It has been three months since Diesel was put to sleep. In my last post in this blog I promised to make one more posting in the end of the summer to write about what was wrong with him when I get the final examination results. So here I am now.

 

The whole thing still feels very sorry and unfair. I have once previously lost a 5-year-old dog and I feel it is the most unfortunate and unfair age to loose a dog. When the dog is 5 years old he is past the youth and he is finally an adult dog. He is no more so full of energy and enthusiasm, he is starting think wisely, too. He has gotten basic obedience training and if he is a sportsdog you have probably gained some results already. He has some life experience and he is starting to listen (which does not always mean he would obey you) and know you better just like you now know your dog and you know how he behaves and responds to things. You begin to be an unseparable pair who don't always even need words. The biggest effor to make the dog a good dog is past you and now you enjoy the work you've done and achieve more results – and you can enjoy working even more with your dog, too.
We didn't get as far as 5 years with Diesel but we got close enough to make the loss feel painfully big.

 

Diesel was 1.5 years old when I got him in the summer 3 years ago. It always felt as if he was mentally 1 year younger than his physical age compared to other dogs I've had. He seemed very inexperienced, he was so surprised and positively curious about everything. My first goal was to pass the BH test (Begleithundprüfung) with him in the autum but I soon realized I had to postpone this goal with at least a year. Diesel had no self-control and no self-discipline at all. He had big difficulties in focusing in any one thing. There was a huge workload to do.

 

When I had had Diesel for about a year I finally started to actually like him. For a long time I had felt he was mostly annoying with all his bad habits. He was very very vocal, noisy, always running around in a rush and trying to get everywhere first even when he had no idea what was going on. I was patient and gave him time and strict physical and mental limits since day 1. He calmed down remarkably but it took two years. Slowly he started to turn into an almost normal dog with high energy level and poor focus. But there was no way he would ever turn into a dog who is a nice family pet dog. His character was never suitable to be just a family pet dog.

 

When I got Diesel he suffered of severe separation anxiety. When I left the dogs home alone I had to put him in a large crate. Otherwise he'd try to run after me through windows and doors. The worst thing in Diesel's world was to see someone walk away from him when he could not follow. Sometimes we had a visitor in the house and when he went out the door, Diesel rushed after him howling in desparation – his reaction was so automatic he did it even when I was still inside the house with him. He reacted before realizing the situation and seemed puzzled afterwards.

 

The first months when Diesel was home alone in his big crate he was barking and digging in the crate so anxious he was dripping wet of his own drool up to his elbows when I got back home after a couple of hours. Having received an e-mail from his previous owners I knew this had been a big issue already for a long time.

The ”water lever” got lower with time. One day I realized only the toes in his front paws were a little wet when I got home and he had been alone for a few hours.
 

When we moved to our new house Diesel was so much better that I no longer needed to crate him while I was away. He got his own room where he was separated by a fence from the other dogs and my office. He had a big window where he could see out (but not anyone leaving). When he was left alone, he jumped against the door once in desperation and then calmed down and lied down. He was not hysterical when I got back home and his feet were all dry. He had his big crate in his room and it was always open and he often went in it to sleep. It took him about 2 years to get rid of the worst of the separation anxiety.

 

Diesel was my dog. Other people meant nothing to him when I was around. When we got visitors my other dogs rushed to greet them and Diesel rushed to run around the other dogs realizing they were happy and excited so he was also really excited but he did not understand the visitors had something to do with it all. I think it took over a year before he actually paid attention to people who appeared in our yard. Mostly I was the only significant person he needed. Whatever he was doing he was kept one ear tuned to my level, he always noticed when I called him or talked to him no matter what was happening.

 

Diesel would have given his life for me. He would have done his everything for me. He had a huge tendency to aggressive behavior when threatened so I knew I could go anywhere with him and always be safe. But it also explains why someone could easily have problems with grooming him and handling him. He was not afraid to use his teeth in unpleasant situations. Dispite this quality and tendency it was not a problem in our everyday life – Diesel was not an aggressive or unpredictable dog, he was kind and open and friendly.
 

