We are once again a two-dog household.
Cleodhna phoned me at 8:30 yesterday, while I was at the Research Club getting ready to play chess, to tell me that Laszlo was in a really bad shape. I dashed home, and when I came through the door Laszlo was sitting up, but didn't have the energy to wag his tail. He'd slipped and fallen earlier, possibly triggering a major internal bleed; he'd refused roast chicken. He was clearly on his way out.
Cleodhna phoned Kirsty, and Al drove the two of them over; we phoned a variety of vets, and got a number of reasons why they couldn't come over and put Laszlo to sleep (all their vets were busy in surgery, and they weren't insured to take drugs to people's homes; the vet on call was the only one in the building; the practice had a spare vet who had been on call for the last four days running, and was now on his third beer, and if anything went wrong the practice was potentially at risk so his manager said no). Eventually Kirsty found a vet who would take Laszlo; we experimented with bundling Laszlo into a sheet, but he decided that he could walk down the stairs, with a fair bit of prodding and encouragement. Al, Cleodhna and Laszlo drove ahead; Kirsty and I followed them. We arrived at a vet in Paisley, marched him into the consultation room, the vet injected Laszlo with a sedative followed by, effectively, a lethal injection, and he went quietly to sleep. Cleodhna and I stroked him and hugged him until we couldn't stand it any more, and knocked on the wall so the vets could take him away.
We drove home, and spent the next three hours talking about what a great dog Laszlo was, how lucky we all were, what we're going to do next, and how lucky we are to still have Berkeley and Habibi, who can keep each other company and play Nr with each other.
As far as I can tell, Laszlo suffered perhaps 4 days in his 7-year life. He spent a day and a half with the emergency vets, then his own vets, when the tumour on his spleen ruptured; he spent a day and a half at Glasgow Vet School when we had him in for tests. He was probably in pain for roughly 4 hours yesterday, between the bleed being sufficient that it was compressing e.g. his heart and lungs, and him being given the final release. This isn't bad at all.
And we spoiled him rotten in the last few days. He got haggis, buttered toast, rotisserie chicken from the supermarket, pilchards, you name it.
And he was never in and out of hospital; he never had batteries of pills or random treatments imposed upon him. Only a month and a half elapsed between his spleen exploding and him being put to sleep. And for nearly all of it, he was at home, surrounded by the humans, dogs and smells that he loved.
Laszlo was gorgeous, a working dog with the shape of a malamute but the colour of an alsatian. He was athletic and indefatigable, right up to the end, when his blood supply betrayed him. He was unflappable when it came to other dogs (his normal tactic being to take his Massive Paws and whack one of them onto the head of the dog that was annoying him, and subsequently to drive him into the ground), but very rarely sought domination over others. He was a wonderful companion to his humans, and a graceful pack leader to his other dogs.
Cleodhna took him to puppy classes when he was young, and he did all the things he was told to do (e.g. "pick up that ball, jump over this fence, then put the ball in this dish"), but then gave her a look as if to say "Mum, why are you making me do these things?" He would chase squirrels in the park, but mostly because he was interested rather than because he wanted to kill. (He once brought Cleodhna a baby bird that he'd found, fallen from its nest, carried every so gently in jaws that, if he wanted, could e.g. kill network cables with one bite.) He had a congenital fear of strangers, but he absolutely loved those people he decided were OK (many of whom still have the bruises to show for it.)
We will never get another dog like Laszlo, and we're not going to try. Having acquired Habibi by complete chance a few months ago looks like wonderful timing, with hindsight: it's been long enough that she's completely settled in with us and the other dogs, and it means that Berkeley has a companion. We'll take the two of them to France in the summer, along with (probably) Laszlo's ashes, which we'll use to fertilise a tree that we'll plant in Margaret's memory. And then, once we're back, we can look at dogs again.
In the mean time, though, let's hear it for Laszlo.
