Hassle, Death & Stress

I've done a lot of mooching around today, but I did receive a phone call from my sister telling me that my parents were in a right pickle with regards to their impending move. They complete on the sale of their house on Thursday at 12 noon and from what my sister has to say my parents seem to have forgotten about this fact and have done very little towards actually shifting their shite to where they will be staying.

So, after a lot of thinking (I mean do I want to devote 2 days of my life to shifting someone elses crap) I decide that tomorrow I should head off to Wales and help out with the removals. I don't want to, but for some unknown reason I feel duty bound and so I spend the remainder of the day preparing my stuff to take down to Wales. This includes our vacuum cleaner as I'm pretty sure that mum's has as much suck as a sucky thing without it's suckers.

You may wonder why I pack my things up a day before I leave, but the truth is I need to be out of the house by 5 am to make it down to Wales for 9, and this get a full day in... I think we're going to need it.

I also get a phone call off my Mum, but it's bad news. One of our sheep dogs has had to be put down today - she developed a growth under her belly last week and it's been growing ever since. We had her taken to the vet's when we first noticed it and they said it was an abscess and it would pop, but it hasn't so today she got taken to the vets again to see what was going on. This time it's all a bit more serious, after a thorough exam they discover that she has a heart murmur as well, and she needs a load of teeth taken out too. Not only that they think that since the lump has got rock hard, and is hot to touch, and the fact it's grown so much it is most likely to be cancer.

What with the heart problems, her age (she's 14 now) and the likelihood that the cancer has spread too far to make it easy to extract cleanly Mum made the decision to have her put down.

I'll miss Tess, she was always the most obedient of our pets and was super friendly (even if she did snarl a lot at Pongo). So that leaves us with just 2 dogs now, Scrumpy (Tess's Mum) and Pongo.

After that bad news I then get another phone call from (ironically) one of the vet surgeries I'd written to so that the vet could arrange to meet me for an interview. Not a problem but I'd just made plans to go to Wales so we sorted something out for Friday when I should be home.

It's quite difficult sounding professional when you've just had bad news, are sobbing away and have to hide all that away while you're singing you're own praises. Don't get me wrong, I can do the emotional detachment necessary for working with animals, but it's a bit different when it's your own pets.

Posted by Abi on the May 16, 2006 9:40 PM

Jon at May 24, 2006 4:05 PM