Today our dog Squiffylugs was diagnosed with bone cancer, so she probably won’t be with us for much longer.
Squiffylugs, 12 Jan 2015
On Friday she was fine, on Saturday she began limping, and as there seemed no improvement today we took her to the vet, and he said it was bone cancer, and the prognosis is not good.
She was born on 12 November 2007, her father being our German Shepherd Samwise, and her mother being our cross German Shepherd-Border Collie, Ariel. There were three surviving puppies in the litter, and two of them went to a monastery then at Hennops Pride.
She had lots of nicknames when she was growing up — Fatty Lumpkin, because she was the greediest of the litter and the fattest. Jethro called her Pidlet, because she would piddle when she was excited, and she didn’t merely wag her tail, but her whole body. Eventually it became apparent that she would always have one ear sticking up and the other folded down, so she became Squiffylugs.
She is the third dog we have had who has had cancer. The first one, Lucy, died in January 2001, also from bone cancer, in the same place. She was quite old, and would probably have died of old age quite soon anyway. Squiffylugs’s mother Ariel died of the canine equivalent of breast cancer nearly three years ago.
And that makes us wonder. One sometimes hears stories of people living near to high tension electricity lines having higher rates of cancer than normal. We’d not paid much attention to such stories before, but there are high tension lines just across the road from us.
The view from our sitting-room window
And it was in October 1994 that another line was strung up on the other side, so that we have high-voltage lines on two sides of our house. Three dogs getting cancer makes one wonder if there is a link.
Filed under: family news | Tagged: cancer, dogs, pets, Squiffylugs | 1 Comment »
Hayes & Greene family history 