Since Minnow is undeterred by a wall approximately four times her height, topped by a row of variegated agaves,and can squeeze through the bars of the gate, we knew we had to bite the bullet and have her ‘done.’  The thought of her tiny little body going under the knife was quite upsetting, but she is enough of a handful already. She is not as placid as the dog of the blog, and we could quite imagine her becoming very aggressive toward us and toward poor Poppy, if she had pups to defend. There would also be the problem of finding homes for any progeny. There are just too many dogs needing a loving home here in Andalucia, and we felt that adding to the number would be very irresponsible.

We were due to go back to Canillas for the weekend, so we checked whether it would be possible to book her surgery for Monday with the vet she has been with since she first came to us. It seemed a good idea, especially as the excellent Action for Animals had offered to help with the costs when we agreed to adopt her.

Monday morning came, and poor Minnow waited for a breakfast that never happened. By ten thirty, she was at the vet’s, and we were wandering disconsolately around the Chinese shop in Velez-Malaga, trying to take our minds off what was happening. We had a few purchases to make, as we planned to spend the rest of the day on some house maintenance and repairs, before collecting Min at around six.

The day flew by quite quickly, and we achieved more than we had hoped. We packed the car up and headed off to collect Minnow.

As  we had anticipated, Minnow was not at her best, and she trembled as we held her and reassured her that she was being a very good girl. She shook and huddled into my arms while the vet explained what follow up and drugs she would need. The trembling continued as we strapped her harness to my seatbelt, and covered her in a blanket for the long drive home. She could not settle comfortably,and shuffled and rearranged herself endlessly, shivering the whole time. She was still shaking violently three hours later when we pulled up on the drive.  Poppy came charging out to see us, and tried desperately to greet Minnow, but poor Minnow snarled weakly and cowered away.

We attempted to give her a drink, but she refused, and listlessly moved her head away, not even bothering to take a small sip. We tried tempting her with her favourite  kind of treat, but she was just not interested. Poppy was only too pleased to clear away the unwanted snack, and Minnow showed none of her usual determination to have whatever Poppy has.

We decided to take her upstairs to our room for the night, so we could keep an eye on her.  We took her favourite, the bean bag, and arranged it carefully by the side of the bed. We had  put a little jumper on her, as the vet had advised, to stop her pulling the dressing on her tummy off,and covered her gently with an old towel.

Two hours later, I turned off my bedside light. Minnow seemed to have fallen into a twitchy sleep, and the shaking had almost stopped. I figured I had better try to get some sleep while I could, as this was almost certainly going to be a broken night.

By seven this morning, I had given up on sleeping.  Min had repeatedly shuffled her way out from under the cover, and in the process lost or entangled herself in the jumper. The sound of her snuffling and licking at her dressing woke us repeatedly from our fragile sleep. Geoff put her on the bed between us. We are a strictly no dogs on beds household, but neither of us had the heart to deny her any shred of comfort we could afford her. She was shaking and shuffling miserably,  too weak to want to play with the quilt as she would normally do.

Geoff decided to go and make a cup of tea. To my dismay, when he left the room, Minnow went to follow.  I tried to catch her without grabbing at her tummy, but I was too slow, and had to watch in horror as she half jumped, half fell off the bed, landing awkwardly on the tiled floor. She staggered to the door, and teetered down a couple of steps before I was able to catch up with her and scoop her into my arms.

“If I had known she would be like this, I wouldn’t have had her done.” I lamented miserably. We agreed it was as well we hadn’t known.

By ten o’clock, she was shaking more violently than ever. Her nose was dry, she showed no interest in anything. The spasms in her body showed through her short hair. She would only lick tiredly a couple of times at a finger dipped in a bowl of water, and refused pate, cheese, toast  and biscuit pieces. She was clearly a very unhappy, very poorly little dog.

We had been told that she should have her painkillers and antibiotics with food. Not wanting to upset her stomach by ignoring these instructions,we wondered what on earth we should do. I called the vet. He was not overly concerned, but suggested that it would be wise to get her checked, just in case she was running a fever or something had gone wrong.

Normally, we would have bundled her into the car and set off straight away.  Our vet, however, was now a three hour journey away.   We decided we would contact one of the local vets if she did not show any sign of improvement in the next hour.

Geoff went to let the chickens out. The poor things had been left in their coop while we fussed and worried over Minnow. Minnow lay on my lap, abject and trembling. I found myself thinking the almost unthinkable. Admittedly, we had not planned to have another dog when Minnow turned up, but she has staked her claim to a disproportionately large chunk of our hearts, and the thought of losing her was almost unbearable.

Poppy came back in from the garden, followed by a rather excited Geoff.  “Look!” he cried proudly, “We’ve got an egg!”  Sure enough, a perfect, warm brown, smallish egg was nestled in his hand. I was pleased, obviously, but would have given our entire egg output for the year to see Minnow less lifeless  and pitiful.

The tin of pate we had opened for Minnow was in the fridge, and as Geoff put the egg in, he decided to try once more with a tiny morsel on his finger. To our amazement, Minnow licked it off, showing a degree of interest.  He gave her a little more. She probably only ate about half a teaspoonful, but she seemed to be turning a corner. I dipped  my finger in the little bowl of water I had at my side for her,and she licked it off, almost eagerly.

“Let’s see if we can get her to take her painkiller.” We anticipated possibly having to massage it down her resisting gullet, but wrapped in a morsel of pate, it disappeared with no trouble at all. The first of her antibiotics followed. She stopped shaking a couple of minutes later.

Within ten minutes, she had teetered on wobbly legs to the door, followed Poppy into the garden and managed to do what she had not done for probably twenty four hours. The effort clearly exhausted her, and she began to shake again. We took her indoors, and she curled up and fell asleep in her crate.

When she awoke and made to lick at the stitches holding her dressing in place, we decided we would have to try to fit the collar the vet had sent home with her. Poor little Min put up with having the bucket-like contraption fitted, but clearly did not feel strong enough to lift her head with it on,and could not get comfortable lying down either.  I took it off, unable to watch her suffer this further discomfort.

The other option the vet had mentioned, the jumper, had not been very successful during the night, partly because I had not wanted to manhandle her into one that fitted too snugly. I decided to try an impulse buy I had picked up in the Chinese shop.

Minnow was obviously relieved to be rid of the awful collar, and submitted quietly to being dressed in the new garment. Her big brown eyes looked sadly at me as I held her in my arms. Rosemary took a photograph. If only Min had not looked so pitiful, she would have had us chortling at the sight of her in her blue and red Spiderman costume.

I put her gently on the bean bag and covered her up. She fell asleep, trembling softly, worn out by less than half an hour of slight activity.

Since then, she has scoffed a reasonably normal bowl of food, tried to play with Poppy a little, and posed for more photos. The twinkle in her eye has returned, albeit not at full strength, and we now have to work out how we shall keep her out of mischief for the next few days, and how to prevent her removing her stitches. The internet suggests adapting an old pair of men’s y-fronts, letting her tail poke out through the fly, and taping the waistband snugly around her middle.

I am not sure I could do that to her: it would look ridiculous!

 

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