DOLLY WAS THE loveliest, gentlest dog you can imagine. Her own sensitivity meant that she was, in turn, very sensitive to the needs of those around her and she always seemed to know intuitively whenever one of us was low, or had problems.
For example, when Dad died in October 2015, the whole family was plunged into grief. It seemed impossible to imagine life at Bemborough going on without him, even though he and Mum no longer lived at the farm. After his death, in the days before his funeral, we all coped with our grief in our own ways, and Dolly was always there, with a comforting wet nose to push into your hand, a gentle pressure on your legs as she leaned into you. It was her way of telling us she understood, and wanted to give her support. If I was sitting, quietly, going through my memories of Dad, she’d put her head on my lap.
Grief rolls over people in waves and we were all up and down in our emotions. Dolly seemed to sense exactly which member of the family needed her most at any time. When my sister Libby, fighting back tears, took herself away for a contemplative walk through the fields she had known since childhood, and which symbolised Dad to all of us, without being summoned Dolly rose from her bed in the kitchen and attached herself to Libby’s side – a comforting presence on a tear-stained walk. She knew that Libby was, at that time, most in need of a gentle, undemanding companion.
About eight months after Dad’s death I was absent-mindedly stroking Dolly when I felt a lump on her ribcage. It was very small, but it grew rapidly until it was about the size of a golf ball; a smooth lump raised on her chest. She was only nine years old, so I hoped it would be a lipoma, a benign fatty lump of the sort that I was familiar with because Labradors are prone to them (as are Doberman Pinschers, miniature schnauzers and larger mixed-breed dogs). But it’s always advisable to get a lump checked out, so I took Dolly to the vet, which of course she hated because she associated it with sterile smells and needles.
The vet didn’t seem to share my optimism about the lump, which was harder than a lipoma, and he kept Dolly in for a biopsy that involved taking quite a large slice of the growth. She came home the next day, the stitches came out and she seemed as happy and energetic as ever. But the bad news was that the biopsy results showed that Dolly had an aggressive soft-tissue sarcoma. Cancer, and one that would progress fast through her body if it wasn’t checked.
She went back to stay at the vet’s and this time had major surgery: not only was the lump removed but an area of tissue around it was also taken, including between the intercostal muscles of her chest. The vet warned us that, although he hoped he had got rid of the tumour and enough tissue around it to halt its spread, there was a chance that it could come back. Dolly came home with a large scar and a shaven chest but she was soon back to normal, ready to come out around the farm with me in the mornings, always up for a long walk with Charlie.
When I took her for a check-up about a month later, I could feel a few tiny nodules on her scar, but the vet was hopeful that these were just scar tissue. She seemed so well in herself that I optimistically believed he was right.
Charlie, the children and I were due to go on a fortnight’s holiday to Italy a few days later, and we went without any worries about Dolly, as she was trotting around happily and did not seem to be even slightly off colour. Doris, a good friend of ours, stays at our house to look after our menagerie of animals while we are away, and Dolly adored her.
When we got back, though, we could see that the lump had returned, and I took her to the surgery again. Yes, the vet said, the cancer had returned. To operate again, and be sure it was all removed, he would have to take away two or three of her ribs, and rebuild her ribcage with a wire mesh. It was a difficult operation and she would need a long, slow recovery; she would almost certainly never get back to the level of exercise she enjoyed. On the other hand, he told me, it might stay the way it was (it was clearly not bothering her) and not get any worse.
She was nine years old, and although that is short of the life expectancy of a healthy dog (the Kennel Club lists the life expectancy of a wire-haired Vizsla as ‘more than ten years’) she was already approaching old age. So we decided to go for the second option: take her home, give her the life she so much enjoyed, and hope for the best.
Charlie was very upset. Dolly was almost like a third child to her. They adored each other. At first it seemed to be going well: Dolly was her usual self, charging around on the farm. A few days later Charlie went to see a friend and they took the dogs for a long walk, and Dolly was every bit as energetic as she normally was. We were beginning to be hopeful.
But that evening she was lying on an old easy chair in the living room. (Despite my edict that dogs don’t go on furniture, we have an old chair, covered with a blanket, that they can lie on. So much for my strict rules …) As she lay there the swelling on her chest suddenly blew up. You could virtually see it getting bigger. She could hardly move and was clearly in pain.
