Frosty's Frolics: RIP our Beautiful Benji

Very suddenly on Thursday we had to say goodbye to our beautiful wolfhound Benji.it was all very sudden and has left us sad and missing him so much, he was such a lovely part of our lives. Bill has been away all week in Perth so I have been getting up at 5:30am and taking both dogs for a walk separately which is what I did on Thursday morning. I always take him second as he waits at home patiently and doesn’t get up to mischief like Luna, I always put my hand up and say I will take you when I get back, as he always looks at me like he is hopeful I would take him first. I took him when I got back and he charged out he door as he usually does, barks as he usually does at some point almost for the sake of barking and hearing his own voice! He was his normal beautiful Benji self.

I went off to work, when I got home about 5pm he didn’t come out to meet me or say hello, which is unusual, he was asleep down in Amy’s room, Amy and I commented on this and a few minutes later Amy came down to my room to say she thought Benji wasn’t well, she brought him down to my room, we talked about him for a bit and she decided to ring the vet and see if she could get an appointment, they were booked out but told Amy to bring him up and if she was prepared to wait someone would have a look at him, I think she told them that she was worried because his gums were pale, which evidently is a sign of internal bleeding . They took him in pretty quickly and soon Amy had called to say he wasn’t well and they were going to do x-rays, then she called again to say he would probably have to go to the emergency vet to be monitored overnight, then she called to say it looked like he would have to be operated on because he had a tumour which had ruptured, by this time I said I would come up and be with her as she was starting to sound distressed and it was all more serious than we thought, I said I would be about 15 minutes, sent her a text to suggest it might be worth calling Jakob from work, which she did.

By the time I got there she had come to the decision herself that the best thing for Benji was to say goodbye and have him euthanised. It was so quick and sudden, we were all in shock. Jakob had told Amy that they could operate, no guarantees and it might prolong his life for a few weeks then with chemo a few months, it would have been a hard recovery and we would have been doing it for our sake and not for Benji.

I was very proud and impressed with the maturity of Amy with the decision, she had had him since he was a puppy, he was her dog, we got him from Gordon our next door neighbour, when her depression was diagnosed so he means the world to her, and to all of us. Lachlan came up to say goodbye has well, it was so sad, we were all with him to the end. In a matter of three hours he was gone. At least he had a happy last day, going for his walk, doing all his normal things, being with everyone and Amy was home with him all day as it was her day off, and it all happened quickly so there wasn’t a lot of suffering or much pain. I had been talking with Bill on the phone so he was in the loop and knew what was happening, a very sad day in our lives.