Sophie

Sophie (aka Little Bird) passed away 18th June 2011

Sophie came into our lives six months after we had taken in our first ever greyhound, Mr. Flash. She was a very loving, cheeky and a massive energy ball of character little girl. Her personality lit the house up, oh I forgot – she only had three legs, you see you would forget if you’d known her because she never let it bother her, she ran around and played like any four legged dog and never felt sorry for herself. Sophie’s attitude was ‘so what I’ve got three legs – that’s one more than you humans!!’

After Mr. Flash died two years ago, we returned to Fen Bank and brought Max home – Sophie was in her element, she’d got herself a toyboy!!

Over the last few years she had suffered reoccurring dermodectic mite, several vets later we still couldn’t get to the underlying cause, until on June 6th 2011 when she began to develop swollen lymph nodes, a blood test confirmed the worst that she had lymphoma.  The vet told us that it was ‘mild’ and prescribed steroids, but we knew that our time with Sophie had become extra precious.

For the next two weeks we spent every moment with her that we could, not letting it ever show how upset we were, Sophie as always just took everything in her stride, sitting waiting for mum’s ‘what’s in the bag’ game (ready cooked chicken in noisy supermarket bag)!

Sadly on the 17th of June Sophie was deteriorating, and with a heavy heart I was going to call the vet to come to the house the following day, I’d spent the evening talking to her, she was still sat up, ears pricked up listening and in the early hours  I went to the bathroom, she shouted me back (she hadn’t barked for a long time), she wanted to lick the back of my hand, she did that then lay down and she was gone.

I felt then and feel now that Sophie, with her loving and strong personality chose when she was leaving us and took the decision from our hands. We were so lucky to have had her in our lives for the 8 years and 2 days and I thank Sandra for the honour of being able to home such a special little angel.

It has been very poignant to return to Fen bank to collect Tess, as we went into the ‘office’ and Sophie’s picture is still there with the terrible story of what had happened to her (I do hope it stays), but she never let anything get her down, the past was the past and she lived life to the full. Sophie and Flash are now sponsoring a kennel (through Mum), to help their fellow hounds live their lives to the full! 

Jane Poxon