Allie

One of my dogs died on Monday morning. It was upsetting.

Allie was a Doberman and she was 4 years old. She was actually my daughter’s dog. But when my daughter moved to Madras and was unable to get a place where a dog was allowed, she asked me to keep one of her 2 dogs. So I took Allie, firstly because she was female. Besides, she had already been spayed & also because I felt she was very sensitive & would be very unhappy in a new situation, whereas she already knew me & this place. She came to me in 2003, when she was a pup of around 10 months. Allie very soon became my dog. My sons used to call her my tail. Although a Doberman, she loved to be petted and would wait for you to sit down to place her head strategically on your lap. She was very much my dog. But when my daughter or her husband came, she was ecstatic. After all it was they who had brought her up from the time she was 3 weeks old, till the time she was 10 months! So much so I think she was just a bit jealous of their baby.

This May Allie had turned 4. She had mellowed and was no longer the jumpy puppy she was when she came to us.

I really don’t know what exactly happened. She seemed a bit quiet, but I thought that was because she had finally quietened down. Suddenly she started throwing up. We took her to the hospital. One vet said it was distemper, but another said that she didn’t have enough signs. All I know is she was really ill, and seemed to have some internal bleeding. The doctor at the vet hospital treated her for distemper and gave her a dextrose drip for dehydration, as she had been throwing up a lot. But it was of no use. She had terrible convulsions in between, which was agony to watch. But the saddest was hearing her crying through her sedated sleep. Anyway, she was out of her misery early Monday morning. We buried out among the trees. It will take a while to stop missing her.