2019 - A year in extensive review

Hello friends... what a year 2019 was for me! It literally had been the highest of highs and quite frankly some real low points in there also.

The cycling did continue even to the point where I became a ride leader with Woking Cycling Club.  I'd made huge gains on my fitness and even did 4 organised rides over 100 miles each.  So now my longest ride is approx 130 miles.

Keegan and I enjoyed another week in Austria.  Weather-wise it was absolutely brilliant with sunny days the majority of the time.  Although the down side to that is the limited (non-existent) snow fall meant conditions were deteriorating over the course of the week we were there. But we went to more places this time than the previous time.  The village lifts were walking distance from the hotel so we occasionally used them as a bit of a warm up.  The picture below was taken from the very top of the village lifts with the typical weather we had for the week.

The year starting off well, I was still using the trainer at home and was on track for the Woking Cycling Club 100k challenge where you need to do at least one ride each month of 100k or more.  Then came the opportunity to go on the ride leader course which I jumped at the chance to do as I thought it would be good to give something back to the club.  After a few hours of classroom based teaching / training, all attendees were cleared to then be able to lead rides.  I started off on a Saturday social ride with two other riders (Jamie and Simon).  Simon was / is a ride leader anyway and the only difference between a ride leader and Jamie is a RL has done the course so it was a pretty easy group to lead.  Although I felt compelled to always be at the front and actually lead the ride, with two strong riders and me wearing a shower jacket that was too big for me (Jamie said that with it billowing out the back it was acting like an air brake), the ride was definitely more taxing than I was used to on a Saturday.

I think my most notable ride I led though was an actual Sunday club ride which I fondly call the "100k from hell".  It had a couple of hills that I knew, and two that I had never done before but had heard about.  Suffice to say, the two that I had never done before were of course the worst ones I'd ever encountered.  Barhatch and Whitedown lane.  I've done Whitedown lane a few times now but have had zero compunction to revisit Barhatch although I did a sportive several weeks after that ride and it descended Barhatch which was "fun".

Sasha
My frequent workout partner was of course Sasha. We'd regularly do our 5.2 mile walks several times a week.  Sometimes we'd just walk them, sometimes we'd run it, sometimes a mixture of the two.  Towards the end of the summer I took Sasha down into the garden before I headed off to work for her morning routine.  She saw a squirrel and gave chase.  Got  two "bounds" in then sat down and started screaming blue murder.  I'd never heard her cry out like that, ever.  I ran over to her thinking there was a thorn in her paws but there was nothing.  I tried to get her to come over to me and thats when I saw she was dragging her rear legs behind her.

Instinctively I knew that this was not good at all, but I had no idea what had happened. I mean, she'd not fallen, not hit anything, nothing had hit her.  One second it was all systems go, the next, she cant use her rear legs.

It wasn't even 7am and I didn't know what to do.  So I went onto my whatsapp friends group (we call ourselves the Kebab van five as when we retire we're all going to open a kebab van) and wrote... "Guys, need help".  I then called Tori whom had just recently moved back to Woking.  She didn't pick up, a few minutes later I tried calling again. This time she did, when I said what had happened she came over straight away.  I was so lucky that she hadn't gone to work already.

I had contacted the vets after several calls and they had told me to get Sasha in the car and over to them.  But I needed to keep her spine as straight as possible which wasn't that simple to do on my own as Sasha weighs over 20kgs and isn't a small dog.  Together, Tori and I managed to get Sasha on a blanket and then lifted the blanket into the car to get Sasha to the vet.

We were treated as an emergency and were seen pretty much immediately.  The vet suspected there was damage to Sasha's spinal chord.  I was still in shock from the morning's event that even though I was interacting with the vet, even to this day I cannot remember the conversation we'd had at all.

He said she needed to be referred to a specialist centre and would have to make some calls.  So Tori and I went to Costa for a coffee while we waited.  About an hour and a half later the vet practise rang to say they'd managed to get Sasha referred to a place called Lumbry Park in Alton.  So off we went there.

We were seen by a "vet" called Jeremy Rose.  I put that in quotes because, up until then I didn't realise how much someone could specialise in specific areas.  Jeremy is a neurology specialist, so no stranger to spinal injuries and he gave me a few possible scenarios as to what it could well be.  But Sasha would need an MRI scan which as you can imagine is not cheap (fortunately Sasha has insurance), we were then sent on our way.  I received a call from Lumbry Park while Tori and I were in Asda confirming the damage.  A disc in Sasha's spine had herniated and gone through part of her spinal chord. But the damage was not so severe that it needed an operation to correct.  I never realised that a spinal chord injury could repair itself on its own but while it would hopefully get better, she would never get back to being 100% ever again.  Best case scenario was 80% functionality to be gained.

I was a bit of a mess (again) in Asda but I suppose the news could have been much worse.  That evening I can say that I didn't get much sleep and woke up early Saturday morning found myself cuddling Sasha's favourite crocodile as it was still on the bed from the previous night.  Then it was the stark realisation, OMG Sasha didn't have her crocodile last night.  So I got into the car and drove "crocodile" down to the hospital.  Yes I did a 70 mile round trip to deliver a cuddly toy to Sasha.

The staff at the hospital were kind enough several days later to send me a couple of photos of Sasha as I was missing her something rotten.

The hospital were absolutely fantastic though. Gave me a call every morning to give an update on Sasha.  I remember the first time they called me on Monday, I was at work and went into a meeting room to take it.  I forget the entire call but I do remember when they told me "Sasha is wagging her tail".  OMG I just lost it.  Maybe you're thinking "So what, she's wagging her tail?" But from my point of view, Sasha was paralysed on her hind quarters which meant the signals were not travelling from her brain to her rear legs. The fact that she was wagging her tail, to me showed some semblance of activity on her spinal chord that was not there before.  So a HUGE step in the right direction.

