o'cockaigne

22-3-2015 Cockaigne Chidish van de Meirse Weiden 1-9-2019

Last week, September 1, our Chidish was hit by a cardiac arrest.

At the end of a beautiful course that he had ran with Cytaugh, he fell dead at the finish. Because of the way he fell, the alarm bells went off right away and when I came to him and put my hand on his heart, I felt that it was no longer beating. He also didn’t react to anything anymore, he was already completely gone.

For him a wonderful death because he loved to do coursing but it is in and in sad that he could only enjoy his life again for such a short time. After the operation on his toe in mid-March, which went super well, he rehabilitated for a long time to make sure that he may and could do everything again.

At the end of June, during the holiday in Denmark, he was off lead again for the first time and he enjoyed it to the full.

After this his condition slowly rebuilt and he did his first short piece of coursing in early August in Donaueschingen. This went well, his toe remained intact and Chidish was very happy. The following weekend he did the coursing in Lelystad and here it was as usual. He was super fanatic and ran beautifully.

In the meantime, he started to play nicer with Cearrean and built up a good condition. During the walks he was also very active and enjoyed the contact with other dogs. He thought everyone was sweet and nice and preferred to be in the middle of such a large group of dogs from a dogwalking service.

We are now a week further, the loss is huge. Chidish was a huge teddy bear and came many times during the day to get a hug, he preferred to be in my neighbourhood and always lay or stood in the way. He enjoyed everything; liked showing, always recognized his people- and dogfriends everywhere and lived for coursing. We would never have expected that this would be his death, but the moment he said goodbye to worldly things, he was happy.

This was not the only setback in the past six months. One of the other reasons that I did not stay “up to date” was the “testicle problem” with Cearrean. At the beginning of March we had the idea that both testicles had come down. Very small but noticeable. In mid-April only one small ball was felt, after this it only became smaller and ultimately nothing was left of it. Of course we visited different specialists and finally decided for hormone therapy. To keep a long story short; Unfortunately, hormone therapy did not help, one testicle was atrophy and it appears that the other is still in the abdomen. What we thought that was his second testicle is still a mystery. In short … I have been quite “sick” of it. Not only because he can’t go to the shows but mainly because of the DNA loss. The chance that someday something will be born from the remaining semen that is still stored in Utrecht is very small as the quality of that leftover is not very good. Saving sperm for 27 years is not something you do for nothing and when something like this happens it is very sad.

Cearrean also ran, in a racing game with his mother at the end of April, against a pillar of our house and thereby damaged his knee so much that he was no longer allowed to run and play so much. If he did a little too much, his knee would bother him again and he would cripple. Yes, and tell a puppy that he should take it easy.
Now things are finally getting a bit better, but he has adapted his way of walking and standing to the sore knee. Cearrean is now almost 9 months and already has a height of 80 centimeters. With adapted food and exercise, I hope that it will eventually work out well, because the aim is that he can move freely and happily.