It has been very difficult for us here recently. Our younger dog has not been well for a long time and today he made his last visit to the vets. We had him since he was a pup, and watched him grow and grow and then grow old.

Noche was part of a litter that some friends’ dog had in December 2012. Here he is when he was only a couple of weeks old.

He came home to us in January 2013. This is him shortly after arriving.

And here he is making friends with Diablo, who would have been about 6 months old by then.

At first he was everywhere. He was so small that he kept getting out through the cat flap, but after a few months he could only get his nose through it. This is him when he was about 6 months old and although he was towering over Diablo by then, it was the Jack Russell who was very much in charge, and Noche was just a gentle giant.

Over the years Noche was always good company and a constant source of entertainment and pleasure, but in the last year he has had a whole lot of problems. The biggest problem was Cushings Disease. There is no cure for it because his was caused by a tumour in his neck, but medication helped with a lot of the symptoms until recently. The vets kept increasing the dosage but symptoms kept coming back. On top of that he was getting a bit arthritic and stumbling and falling a lot. We are pretty sure he was in a fair bit of pain, but he never really complained about it. Cushings made him prone to all sorts of other things, and then he developed an ulcer on his retina which burst and was going to require having an eye removed.

Jayne didn’t want to put him through that, not with his life expectancy likely to only be a few months anyway because of the Cushings, so we had to make a very difficult decision, and today was the day of his last appointment with the vets, where he was very well-known and well-liked.

We are really going to miss our great big teddy bear of a dog. Diablo seems a bit confused by Noche’s absence, but he is getting spoilt rotten at the moment.

One decision we have made is to not have any more pets, especially not dogs. I don’t think we could cope with all this again.