I got my first dog in adult hood at 30 when my two boys were 9 months and 2 years. A ruby Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, he was 8 weeks, the reason why I got a cavalier was because my husband never got a dog before and they are easy to train and very good with kids and cats. We got him from the Kennel Club website, he was KC registered and had a show winner dad. We first saw them at 6 weeks and paid a deposit and picked him up on the 10 th Jan 2008. Everyone was very excited. He came with his challenges though, he ate so much cat poo he didn't eat his meals, the toilet training was a nightmare especially with a toddler and a baby but we managed it. At the first vets appt I discovered he had a mild heart murmur (grade 1) which the breeder never told me but at that time the health measures weren't available. He was soo good with the kids, soo placid as well.
When he turned 3 and a half he turned deaf but he knew sign language which I taught him, and was on deaths door when ate a mushroom from the garden, pooing blood but the vets saved. At 5 and a half he was displaying weird traits so the vets referred him to a specialist and he got a MRI scan which revealed he had the worse case of Syringomyelia (SM) on paper but had no symptoms, his heart murmur was getting worse as well, it got to grade 4-5 by age 7. I wanted to get another puppy before anything serious happened to him so we got another cavalier, blenheim puppy when Benji was 7.
From the age of 7-9 2015-2017 his heart murmur and SM were getting worse, he was on 6 pills per day. I did love him very much. I had the quality of life conservation many times with the vets to make sure I was doing the right thing, but i knew in April of 2017 it was time to say goodbye, I couldn't stop crying the week before and the day arrived, it was horrible, I gave him his last slow walk and then took him to the vets and was with him (I've got tears writing this) until he crossed over, the death of a pet is a horrible thing to go through. I got him cremated and his ashes are in our garden, with a headstone of stone cavalier.
In Memory of Benji
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