We let her sleep there overnight. I crept down in the small hours to check on her and thankfully she was sleeping peacefully. I got up even earlier than usual and was downstairs at 5.30am to find that the whole of her side had expanded and she struggled to walk. I managed to get her out into the garden to wee, but it was costing her a massive effort.
I broke the news to Charlie, then I rang the vet and asked him to come to the farm, and to be prepared to put her down. While we were waiting for her to arrive, Charlie stayed with Dolly and I walked up to Buttington Clump to dig another grave: I knew that her end had come. When the vet came, she told us the cancer was rampaging through her body. I sat with Dolly in the garden while Charlie took refuge in the house, and we were both grateful that Alfie and Ella were away with friends. I held Dolly in my arms, keeping my emotions in check so as not to alarm her. The vet gave her a large dose of anaesthetic and after a few seconds I felt her beautiful body go limp. I carried her reverentially to the clump and buried her.
It was a sad time, especially for Charlie. She and Dolly went everywhere together. A few months after her death, when I was at the Bath and West Show, I met a charming artist called Sophie, who had studied at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester before deciding to turn her hobby of drawing into a profession and starting up Sophie Cotton Limited. I was very impressed with Sophie’s work and commissioned a portrait of Dolly for Charlie’s birthday. Sophie works from photographs, using fine graphite to create intricate portraits, and Charlie was delighted with her present. The drawing now hangs on the wall outside the living room door, and we pass it every time we go into the living room or upstairs – it’s a lovely reminder of the beautiful dog we still miss.
We had Boo, Pearl and Peg, but there was a Vizsla-shaped hole in our lives. After six months we knew we had to do something, so that’s when we got Olive.
The story of Dolly’s death was used on Countryfile, with archive film of her walking through the farmyard with me, to introduce an item I did about cancer in dogs, and the way new treatments are being developed. After the programme I received an amazing number of letters of sympathy and support, with many dog owners sharing their own similar experiences. As I said in the introduction to the programme, treating cancer in dogs has always been notoriously difficult, but technology is giving more and more dogs a chance of life, and as long as an animal is young enough and fit enough, some owners are prepared to give it a go.
I went to meet TV’s ‘Supervet’, Professor Noel Fitzpatrick, who founded the Fitzpatrick Referrals hospital at Godalming, Surrey, in 2005. As anyone who has seen The Supervet programmes knows, Noel has pioneered an amazing array of treatments for animals, things that would not have been available even ten years ago. The hospital is at the forefront of cutting-edge technology, which is combined with genuine care for the sick patients. His team treats orthopaedic and neurological conditions in small animals, and the hospital is a world leader in joint replacements for animals, including, to my amazement, hip replacements for cats. I can’t imagine anyone being able to perform such a delicate operation, but it happens here. All spinal and neurological conditions are treated, and prosthetic limbs are fitted to any animal that needs one.
But, because of Dolly’s recent death, what interested me was a new hospital, Fitzpatrick Referrals Oncology and Soft Tissue hospital, opened just a year earlier and dedicated to the cure of cancer in animals. In that year, more than 1,000 furry patients have received cancer treatment there. It was there I met Noel, as well as the hospital’s clinical director, Professor Nick Bacon. The two hospitals employ over 200 staff, 40 of whom are vets, and the operating theatres are constantly busy.
Before I went to see the work they are doing, I met a dog and his owner who have both benefitted from being referred to this highly specialised unit. Anne Rogers, a farm manager from Hampshire, has a lovely collie cross called Monty. On Christmas Day Anne had a friend round for Christmas dinner, and when Monty sat on her lap for a stroke, Anne’s friend noticed a small lump on his leg.
When Anne’s local vet examined it and sent a sample away for testing, the diagnosis was cancer. The only option available to the vet was to remove Monty’s leg, but Anne wanted to give him another chance, as he was a young dog. At this point she was told about Noel’s hospital.
‘Monty’s a very important part of my life. I spend a lot of time on my own in the day and he is with me from dawn to dusk, checking round the farm. He’s a pet and a work companion,’ Anne said.