After about a week of steady progress I received a call from the vet saying that he is happy for Sasha to return home.  During which time I had been busy at home getting the flat ready for her return.  As my hallway has laminate flooring through it, I went to B & Q and bought some interlocking foam / rubber matting so Sasha could get some traction on it.  Three baby gates to pen her in as she was under strict instructions for enforced rest for the next three weeks.

Two days before she returned home, Keegan, Tori and I went to Lumbry Park to see her.  I'd deliberately not been to see her while she was there as while it would have been awesome to see her, play with her, etc.  For me to vanish again only an hour later, I felt would have been very unfair on her.  As you can tell she was very happy to see us!

We were shown the physiotherapy exercises they had been doing with Sasha six times a day, a bit of a mini play time and then we headed back home.

Two days later I went back with Tori, this time to bring Sasha home...  Again the massive excitement before being shown her x-rays that were taken seemingly an eternity ago. 

Then into the car to bring Sasha back to her proper home.  Yes thats Tori's handbag you can see in the corner of the photo, Sasha had not been accessorised.

I've accepted that Sasha will never be 100% ever again, but her character and demeanour are still there.  No more 5.2 mile walks or swimming (the stress / flexion it would put on her spine is not worth the risk) but she still loves chasing an apple in the communal garden.  So to her its still business as normal.  Perhaps she wonders why her rear right leg doesn't quite do what she wants it to do, perhaps she just cracks on and is happy with what she has.  Who knows, but if theres something to learn from her is to accept what you have and dont think about what you used to be able to do if you can no longer do it...


Roland - The uninvited guest
Cleaning up in the kitchen one night I noticed that Sasha's food bag had a hole in it.  I just put it down to a poorly made bag especially as I was constantly moving it about in the kitchen.  But then I noticed a large amount of Sasha's food underneath the corner unit in the kitchen.  So I started to sweep it up and amongst the food I noticed droppings!  Oh no, mice!  So I cleaned it up including under all the kitchen units, then disinfected the floor and that was it.

The next few days though I kept on noticing new droppings, in the same location.  Cleaned those up, then after extensive reading started to take even more steps such as re-organising the cupboards, buying food bins for Sasha's dry food and I went completely OCD with regards to sanitation in the kitchen to the point where a friend asked me why it smelt like a swimming pool in the flat (extensive use of bleach as I read that was a deterrent).  Then I started noticing droppings behind the toilet too.   Thats when I realised, I didn't have mice, it was rats!

I got an exterminator in and he laid down some poison in locations where we knew Sasha wouldn't be able to get to it.  He was really informative and told me that it is a common misconception to think that if you have a rat problem then you're living in very unhygenic surroundings.  He'd been to new build homes, before the people had even moved in to get rid of rats.

So I placed a web cam in the kitchen.  One with a motion detector on it and night vision (scary how cheap these things are now) to see what I was dealing with.  Sure enough it picked up motion that night / morning.  Looking at this potentially disease ridden thing (or was it things as I couldn't be sure because only noticing one rat) just wandering around my kitchen.  Sasha sleeping in the hallway with just a baby gate separating them, looking for food.  It had even taken up eating the insulating foam going up the back of my fridge.

You'd think after eliminating all food and water sources it would have been discouraged and moved on to easier pickings, but this thing came back night after night.  I couldn't find where it was nesting.  I was getting homocidal.  Discouraging it hadn't worked, it wasn't touching the poison even though all food sources had been shut off to it.  All entry and exit holes had been repaired (ok there were 2).  So I bought snap traps.  Placed those in various locations, nothing, even after several days.  Thats when I upped the anté once more and had to hunt online to find glue traps.  They're not easy to find as, to be frank, they are not humane, but very effective.  I felt I had no other choice as I had exhausted all other options. 

The traps arrived and I placed three of them in the kitchen along places where I knew Roland would walk.  The traps are non-lethal (which is the reason why they are not humane) but it does mean that you will need to do "the deed" yourself.  The following morning, Tori inspected the traps.  She called to me in my room "Dave! Better get in here!"

I looked at the trap she was pointing to (it was under a kitchen cabinet).  There was something laying on it, motionless.  Thinking the universe had done me a favour.  I told Tori to go into my room, sit with Sasha, and shut the door.  I'd made some preparations the night before, just in case.  So I put rubber gloves on and started to drag the trap out, ever so slowly.  Once the trap started to move then this thing suddenly came to life, writhing on the trap but it couldn't escape because of the glue it was stuck to.  When I had it in the middle of the kitchen still writhing on the trap thats when it started to, for lack of a better word.... scream.  My heart was beating in my head.  I covered it up with another glue trap as they were quite rigid boards, got my snowboarding waxing iron and hit it hard, once where its head was (I say was because I'd covered it).  Then silence...

Tori came out of the room, I was still kneeling on the floor, heart still pounding.  She had heard the noise, heard a whack, then silence...

Blood had started to pool in the corner of the trap.  We placed the trap (and Roland) in a bin bag, then that bin bag in another bin bag, tied them up to be disposed of.  Then I hugged Tori and cried.  Its one thing to have something you dont want in your home, but its a very different thing to have to take a life.  It really didn't set me up for the day I can tell you.  I took Sasha into the garden and put the bin bags in the communal bins.  Then went to work.

Even now, months later it gets to me if I think about it (like I am now). I take solace that doing that did get to me because I wouldn't want to be the sort of person that is desensitised to killing something. I didn't want to do it, but I had exhausted all other options.

On Monday morning, when I was in the garden with Sasha I saw the bins being collected.  I just stopped where I was, looking at the bins being wheeled out and literally said "Bye Roland"...