Around the middle of 2010, shortly after I turned seventeen, I decided to broach the subject of a second dog with my dad. I'd always just accepted the fact that I'd get a second dog once I moved out, but especially with me now extending my schooling by a year it was looking like that was years away and Charlie was going to be a grumpy old boy before I had the chance.And since I had an extra year of homeschooling ahead of me, what better time to get a puppy?
My time frame, in my head, was by the end of 2010. I gently brought it up with my dad and, to my surprise, he was on board straight away- maybe because, as I pointed out, he was just sharing a living space with pup number two. It wasn't going to cost him anything. He asked me what breed I wanted and, after many months of asking myself that same question, I could finally answer with a definite, "Sheltie".
My mum, as usual, put up an argument and it all crumbled. It didn't help we were getting along even worse than usual at this stage and she was definite: no way in hell was I getting another dog.
But some sweet talking and mustered maturity later, I had the official go ahead from bother my parents and my search could really begin.
Because of my time frame and my obsessive idea that if I didn't have the new dog by the end of the year, it'd all go pear shaped and I wouldn't bother at all, I looked for not a breeder in particular but rather a breeder I liked that had a litter available when I was ready. I found a breeder I loved, down in Sydney, and was all set to get a pup off her- but then she emailed me an update that said the bitch hadn't taken and she'd be waiting until next year to try her again. It would push the litter back to the middle of 2011, and I wasn't okay with getting a puppy then so, disappointed, I thanked her, declined, and started the hunt again.I found another breeder I liked the look of down in Orange who had a litter due that would be ready for new homes middle of December. It was perfect and I waited with baited breathe as the due date neared- and passed. Three days late, the bitch went in for a c-section and delivered one female puppy. It was clear to the breeder from quite early on that this puppy wasn't suited for me, so I resigned myself to another search. My ideal timeframe was fast disappearing, but then I got some news. The breeder with the single female pup had an idea.
One of the bitches she bred had gone to a home with a relatively new breeder that she was mentoring; very similar lines to her dogs, and she had available an outgoing male puppy that would suit me perfectly. I got in contact and after some hazy details I was officially assigned a hefty sable and white boy that we'd be picking up on the twenty eighth of November 2010.
I'd been so sure I was getting a bitch that I hadn't put much thought into boy names, but one that leapt at me was Fletcher. The puppy looked like a Fletcher, too, and so that became his name.
Dad and I drove the sixteen hour round trip to Salt Ash on that Saturday; we'd been going to take the whole weekend and stay down there on the Saturday night before coming home on the Sunday, but the trip went quicker than expected. We left at just after four that morning, picked Fletcher up just after lunch and got home at ten thirty that night.
When we picked him up, we all noticed that Fletch had a squint. We didn't think much of it, his breeder was a bit mortified she hadn't noticed it beforehand, but the distance meant it was stupid to have driven all that way just to leave him there to get checked out. So I took him anyway, and would get him checked out by my vet and let his breeder know what it was. We all thought it was probably just him playing rough and tumble with the brother he had left, and poking himself in the eye.Whether or not that funky eye was an indicator of what was to come or not I'll never know. But from the very beginning, Fletch was an anomaly. A special little puppy.
At first he was diagnosed with having a simple micropalpebral fissure- unusual, but not something that would affect him apart from maybe affecting his peripheral vision ever so slightly. If desired, a little nip and tick when he was finished growing would have sorted it out.
So home we went, satisfied that nothing was going to go further with it. His breeder refunded a third of his purchase price and I was still satisfied with my amazing little dog: he had everything I wanted in a puppy. The personality, the pep, the incredibly confidence, the happy attitude... I couldn't have picked him out any better myself.The eye itself was deemed to be fine. Totally normal. No issues there. He had a few hiccups with his third eyelid as the weeks went by, and it looked like that would probably need a bit of nip and tuck later on, too.
We did puppy preschool and it was a bit of an experience. I think I'm destined to always get yappy dogs. Typical sheltie, Fletcher liked to "talk" through the whole class- but this time I wasn't a stressy fourteen year old and didn't let it get to me. By the end of the preschool course I had what I considered to be the beginnings of a wonderful partnership with a wonderful puppy. We did a lot of freeshaping because Charlie frustrates me with only offering focus for the clicker because that's all I trained it with for nearly six months, so during the class when the instructor was talking, Fletch would be madly offering behaviours in front of me- and giving an indignant bark if I wasn't paying attention to him.
Obedience One went pretty well. We started a basic trick class at the same time and I first started to notice something was a bit… off… during this time. He'd go from being food obsessed to refusing it. There were a couple of hiccups with his eye, and some times he would just sit there and not want to do anything. I wasn't sure what was going on. We'd been working so well together, making such progress, and yet something had changed. When he was "on", he was bloody brilliant. But "off", for him, wasn't a motivation issue: it was something else, and I had no idea what.We went to the chiropractor, firstly for Charlie who was out all over the place, but I'd taken Fletch as well because he seemed to be sitting funny and I wanted to make sure his hips were where they were meant to be. He was slightly out, but the bigger surprise was that his whole jaw was out of its place. It was popped back in- with a lot of screeching from Fletcher- and he regained his crazy appetite and our training was back on track. I didn't think anything else of it, and since I had him back for training I figured that had been his "off" problem.