Diesel was the first dog I have had to challenge and win physically, fight like dogs do until surrender. It happened when I had had him for 1.5 years and I think I was the first living being, man or dog, that he ever fully surrendered to both physically and mentally. Fighting with him like dogs do (not something I had ever imagined myself doing!) until he willingly surrendered to me like dogs do was probably the most significant turning point in making Diesel a nice dog. After that he was more content and balanced and peaceful than ever. 

 

Learning to know Diesel and seeing his problem behavior I understood very well why his first family could not keep him. I assume they only wanted a nice family dog and what they got was a high-energy-level puppy who was not afraid to bite and who needed a job and calm leading with a very firm hand. When problems escalate to a level that was visible in Diesel when I got him I can well understand that the best solution for both Diesel and his first family was to give him up to someone who can handle the whole wild package.

 

The last autumn and winter that I had Diesel we focused in training obedience and the progress was magnificent. I had been teaching the basics of obedience work to Diesel since I got him. I had spent very much time building up the basics, and I had done it very thoroughly. Now it was finally time to build on the good basics and it was super! Diesel was so excited to do obedience work with me. He tried so hard to please me and do well and right after he tried to do it even better.  He gave his everything to me when training and I miss training and working with him so, so much.

 

This summer I should have been building the basics to obedience training with little Merlin puppy but I have had no motivation. The motivation died with Diesel. I don't want to start things all over again with yet another dog, I want to continue where I left with Diesel. I want him back.

 

It feels so so unfair that just as Diesel started to be a nice dog and worked well and was so co-operative and able to focus and control himself and we got terrific results in tests and trials, it was all over. It has been three months now. Sometimes I meet an acquitance who hasn't heard the news yet. I still get tears in my eyes as I point out the lilac under which Diesel is buried in our garden. Some days I realize how much I've lost and the pain presses my heart badly. One morning driving to school was really bad, tears ran down my face all 45 minutes that I sat in the car.

 

After Diesel was put to sleep I took him to the university for post-mortem examinations. It was my & Diesel's gift to the science. They did computer tomography scans of not only Diesel's spine but also his elbows because he had been limping a front foot for so many weeks without any improvement even when he was on two painkillers.

For me the reason to have Diesel euthanized was all clear: it was the human thing to do, it was the final release from chronic and uncurable pain when pain killers did not help. So there was no hurry to get the CT scan results. I knew what I did even if it felt so hard.

Finding a new home for Diesel was not an acceptable solution at any point in the end the journey. It never even crossed my mind. Dogs come to my home to stay for good. Diesel had a very difficult character. I was a god to him. A new home would not have removed Diesel's pain and it would not have brought him a new back and a new front foot. When you come to an end you come to an end and there is no way to change it.

 

I got Diesel's epicrisis from the university in late August. A lot of people have asked me what was actually wrong with Diesel and I've promised to put it all in my last post in this blog so here it is:

Diesel had a transitional vertebra in the lumbo-sacral area in his back. It is something he was born with and it gives predisposition to over-mobility in vertebrae, and spondylosis. The body tries to self-fix the over-mobile vertebrae with creating spondylosis which is a very painful process and when finished makes the vertebrae totally immobile. Diesel had spondylosis in different stages in several vertebrae.

Diesel had mild arthrosis in the wrist in his right front foot.

Diesel had arthrosis in both elbows. He has possibly had mild elbow dysplasia to begin with.

Diesel's left hip socket was low and the radiologist had given him an additional diagnosis of hip dysplasia. However, he didn't have any significant arthritis in his hips.
 

Later in August I got to sit down with a specialist to view the CT scans. I could see Diesel's pelvis in 3D and from different angles in the computer screen. It looked horrible. The transitional vertebra was totally deformed and even a layman like myself could easily see it didn't fit there at all.

 

I've been thinking if I actually regret buying Diesel. I can't say. It is a good question. However, there is one thing I did learn in this process: it does not matter how good health results the adult dog you are buying has on paper. It does not matter that you ask the seller to have someone check the dog's HD x-ray to see if there are abnormal vertebrae in the lumbo-sacral area. You must do it yourself, you must see it for yourself. Diesel's transitional vertebra is clearly visible in a usual hip x-ray.