note Dembe is settling in very well, you can read about his adventures at www.thedembediaries.com I publish every Monday letting everyone know what he has been up to over the previous week. I don’t know where I would be without him if I am honest. It is exhausting though looking after a puppy when you compare looking after adult dogs who are independent and happy to be left sleeping for most of the day.
 
Dembe is very close to me but I wouldn’t expect any different, he and I are alone together all day ( around 11 hours) bar Jay coming home for 30-40 minutes at lunch time. Dembe loves Jay too, you only have to witness the furious tail wagging when Jay comes through the door to know that. But he is a mummy’s boy at heart. He loves nothing better than curling up at the end of the sofa and sleeping, as long as I am at the other end. 

 
 
 
When I get onto my sewing machine or embroidery machine, he sleeps on the bed I made him in the kitchen. Due to feeling so rotten, not a lot of sewing has gone on. However I did manage to finish this birth announcement cushion, which is a gift for a friend to celebrate the arrival of his daughter. By the time this blog post is published the gifts recipient should have it.
 

 
I am really pleased with the cushion as the feet are from one design and the text is from an inbuilt text on my embroidery machine however I had to get the placement and size of the text right so that the cushion looked balanced. 
 
I used a product called Sarille, which is a type of interlining mainly used on curtains. I saw in various groups lots of suggestions for using wadding behind embroidery designs that were stitch dense and being sewn onto lightweight fabric. I had loads of the Sarille lying around from when I used to do my subscription box. It has given the cushion a nice bit of body at the front and it has also ensure there is minimal puckering. 
 
It’s the first bit of sewing I haven’t had to force myself to do since Frankie and Mollie passed away. For a while there I didn’t know if my sewjo would ever come back or if Dembe would sleep enough for me to manage to get anything done. Jobs are taking me longer as I now tend to wait for Jay to be home before sewing anything. Embroidery is different as I can get up and move away ( when the machine / thread is behaving), so I can keep an eye on Dembe. He is very used to me doing bits of embroidery, he  will lie on his bed in the kitchen and go to sleep. Puppies do sleep a lot although when they are manically running around, chasing their own tails it can seem like they never sleep!
 
I have also managed to get two other bits of embroidery done today, birthday presents for March. I do like working ahead so that I don’t feel under pressure. Whilst I am in the mood to be creative I tend to go for it. Its only in the last few days that I have felt the creative juices starting to flow again. That has as much to do with getting over the infections as it does with dealing with the grief losing the dogs caused. 
 
Its taken 4 weeks for me to feel anywhere near normal and it is still very raw. I am managing to go days without crying where as in the beginning I was lucky if I could go an hour without breaking down. 
 
I am finding it very difficult at the moment to motivate myself to write this blog, mainly because the dogs, our Weimaraners featured in it from the very beginning. They are what kept me sane and kept me going, when it would have been incredibly easy just to give up and not fight anymore. It is taking some getting used to being without them. It’s a new normal and it’s going to take a while to get used to it.
 
 

Washout

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

 

Well the last week has been a bit of a washout, on the day my last post was published I started to come down with a nasty virus. My throat felt like I had swallowed a packet of razor blades, I started to ache all over and my temperature started shooting up. Within the space of a few hours I had gone from feeling ok to wanting to crawl into bed and cry.

Thursday was also hard because Frankie and Mollie came home to their resting place. It was a really emotional day. Jay and I wanted them back home with us but it also meant it was final and we would have to accept that they were gone. They have a beautiful spot on our bookcase in their Emma Bridgewater pet bowls with their names on.

I can’t look at the shelf at the moment I find it too upsetting. I miss them both so much but particularly my Frankie. He would have loved Dembe as he was always crazy about puppies. Whenever Jay took him to the vets and there was a puppy there Frankie would cry until he was allowed to go up and see the puppy. 

I remember him when we had the 2nd litter of Weimaraners and he had them hanging off him, all different places and some quite painful and he never batted an eyelid. He was so very gentle when it came to puppies. He didn’t like other fully grown dogs much ( other than Mollie his mum and his sister Willow, who we lost in 2017) but puppies oh how he adored puppies. I know he would have adored Dembe.

Obviously due to the emotional battering we have taken over the last few weeks both our immune systems have been compromised. I rarely pick up any bugs that are going around even if Jay comes down with them 99 times out of 100 I will avoid them. So its unlike me to come down with something first. However over the last few weeks we have been out and about much more than we have been previously. I have mixed with many more people than I normally would. So I have probably been a lot more exposed to other people’s germs than I would have been before. 

I haven’t worn proper clothes since last Thursday I have just had to lounge around in my pj’s because I just don’t have the energy to get dressed. Some of my friends have also come down with this virus and have ended up quite poorly with both chest and sinus infections. Hubby has said they are dropping like flies at work and he is now starting to come down with a cold.

Dembe still brings us much joy and delight. He is such a happy pup, he just wants to please you the whole time. He has mastered sit and paw. We are working on his recall at the moment as he will be able to go out for his first walk on Thursday. Initially whilst we are still working on his recall, Jay will be walking him around the local streets teaching him to walk to heel and to get his bearings. He is desperate to get into the outside world. He loves sitting on the lounge window ledge and looking outside. 

