Fluffy Is Gone

A tough one to take

"In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." — Albert Camus

We lost Fluffy today. After coming into us on Monday morning and battling with everything she had, her body gave up just after lunchtime today.

She has been rallying and I was elated to see her alive this morning and sat talking to her. I told her to keep this up and we’d have big plans for her. I dared to dream.

I was very cautiously optimistic that she might be over the worst. Sadly, I was wrong.

A Semi Dignified End

We tried everything in our power to save little Fluffy. She was with us for 36 hours and I never once looked in and saw her on her own. There was always someone willing her on, sitting talking to her, adjusting temperatures or just staring at her with hope in their eyes, gently pleading with her to live.

I won’t get into what happened to her here. I’ll keep that offline but the damage was probably too severe to ever heal.

The comments under this post will all be wishing me well but the medical team are the ones who battle and are hands on. Losing a dog always hits hard but everybody had a super soft spot for little Fluffy. She had pain relief, a name, the best medical care and a lovely send off. I’m not going to lie…this one broke us. No dog should die like this.

We Never Even Got A Nice Photo

I think we got to Fluffy about 24 hours too late. I saw such improvement in her in the short time she was with us. She even lifted her head this morning and sat up on her own last night. There was real progress but her little body started convulsing this morning and she left us.

I would never say I was happy to lose a dog, and she did have huge pain relief but maybe given the damage done, slipping away might have been her best option.

I wish I’d gotten to know her. I think she would have been a fun and excitable little dog.

Walk, Clear The Head And Write

When the news came through on my phone I instantly stood up, got my running shoes and went for a walk. I just dropped everything on my to do list and said I’d walk 5km to clear the head.

I had a mixture of fury, sadness, disappointment and just utter frustration bubbling up inside me. I ended up walking for six and a half hours because I didn’t want to stop until I felt utter exhaustion and pain. I wanted to distract myself and just put one foot in front of the other.

All I could think to myself was “Feck this world and the people in it”. Losing Bear a couple of weeks ago really hit me and this was the double whammy. We see plenty of death but there was something so hopeless and sad about Fluffy and Bear’s deaths that has hit me. You can’t really unsee the fear and pain in their eyes when you hold them up close.

I knew the walk would calm me down and I wouldn’t stop until I had solutions. It’s very hard to flip situations like this into positives but we have to try.

I came up with 2 clear actions to honor little Fluffy…

1. Creating Something Tangible In Fluffy’s Honor

Sometimes when dogs pass I am so moved and upset that I try to do something to honor their legacy. It’s the reason we have Alba’s kitchen, our retirement village and of course Tina’s hospital.

Even though we only knew Fluffy for 36 hours I want to do something to remember her forever. I thought about an area of Tina’s hospital in the emergency room and how it should have…

• A little Oxygen chamber to help future dogs.

• A special burns unit area to treat dogs in her honor

• A little tasteful tribute to her so she always has her place in our hearts.

If anybody wants to contribute to it you can here as part of the hospital fundraiser I am doing on September 12th. I’m sure Tina would be very happy to have a little Fluffy emergency area in there.

2. Creating Lasting Change In Fluffy’s Honor

Put very simply I’ve decided we can’t just go around picking up other people’s mess any longer. I purposely picked three dogs below who have fairytale endings and beautiful homes now. Sienna, Rocky and Bowie.

All three were dumped out in the streets while sick, dying and pregnant. We turned their lives around like we often do but we also lose dogs like Bear and Fluffy.

We have a meeting on Thursday to…

• Develop our education strategy.

• Choose how to allocate the budget

I decided today that we need to turbo charge that along with prosecutions for animal abuse and neglect. That will start happening in Q4 of this year. No more just picking up other people’s cruelty (although we will of course help dogs in need) but it’s time to get aggressive and tackle the problem at source. There are only so many Bears and Fluffys we can pick up at death’s door before our hearts break for good.

I also decided one smaller thing while walking…

• I’ll wait to share very sick dogs online until there is some better news. I don’t think people need to see all this sadness. In retrospect I should probably not have shared Fluffy until we looked at her for 24 hours. I was just so hopeful for her.

I wish I got to know Fluffy even for a couple of days. I have to be honest and say I feel very empty and sad as I know many of the team do.

I promise we will turn this into a positive and I’ll blitz you all with some happy news in the coming weeks. I choose the quote at the top of this post because in this world we live in helping dogs there is no other way to live.

Take care of yourselves.

Big Love

Niall

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