I was meant to get a referral to an eye specialist shortly after that first appointment at eight weeks old, but "due to the floods" they wouldn't agree to see us because we weren't an emergency case. After hearing wonderful things about another vet, I switched and on our first visit there we were given a referral to a sister clinic of the other eye specialist and booked in for an appointment the next week.We went down and to my horror the specialist, after a twenty minute examination of both eyes, told me that Fletcher was "without functional vision" in his right eye. He had microphthalmos- a small eye- and something was wrong with his optic nerve, and it wasn't wired properly to his brain or to his left eye. It explained a few things, but when the specialist told me that he'd probably never had vision- or proper vision- in that eye I was so confused how no one could have picked it up. She assured me that at the age he was examined for CEA it couldn't have been noticed. But still, our other vet hadn't been concerned- her tests, though, had been brief because Fletcher "wouldn't sit still".
It still seemed okay. I could do agility with a dog that only had one good eye. Fletcher could still function alright; if he'd never known vision in that eye then he would still be able to continue to cope fine for the rest of his days. I adjusted my handling accordingly, now aware he couldn’t see on that side, and while we were back to struggling through off times- and those were increasing day by day- we were okay.
Throughout this time he'd been blocked up in one nostril, on the right side, and at first we thought it was to do with the out of whack jaw. Then when it came back we thought respiratory infection. I made a vet appointment to get him checked out. He'd also been reverse sneezing a lot more than was normal or healthy, and had started snoring/wheezing slightly.Then something awful happened. We were at training, running barless jumps, and Fletcher ran into an upright- smack bang on his left eye. His good eye. By that Thursday, just four days later, he was totally blind. We had the vet appointment the next day and while there I told the vet what had happened. He thought the same as I did- the logical thing. He was blind because he ran into the upright and had hurt his eye. Fingers crossed it wasn't permanent, I went home armed with all manner of drugs for his eye and respiratory infection, and the resolution that when this cleared up, he was going to be pulled from anything agility related and we'd do something else. It wasn't worth the risk.
A week later, and with nothing changed with either the infection or his vision, we went back to the vet and my heart sunk. The vet took a quick look at him and told me that it was probably the opposite, and just bad timing- Fletcher ran into the upright because he was going blind. And to be perfectly honest, he added, if all of his issues weren't connected, and to do with something much worse happening, he would be very surprised. He'd also developed an ulcer on his right eye, and it looked absolutely sickening.We got a referral and were able to get in to see the eye specialist that afternoon. The opthamologist took one look at him and told me straight up, "That right eye needs to come out". And then she looked at his left eye and went to find the medical specialist because she, too, thought this was bigger than just his eyes.
We changed consult rooms and within two minutes I had the beginnings of an answer. The specialist opened Fletch's mouth and showed me this horrible lot of pink, sore looking scratch marks on the roof of his mouth on his soft palate. He needed samples immediately: either we were looking at some rare type of fungal infection. Or a tumour. Both were rare in such a young dog- heck, any age dog, actually- but the tests would find out for sure.
So that afternoon I left Fletcher at the clinic overnight where he had a scope put up and samples taken. I got a call that evening, after the specialist had had a quick look under the microscope for himself. He told me he thought it was a tumour, but I had to wait until the beginning of next week to get the pathology and cytology results which would say for certain.
I'd Googled enough to make a picture, and it wasn't pretty. It explained every single thing that Fletcher had wrong with him, but what I still don't know- what no one knows- is how it had happened in a dog that wasn't even seven months old.
The specialist told me to give him lots of love, and to trust myself that I'd know when he was ready to go.
On the Tuesday I got told the results of his tests. Pathology said nothing. Cytology said cancer. We had to trust cytology, given what was happening to him.
He seemed okay. Coping fine, back to his usual self almost, apart from needing to be carried or clapped about everywhere because he couldn't see. When I came home from work he would hear me at the gate, and hear Charlie and Jack going bananas and he'd totter outside and come to greet me, butt wiggling and yapping.
But he got worse, a little bit more so every day- he was more lethargic, he was struggling to breath. He was deteriorating in front of my eyes. It was so scary, how quickly it was happening. He'd never really been "fine", but in the space of two weeks he'd gone downhill so fast I couldn't quite grasp it. My mantra for Fletch had always been, "He'll be alright", and I kept saying that. I don't know if it was denial, or just so I wouldn't keep bursting into tears.
Each morning I woke up to him lying on my chest or at my feet and I asked both of us if he was ready.
On Thursday the seventh of April, a week after he'd had the scope done and samples taken and barely six hours after he'd spent ages playing with hose like a lunatic, we were in the lounge room and my mum suddenly said, "Oh shit. Emma..." I looked over and Fletcher was lying on the ground, bleeding from his nose. He seemed okay- tired, but that was usual now. For the next few hours he had a small yet steady dribble of blood coming out his nose until it stopped just before we went to bed. But I'd already decided: he was ready to go, it wasn't fair to hold onto him any longer.
That's when it really hit home: I was going to lose my puppy, way before I was ready or expecting it. I was going to lose him to a cancerous tumour, and the only thing I could do was make sure he was given the most pain free, loving way out possible.
The next morning I called work and told them I couldn't come in that afternoon because I needed to have my puppy put to sleep, and then I rang the vet and made an appointment for three o'clock. We spent the day curled up on my bed, watching episodes I'd already seen as it rained outside, just enjoying each other's company one last time. We drove down to the vet and I carried him inside, sat down and cried while one of the vet nurses and a friend of mine from agility hugged me and patted him. Then I held onto him, cried into his fur, told him I loved him and I was so, so sorry while he finally got to rest.
I wrapped him in a blanket and carried him out to car, and took him home. When my dad came home from work, we buried him down the back of our property, on a bit of a hill overlooking the river.
Rest in peace, Fletch. You're a very special little boy.
