Dog Days

I wrote this post originally while on the plane from Bangkok to London and I will copy that post as I wrote it below here. The reality is that a lot more has happened with Nell since that time so I am going to expand the post with some other info from before and afterwards. To be honest, this is one of those memoir posts for us more than anyone else so feel free to skip it

The ‘before’ part is that Nell started to have some trouble seemingly with her back legs / hip area. She started dragging her back legs occasionally and you could hear her toe nails dragging on the ground. From the December previously she had started taking the steps one at a time which seemed sudden to us but we figured it was just her getting old. We didn’t really know what was wrong and the nice Thai vet basically suggested we have her checked out in the UK where they have ‘real’ vets. She’d developed some face warts or something also that year so we didn’t know if that could be anything to do with it.

OK, now for the part I wrote on the plane about how we got Nell out of Yangon:

I am writing this post on the plane from Bangkok to London with just a few hours to go so the spoiler alert is that we made it. After our trip to Malaysia and Singapore there were 8 weeks of school left and there were times during those weeks that we barely knew how we were going to get out.

The problem was Nell. A dog of her size needs a sizeable crate which we had kept from when we came to Myanmar in the first place. The crate needs to go in the cargo hold and the cargo hold needs to be ventilated in order to carry a live animal. To have a ventilated cargo hold you need a plane of a certain size and the problem with that appeared to be that, I guess due to the number of passengers flying out of Myanmar, there just isn’t the need to have that many planes of that size.

I should caveat all of this by saying that the information we have on this is only what are inept pet shippers were telling us. We chose them because when they came to do a quote for the shipping of our household stuff it turned out that they had been the Yangon end of Nell arriving in Myanmar and that they had just shipped a dog to the UK in the last few weeks and seemed knowledgeable about the requirements.

For some reason our shippers wanted to use Malaysian Airways for Nell’s move. The problem with that is that the airline doesn’t know which days it’s going to have a plane big enough to have a ventilated cargo until a staggering two weeks before the month in question. Our agent kept saying that the day we wanted to move Nell (a Thursday) would be fine which was already a pain because Heathrow don’t like pets being imported on a weekend (what?). They then said that in the month of May they were putting on these planes on Mondays and Saturdays. That messed with our plans but we could work around it.

The time that they promised they would know for sure came and went and then finally right at the end of May we got a list of 5 days in June when they would have the right sized plane. None of those days were the days they had sworn up and down that we would be able to go. As a person shipping a dog to the UK needs to arrive within 5 days of the animal we were only then able to book our own tickets out. Lindsey has been known to book tickets a year in advance so you can imagine her stress levels at not being able to book until 2 weeks before the flight.

Finally, the day comes for Nell’s flight which is 5 days before ours for reasons that are painful but too boring to explain. Getting her on the plane was a palaver in itself but that was eventually managed and then we thought OK, she’s on her way, surely it’ll all be fine now. (The photo of this post was the last one we took of her in Myanmar at our home).

Nell was supposed to arrive in the morning UK time which is the afternoon Yangon time. We were closely monitoring the emails that day which, by the way, was the same day that the shippers were packing up our house (so no additional stress there). Eventually we get an email from the UK agent saying that Nell had missed one of her connection flights and so had been booked on a later flight. No one from the airline had bothered to tell either of our agents which was pretty surprising considering that meant an unscheduled overnight stay.

By this time the later flight had already taken off so we knew Nell was finally on her way. She eventually landed and was taken in by the Heathrow Animal Centre which have 24 hour kennels. I actually spoke to someone there who said Nell was fine; queue another unscheduled overnight stay this time at Heathrow.

Just when we thought everything was finally OK, the UK agent reported that the airline managed to lose all of Nell’s paperwork!!!! Oh my God can we catch a single break!!!. I won’t bore you with the rest of the details and frankly you probably wouldn’t believe them. It really was a comedy that I am not yet ready to laugh about. The upshot of it all is that Nell arrived and was cleared from customs and got to her temporary boarding facility who then sent us ‘proof of life’ videos to put us at ease.

The moral of the story is if you’re going to have an international life of moving around – don’t have a dog!

OK, now we’re back to the rest of this post which is what happened next:

Two days after we landed we moved back into our old flat which our tenants had agreed that we could rent back from them for a couple of weeks. Nell was delivered to our flat that day which was all pretty amazing. We never thought Nell would ever be in the UK again, let alone in our old flat. She definitely knew where she was and even though the smells were not our smells, she seemed pretty content to be there. Two weeks or so after that we took her to Devon with a car borrowed from some friends who were in the States for the summer. It was also amazing for us that Nell got to spend a few weeks in Devon which we always think of as her favourite place.

The problem was that Nell’s condition was worsening. She wasn’t able to walk as far now and started having trouble maintaining her stance while pooing. We actually had to start holding her when she pooed! This was all very stressful but we knew we had a good vet in Devon that was a million times cheaper than in London. The problem with all of that was simply that it was the summer so all the vets kept going on holiday. We barely spoke to the same vet twice. If we hadn’t had had great experiences with them before I would almost say that they saw us coming and took as much money as they could from us without really caring about Nell. We spent A LOT of money on tests and x-rays with no real answers. They also put her on pain relief medicine that basically knocked her out. All of this and we still have to get her to Ghana.

Nell had to go back to the shippers for a few nights before we left to Ghana but eventually flew on the same plane as us. It was a direct 6.5 hour flight so really no big deal although when we got on board the pilot announced that they had had to ‘decargo’ some things so I was convinced that Nell had been ‘decargoed’. That would fit perfectly with the rest of the story right?

She wasn’t decargoed unlike 3 out of our 4 bags and about 100 people’s other bags but that’s another story. Maybe three hours after we landed Nell was dropped off at our accommodation which was delightful. I have to say, the shippers on this end were great with Nell from start to finish.

So now, we have a very poorly looking dog in Ghana while we have to start sorting out our whole new life. This was a very bad time. We should have been focussing on our new life but instead were just stressed about Nell all the time.

Our neighbours also have an elderly dog – a very sweet street dog from Uganda called Charlie. His owners put us on to a local vet who comes to your house much like they did in Myanmar. It took a while to get an appointment but then he shows up. He didn’t really look like your usual vet. He is a large man with a hawaiian shirt and kind of a booming voice. Anyway, he took one look at Nell and after hearing our story suggested that she might have one of two things. He said that he needed to take blood and proceeded to do it right there and then on our front porch!

A week or less later, he had the results and new what tic borne disease she was suffering from. I’m pretty sure it isn’t even a disease that dogs even get here so we were astounded. He showed up the next day with the treatment which was 2 or 3 injections and that was it. He said we should start to see a change within 72 hours. Within 24 hours we were already seeing improvements. It literally blew our minds that a vet here did in a matter of days what the UK vets could not do in 4 weeks. The cost was the tiniest fraction of what we paid in the UK.

Nell is 13 and a half years old. She is still an old dog and moves slowly as you’d expect from a dog of that age but she is a million times better than when she had that disease. It is a relief that we still can’t get our heads around. If you got to the end of this post – well done. Next up from me will be our trip to Mole National Park.