I don’t know what we would have done without Dembe, this Friday we will have had him 3 weeks and he will be 11 weeks old. He has grown loads but is still tiny compared to our other dogs. I don’t even remember our other dogs as puppies. Probably because they grow up so fast. He changes every day and each day just brings us more joy. 

The really weird thing is Dembe on Friday seemed to know that I was feeling really rotten. Whilst I was lying on the sofa he wanted to sleep at the end of the sofa just like Nurse Frankie did whenever I was really poorly. Normally Dembe sleep’s in his bed in the kitchen, so it is quite unusual for him to spend long periods of time on the sofa with me. He was so calm all day Friday, like he knew he had to tone things down as mum wasn’t feeling well.

He also loves empty toilet roll tubes just like his Uncle Frankie did. He has a box full of toys but he goes crazy for an empty toilet roll tube. It is so sweet that he has some of Frankie’s ways about him, he also loves a ball like Mollie did and loves cuddles like Willow. We don’t compare him to our other dogs as that would be like comparing apples and oranges. It is just nice to talk about the others and him in the same sentence.

Well as I have heard from friends all over the country who have succumbed to this virus / flu-like bug I hope you all manage to avoid it. It is really nasty, I spent most of last night coughing as my throat kept drying out. Until next week…

Hoping for a quiet 2019

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

My last post was published on the 10th of January when I felt like my whole world had caved in. The last few weeks have been very hard, I miss Frankie and Mollie so much that my heart aches. There has not been a day that has gone by where I haven’t wept with the pain of losing them as suddenly as we did. To lose two dogs in 7 days is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I wouldn’t have got through it without hubby by my side. In fact I would have probably given up completely had he not been here.

 
Due to the shock, upset, grief hubby has taken some time off work. He already suffers with anxiety and depression and to ensure he didn’t take a nose dive he saw the doctor and got himself signed off. He didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. Losing Mollie hit him very hard as she was his dogs. Plus it was very traumatic for us over 24 hours where it became clear that she had suffered from a stroke and there would be no recovery from this. We nursed her overnight and made sure she wasn’t suffering. Right up until the end she only wanted her dad, whenever she was out of his sight she panicked. Jay stayed with her until the end as I had stayed with Frankie just the week before. To say our hearts were broken would have been an understatement.
 
I took a break from this blog as since the beginning back in 2008 the dogs have featured quite heavily in it. My Gravatar is me with Frankie, Frankie is the banner on WordPress, on Twitter his photo is my profile picture and its the same on Facebook. Although I have managed to change my about me pages on both blog platforms, I can’t remove his photo from any of my social media profile photos.  It feels like a huge chunk of my life has just vanished. Life as I knew it was taken away from me in the space of 7 days. I never knew I could feel so utterly broken by the passing of three dogs in just a little over the year.
 
For a few years Mr Myasthenia Kid and I had talked about what would happen when we no longer had any dogs. Initially we had said we would get a Labrador ( black) then we talked about a Beagle and also a Bracco Italiano. However for the last few months I had said I didn’t know if I wanted another dog, I knew losing our last two Weimaraners would hit me really badly and by getting another dog meant at some point in the future I would have to go through the pain of losing it all over again. Jay was not having any of it, he said that I was already completely socially isolated and without a dog I would have no company at all. He felt it would be very damaging to my mental health. He was right, as 7 days without a dog in the house were the worst thing ever. I missed everything about having a dog, the cuddles, the mess, the unconditional love, someone to have silly conversations with.
 
By the Sunday after Mollie’s passing we decided that we would get another dog and we started looking on-line for Labrador puppies. I had to give myself a crash course on Labrador’s having not ever owned one. I located several breeders who had litters on The Kennel Club Website. Luckily one lady immediately responded to my email and told us she had two male yellow labs for sale. Obviously we had originally said we wanted a black lab but by this point it didn’t matter what colour it was. We needed our house to feel like a home again, we were both distraught and sinking fast. We arranged to travel to see the 2 pups available the following day.
 
The rest is history, we now own a 9 week old Yellow Labrador called Dembe. We chose his name from the TV programme the blacklist, it means peace. Which you will probably agree we need by the bucket full. Dembe came home with us on Friday 11th January. You can read all about him   here as I have started his own blog for him. I will from time to time have photos of him on this blog but it is much easier to have all the news about him on a separate blog. Every Monday I will give a run down of what he has been up to the previous week. 
 
Some of you may be judging us, that we got a new dog too quickly or that we didn’t love our other dogs that much because we replaced them with Dembe. Dembe is not and has never been a replacement. He is an addition to our household. He is very much-loved for the dog he is and will become. Anyone who thinks any less of us for this can just fuck off as far as I am concerned, your opinion is of very little value to me.
 
