Opinion: Was stepping off insurance treadmill right for Bella?
© Kathy Horniblow It has been nearly a decade since we had the grim job of calling the vet and asking him to put down an old dog.
And bearing in mind that the Manor Farm menagerie consisted (until a week ago) of four dogs and two cats, that’s a long interval.
Too many pets? Not at all; a sofa piled high with slightly muddy dogs sleeping off the day’s activities is, after all, one of the biggest perks of living in an old farmhouse.
Nine years ago, it was Monty the flatcoat who broke everyone’s heart by developing some terrible immune issue and spiralling downhill from a monster of a dog to a shadow of his former self.
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Crucially, we still had pet insurance back then, and the poor fellow was shunted from clinic to clinic as experts and specialists ran test after test to try to pin down exactly what the problem was. (Flatcoat owners all over the country will be nodding in sympathy at this point.)
It was all in vain, and the call was made. Monty was only five.
A few years later, we were having our insurance review with the NFU. With our change in circumstances, we were making a lot of revisions.
There were easy ones relating to numbers of tractors and huge heaps of grain awaiting sale, and the slightly harder one: did old dogs justify the insurance premiums?
The younger flatcoats, out working several times a week in the season, needed coverage, but the older flatcoat (Bella) and the senior Malinois?
After much debate, Hazel and I concluded that they didn’t. Come the day, we’d steel ourselves into making the most practical decision, trusting ourselves to do what’s best for the dog.
After our experience with Monty, we decided we’d step out of the “keep an old dog going at all costs” camp.
That day came last week. Bella had been going downhill for several months, prompting a couple of standard visits to the vet.
There was one last wag as she slipped away, on her favourite bed, surrounded by coats and wellies that smelled of shooting and mud
But, true to our word, we resisted the lure of the in-depth high-tech investigation.
She managed a few days out working, still impressing with her nose and ability to persuade complete strangers to open the gate for her so she could get to a bird.
A fortnight ago, she got worse quite dramatically, but still managed to wolf, woof, walk and wag. Last week, she failed three of those four litmus tests; only wagging the tail remained. Hazel and I summoned the vet.
As we waited for the sedative to kick in, he talked us through options that were still on the table: more scans, more operations.
There was the chance that they might just find something that might just be curable.
Hazel and I looked at each other – everything was getting blurred with tears by now – and agreed that, no, the time had come.
The vet nodded in agreement and connected the final syringe.
There was one last wag as she slipped away, on her favourite bed, surrounded by coats and wellies that smelled of shooting and mud, with Hazel gently stroking her head, and then it was done.
The vet was astonished at how little of the syringe he’d used. Her heart, obviously failing, had given up almost immediately.
Hazel’s instincts were, of course, spot on. RIP Bella.