Nutty's tumour grows bigger

I haven't written for quite a while as my beloved Sheltie Nutty's mouth tumour (it's full horrible title is squamous cell carcinoma) shrank considerably and I was lulled into a sense of security about his long-term prognosis.

But I am sad to report that over the last few weeks the tumour started to grow again, though fortunately outside his mouth instead of inside, as it had previously done. At least he can still drink and he's enjoying his food and his walks. But the tumour is swollen and bulbous and he drips blood everywhere. I carry tissue around, stuffed in my bra, all the time to mop up after him. Yet the vets and my psychic insist he is not in pain. He doesn't seem to be suffering, so I will take their word for it as there is no point pumping him with pain killers unless he needs them.

Talking of medications, Boyfriend-on-a-Short-Fuse has been quite up and down of late. This morning he was in a terrible mood. Was it very dreadful of me to slip half a Valium into his porridge? It seemed to work a treat and today he has been calm and happy. But I wonder if it is illegal to foster drugs on people without their knowledge? The last time I was involved in this sort of terrible activity was 30 years ago in Verbier when some bad men in our skiing party slipped dope into a very dull girl's soup. It cheered her up no end. Do not try this at home, etc etc.

But back to my beloved Nutty. I'll never give up and I'm keeping up with all his treatments. C recommended he see her healer, who has really helped her, so I'm making an appointment as soon as he can tear himself away from his stall at the Mind Body and Spirit Exhibition. Why someone of his calibre wants to exhibit at that pulsating hell-hole of spiritual shoppers and desperadoes, I have no idea. I speak as a reformed spiritual shopper you understand.

We had a terrible moment in the park with Nutty today. I am trying to exercise a bit as the less exercise I do, the more weight I lose, I'm getting far too skinny. So I was doing a hand stand against a tree and as I kicked up I knocked Nutty's jaw. He was right behind me but I had not seen him. He cried out, a terrible whimpering, all the more terrible as he is so stoic and that is the first time I have ever heard him cry. I came down straightaway and to my horror, he was shying away, his mouth a mass of blood. His tumour had split open and a piece of it was hanging from his mouth....

Can anything be more terrible than hurting an innocent creature? Why didn't I look behind me? If only I could have gone back in time and checked. We all walked home feeling dreadful but Nutty, tough little soldier that he is, seemed to buck up. When we got home he polished off a plate of fresh chicken and seemed no worse for his ordeal.

10 hours later the wound now looks as it did before, a black and bloody mess, but it is not bleeding and he seems in good spirits. Click clacking around the flat on his little white fluffy paws as he follows me around.

And so we all soldier on. Please pray for my lovely old boy who has never had a bad thought in his life and is so kind to all dogs and people. Even when the Bichons gobble his food he is easy-going and equable. `C'est la vie', he seems to say as he staggers away and leaves them to it.

I Love My Dog and my Dog Loves Me

I have just fed Nutty his dinner of lightly poached organic chicken (from M and S, I pray it is not halal - fifty percent of lamb is now halal in the UK, so under the cosh of Muslims have we become).

Talking of beastly halal, listen to this. At Christmas I met up with an old flatmate who I hadn't seen for over twenty years and we hit it off straight away, it was just like old times. We were chalet girls together in Crans Montana and had a wonderful time. We were both too lazy to ski and spent all day (after finishing our very cursory domestic duties) in the local patisserie, gorging on cakes and endless creamy cappuchinos. Result was we both staggered back to Blighty having put on a stone and bursting out of our cords. She married an old Etonian Welsh sheepfarmer and disappeared to a place called Mould in North Wales and I never saw her again. Neither of us were great at staying in touch, besides she disapproved of my decidely non-Etonian fiance (a good natured but socially insecure Geordie). But it was lovely, none the less, to reconnect with her and her lovely husband.

Now I have nothing against farming, but when her hitherto lovely husband said with a cold shrill laugh that he sold off his old ewes (knackered presumably after enduring endless births and having their lambs stripped away from them, again and again) to the halal abbatoir "they pay us really well", haw haw, " so why bloody not!" I inwardly shuddered.

My pal had insisted Boyfriend on a Short Fuse and I stay with them on the halal farm in Mould but I knew I never would. I mean, where is his loyalty to his stock? I guess I am very bourgeois, but where is the common decency it it? How desperate can they be for money that they sell these old girls off to some wretched abbatoir where they do not even get stunned before having their throats cut?

Poor old Teflon-dad is completely gutted because he has to close one of his factories in Surrey (which his father opened in the 1930's) because it has been losing two million pounds a year. But he has kept the place open for years, solely out of loyalty to his hard-working workforce who have stuck with him through thick and thin. Many other bosses would, and have, relocated to China or wherever the running costs are cheaper, but he refused to do this.

I am so proud to have him as a father, just imagine having my pal's husband as a rello? Thank God for great mercies, is all I can say.

I prayed to Francis of Assisi and Archangel Ariel, the patron saint of animals last week, and I must report that Nutty has been doing very well ever since. Part of me still holds out for a spectacular remission, or just for his mouth tumour to shrink a bit or not get any bigger. As it is, he is in fine fettle, eating like a trouper, taking his medicines and being his usual loving, sweet-natured, stoic self. We are so lucky to have this extra time with him to spoil him and show him our love.

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Nutty Soldiers On

Both Boyfriend on a Short Fuse and I are still floored with bad colds (bad colds mind, not flu, people often upgrade colds to flu but flu means one is bed-ridden and we are still able to totter about, just).

I am feeling knackered though, and am ignoring my admin mountain in favour of watching old documentaries of Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland on You Tube. Britt was on Piers Morgan last night, still looking good if slightly altered by surgery, but my God she was so beautiful.

Excerpts of a documentary filmed of them both in 1976 takes me back to that blazing hot summer when I was twelve and the misery of surviving a childhood with my own Britt Ekland lookalike Mother. Heavens, no child wants a glamorous mother, it really is a terrible fate. I was studious and skinny, still am, plus ca change.

I never understand people saying that childhood is the best time of your life. I’m much happier at fifty than I was at twelve.

Some things remain unaltered, we had a beautiful fluffy sheltie then too called Tiffany (very seventies name), I don’t remember how she died but I don’t think any of our shelties lived past about twelve, which is why Nutty is doing so well to get to fifteen.

He is soldiering on, brave stoic little chap that he is. He is very doddery and forgetful and even if I have just stroked him he quickly forgets where I am and starts wandering around the flat looking for me. His mouth tumour means he still cannot drink and eating is difficult for him too. I spoon feed him his chicken into his mouth’s good side, it’s not that easy, bits of food fall out onto the floor (quickly hoovered up by the tiny dogs). He dribbles blood, pus and saliva and we have to regularly mop him up. It is undignified for such a clean little dog and he just doesn’t deserve it.

Yet he does not appear to be in pain, he wags his tail when we stroke him and he enjoys his walks at a slow pace, hanging out with and sometimes barking at other dogs.

I am keeping up with his pills and potions – a teaspoon of colloidal silver and seven drops of Dr Regweg homeopathic anti-tumour mix twice a day, a homeopathic pill three times a day, acopops anti cancer pills twice a day (formulated by Dr Dressler, the dog cancer expert), lastly, a shitake mushroom excerpt twice a day. Some of them I can mix in his food, but if he won’t take them that way I open the capsules and mix it up with water that is syringed into his mouth.

It takes time, but I have plenty of time and even more love for my old boy. I will do whatever it takes to keep him going.