So whilst I took a break from here, I have been setting up Dembe’s blog. I managed to keep writing which out of all the things I do creatively was the only thing that I could keep going. I hadn’t been able to sew since Mollie passed away. I managed on the 16th January after a break of nearly two weeks to sit and do a small piece of embroidery. Mainly to ensure that Dembe wasn’t scared of the noise the machine made. The only thing that has freaked him out so far has been the ironing board and it does the same to me if I am honest.
 
My health has been hit quite hard by the sudden turn of events. I have suffered vertigo, continuous headaches, back spasms, Eczema, migraines and ptosis. As usual it a few days after the event before I started to go down hill. Thankfully with Jay off work we have been able to manage Dembe’s care and socialisation process. To be honest without him I would have crawled into bed and never come out again. This little chap has saved us both. The lady that we are friendly with at the vets ( who had a soft spot for Frankie) called Dembe our miracle dog. She knew how much our lives focused on our dogs and also knew that without a dog in our life we would fall apart. 
 
So many people have told us that we have done exactly the right thing. It doesn’t mean that we loved our Weimaraners any less, it is because we loved them so much that we had all this love to give to another dog. 
 
Dembe has bonded with us both. He is such a happy, laid back dog. His tail wags continuously. Everyone who meets him falls in love with him. I thought at one point after Mollie had passed away that Jay looked like he was going to drop dead from a broken heart. He was just an ashen colour. I have seen Jay poorly many times but this was the worst I had seen him look for a long time. Since Dembe’s arrival he is looking so much better, we both feel like there is a future in front of us. In the immediate aftermath of losing both dogs it felt like we were staring into the abyss .
 
I am hoping that my health stabilises shortly, it is going to have to as Jay goes back to work from Monday 21st and it will just be me and Dembe. However Jay will be coming home at lunch times to help with feeding and toileting. He still has a few weeks until he will be able to go out for a walk. Whilst Jay is home though I am trying to take it as easy as possible. Jay has been doing everything for me as usual.
 
2018 ended in a way that I didn’t see coming and 2019 started in a way we never envisaged. All I can hope for is a quieter year for the rest of 2019.
 

 
 

 
I will never forget the love that these three beautiful loyal dogs gave me. Run free my darlings, we will miss you everyday for the rest of our lives.

17th October

/ RachelMorrisMcGeethemyastheniakid / Leave a comment

For the last ten years I have written about how much I hate October and how this month always fills me with sadness. This year is no different. In some ways it is worse.

This morning (17th Oct) I woke up sobbing, as today is the 12th anniversary of our beloved first dog Travis’ passing. He has been dead longer than he was alive, just under three years. The pain today is as raw as it was on the day we said goodbye. Why it is so bad today I don’t know. Perhaps with everything that has gone on in the last 12 months ( losing Willow, Pam, Gran, mum having cancer – now in remission) it’s all the stress just being released. I often wonder how it is possible that I can shed so many tears for a dog that was in our lives so briefly but he wasn’t a dog to us. He was our boy and the pain of saying goodbye is something I will never get over.

Losing Willow on December 15th was hard but she had lived for 11 years. In that time she had been pampered and showered with affection. She had fought many battles herself having cancer, a pyometra both of which could have killed her. I had a sneaking suspicion in the months before her passing that the cancer had returned but it was internal. I know people thought I was crazy when I voiced my concerns, like I was wishing her life away but I know my dogs and I know when things aren’t right. I have cried many tears over Willow but it is a different pain I feel with her passing. I miss her, I remember her fondly. The pain I feel with Travis is like a knife to the heart. The level of pain is not something that has ever gone away. I can talk about Willow without breaking down although some days it makes me feel terribly sad. Talking about Travis about 50% of the time will reduce me to tears no matter how strong I am feeling. It doesn’t mean I loved Willow any less, it just means Travis’ life was cut short and I mourn the time I should have had with him. However had he lived I would never have experienced life with Frankie, his nephew.

Poor Frankie and Mollie ( Trav’s sister) have been desperately trying to lick my face clean of tears all morning. I am trying to pull myself together because I know the sight of me breaking my heart is distressing them. I hate upsetting them. They are my last links to Travis, Mollie is his sister born a year later from the same parents and Frankie, Mollie’s son is his nephew. I never realised how much Frankie looks like Travis until you compare photos side by side. That’s probably why I dote on him so much. After Travis passed away I said I would never have another boy dog in the house and then after Frankie had been with his new owners a week he came back to us as the children were allergic to him. His owners broke their hearts when they returned him. I have never seen a man so broken by a dog ( other than Jay when Trav passed away and my dad when his beloved Esme passed away). I shed a tear with them. At that point I was resolute that Frankie would be sold. Within a few days I knew I could never let him go.

And now Frankie is 12 and not in the best of health, Mollie is 14 and still bouncing around like a puppy but deaf as a post. A few days ago on her walk she was playing with another Weimaraner half her age and giving as good as she gets. Yes I will be devastated when pass away but I know that they lived full lives, surrounded by people who love them. Travis’ life was cut tragically short and I think that’s why I find it so hard to deal with.

I hate October particularly 17th and I probably always will.