{"id":1136,"date":"2018-05-29T10:22:45","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T09:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innerpieces.net\/blog\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2022-04-30T17:00:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-30T16:00:39","slug":"frodo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/frodo\/","title":{"rendered":"Frodo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Frodo<\/a>We anticipated this for some time but it doesn’t really hit you until time is up!\u00a0 Frodo had been half-hearted about eating anything for some weeks.\u00a0 His back legs were getting weaker by the day and he was finding it hard to do his business.\u00a0 He was by nature discreet about his ablutions, to the point that he prefered to go even outside and beyond the garden.
\nThat morning I put his food into his bowl as usual and he didn’t even begin to eat.\u00a0 He just sat down.\u00a0 I went over to him, pulled up a chair and picked out the biscuity bits and tried to feed him by hand. \u00a0At\u00a0that moment, he gave me a look I have never seen before.\u00a0 He looked straight into my eyes as if to say, “It’s time Dad”!\u00a0 From that moment on he lay down flat out.<\/p>\n

\"frodo-and-his-mum\"<\/a>

Frodo as a puppy<\/p><\/div>\n

We had an appointment at the vet for 11:20am on Tuesday.\u00a0 As I sit and wait to go, every minute seems like an hour.\u00a0 I got up at 5:15 that morning and before that spent a little time stroking Frodo\u2019s head gently as he lay beside my bed as he does every night.\u00a0 His breathing was laboured and he hasn\u2019t eaten anything for nearly 3 days.\u00a0 He can hardly walk anymore.\u00a0 He just lies there breathing shallow.<\/p>\n

\"Image00002\"<\/a>

Frodo & Rusty<\/p><\/div>\n

I decided to take Rusty along in the car with us to the vet so he would know what’s happening.\u00a0 Otherwise I think he might have wondered and waited for Frodo to come home.\u00a0 As we approached the outskirts of town I heard the strangest sound like a squeek coming from the car!\u00a0 “Is it the car…” I thought, “or is it Rusty?”\u00a0 Even when I moved my head a little closer to him, his mouth was closed and his head wasn’t moving and I really couldn’t tell if it was Rusty or the car?!\u00a0 After a while I realised it was Rusty!<\/p>\n

\"mary-barley-and-frodo-on-the-right\"<\/a>

Barley Mary & Frodo<\/p><\/div>\n

We arrived at the vet and I parked, went in to tell them I’d arrived then went back out to the car.\u00a0 Frodo lay motionless in the back with Rusty now sitting beside him.\u00a0 I’d arranged for a female vet to do the business and promptly two of them came out to the car, carrying two syringes of what they euphemistically call “blue juice”!\u00a0 The girls were lovely.\u00a0 Young, gentle, quiet.\u00a0 They stroked Frodo and asked about him.\u00a0 Suddenly, Rusty went bonkers.\u00a0 Yelping, whining, jumping about, actually trying to get out of the car and shaking all over.\u00a0 I think he thought he was next!!\u00a0 One of the girls had the presence of mind to pick him up calmly and offered to take him inside, which I gratefully accepted.\u00a0 As I understand it he was given lots of fuss and love and treats in there and calmed down almost immediately.\u00a0 In the meantime the deed was done.\u00a0 The girl vet said he won’t feel a thing, he’ll just go to sleep.\u00a0 And he did.<\/p>\n

\"frodo-straloch\"<\/a>

Frodo as a puppy<\/p><\/div>\n

Rusty came out and the three of us went straight to Mary’s place (from whence he came) where she, being the beautiful person she is, allowed me to bury him next to his two brothers in a quiet wild garden on the hill beyond the main house.\u00a0 Rusty was still a little unsettled particularly as there were three geese padding about on the grass,\u00a0 so I let him out of the car and tethered him to a fence post just to safeguard the geese.\u00a0 In truth they were big enough to see him off, but I didn’t want to take the chance.<\/p>\n

\"shelley-frodo-rusty\"<\/a>

Frodo & Rusty with Shelley<\/p><\/div>\n

I had brought the two rugs I covered him with at night because he got so thin I was worried about him being cold.\u00a0 One of them I laid on the bottom of the hole Mary had so kindly already dug.\u00a0 Then I picked Frodo up from the back of the car and laid him out on the rug wrapping the edges around him and placing his favourite toy between his paws.\u00a0 The other rug I laid on top of him, then after saying a few more words to him I carefully filled in the grave.
\nI think at some point Rusty realised what was really happening because the geese disappeared, he sat down and whimpered quietly.\u00a0 I went over to him, cupped his little head in my hands and said, “It’s ok little boy, Frodo’s ok now”.\u00a0 He looked up at me with those great big eyes that make you melt, and went quiet.<\/p>\n

\"frodo\"<\/a>

Frodo<\/p><\/div>\n

The following day I had to go back to town so I decided to take Rusty with me so that he would not associate the trip with frightening things.\u00a0 He did start whimpering a little when we got there, but I stroked him and reassured him and he was soon ok.\u00a0 When we finally went in a different direction away from the vet surgery he was calm and quiet.\u00a0 On the way home he seemed a little subdued, a little sad.<\/p>\n

\"128-2897_IMG\"<\/a>

Rusty as a puppy<\/p><\/div>\n

I went back to Frodo the next day to finish off the grave.\u00a0 Mary wants to plant a Rhododendron over him as she has done over Barley and Horsa.\u00a0 I think it’s a wonderful idea.\u00a0 So I took four bags of compost from the old piles of horse manure, poured them on top of the grave then laid stones all around the edges then placed a large headstone onto which I scratched his name.\u00a0\u00a0 Like a gift from nature, laying right there was a stone in the shape of a perfect heart, which I placed just below the headstone.\u00a0 A grave fit for a prince!<\/p>\n

\"IMG_7028\"<\/a>

Rusty & Frodo playing<\/p><\/div>\n

Whilst I had a cup of coffee with Mary, Rusty ran around playing with her three doggies, two Retrievers and a border terrier.\u00a0 He was better today. Since then I have kept him with me, taken him on different walks and given him lots of love and attention.\u00a0 I love him so much.\u00a0\u00a0 He is forteen now, only a year younger than Frodo.\u00a0 I want him to continue being the happy doggie he’s always been.<\/p>\n

\"frodo4\"<\/a>

Frodos resting place<\/p><\/div>\n

By all accounts fifteen years is a pretty good innings for a Retriever.\u00a0 It is Frodo’s fifteenth birthday on Friday.\u00a0 I love him so and I\u2019m trying not to think how much I will miss him.\u00a0 He is one in a million.\u00a0 I think a small part of me went with him that day.\u00a0 He will always be very much alive in my memories and my heart.\u00a0 I will never forget him.\u00a0 You never know, he might come running to greet me when my time’s up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We anticipated this for some time but it doesn’t really hit you until time is up!\u00a0 Frodo had been half-hearted about eating anything for some weeks.\u00a0 His back legs were getting weaker by the day and he was finding it hard to do his business.\u00a0 He was by nature discreet about his ablutions, to the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1667,"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions\/1667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/innerpieces.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}