Monty was referred to the hospital at Guildford in the hope that he could be treated without a radical amputation. He was successfully operated on, recovered fully, and when I met him he was full of beans, a lovely, healthy dog: you’d find it hard to imagine he had been through such a tough time.
The hospital itself is a state-of-the-art building, and Noel is as charismatic in person as he appears on TV. I was not surprised when I learned later that, after training as a vet, Noel had a spell when he combined veterinary work with acting, appearing on TV in popular dramas like Heartbeat and Casualty. Thank goodness he didn’t find acting stardom: thousands of animals owe their lives to his decision to give himself full time to his first love, being a vet. And not just any vet … But I’m guessing the acting gives him the confidence to appear in front of the TV cameras in an unselfconscious way, and adds just enough showmanship for him to be able to explain his work so clearly to those of us who don’t have degrees in veterinary science.
Noel is passionate about his work. He loves cars but once sold an Aston Martin to pay for an extra vet, that’s how dedicated he is. Some people are ready to criticise pet owners who spend thousands on their animals, but Noel understands the pure, unconditional love that owners have for their pets. He knows that for many people the value of a pet in their life is incalculable.
He points out that every advanced medical drug treatment used in humans has been tested first on animals before being declared safe for us, so why shouldn’t we give something back to them, now that we have the technology and the skills?
My first question for Noel was, ‘Is cancer more prevalent in animals than it used to be?’ He explained that it has always been there, but with modern diagnostic techniques owners are hearing about it more.
He introduced me to Archie, a dog with a tumour in his jaw, which was bursting through his gums. It looked very nasty to me, but Noel explained that it was operable, and that Archie would soon be back to his old self.
Noel told me that the hard statistical fact is that half of all dogs over the age of ten will die of cancer. After accidents and trauma, cancer is the biggest single canine killer.
‘People used to say that nothing can be done when an animal got cancer,’ Noel said. ‘But today that’s not true. We can cure some cancers, and we can give good palliative care for most, so that the quality of their lives is good. Dogs can have all the treatments that humans can have. It’s a game changer.’
The treatments the hospital provides include surgery, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiotherapy. Surgery alone cures more tumours than any other treatment, or combination of treatments. The same anaesthetic drugs, surgical equipment, instruments and suture (stitch) materials are used as in any human operating theatre.
The chemotherapy drugs are also the same as those given to humans, but in lower doses to keep life as normal as possible for an animal that can’t understand what’s happening. Anti-sickness drugs are used to make sure they keep their appetites.
‘Our chemotherapy goal is for your pet to look so well that none of your family or friends would know they were on chemo,’ I was told.
Having just had to make the heartbreaking decision to end Dolly’s life, I said to Noel: ‘It must be very difficult for the owner to make a decision on how much they want to put their dog through, and how much the vet thinks the dog can cope with.’
‘In every case,’ Noel said, ‘all we can do is promise the family hope, but not in the absence of reality about their situation, and that includes the possible financial costs and the moral implications of what we will put the dog through. ‘I feel very, very strongly that it’s not enough to be able to do something, it has to be the right thing,’ he said.
Every pet owner who comes to the hospital with a sick animal is given a copy of The Little Book of Cancer, which explains the nature of the disease, the different types of cancer and the treatments available. One section that struck me was the page headed ‘What would you do if it was your pet?’ This is a question often asked of Noel and the other vets – and is probably familiar to every vet in the country. Anxious owners, unable to make the decision themselves, turn it back on to the vet.
‘Many factors come into the decision: the type of tumour, its growth rate, the tumour location, if it has spread, how far you live from the cancer centre, what your own personal experience of cancer is, your financial situation and your pet’s character – to name but a few. What we promise is that we will carefully explain the pros and cons of various options and patiently work with you to find the one that feels right. We do not judge, we do not criticise and we do not coerce. We are on your team.’
I went through the door marked ‘Dog Ward’ to meet up with Nick Bacon and one of his patients, a gorgeous Labradoodle (a Labrador/poodle cross) called Fudge, who had come from Cardiff with his owner Andrew. Andrew wanted to know if the cancer in Fudge’s leg had spread to other parts of his body, so the dog was gently sedated before being given a CT scan. As his limp body went into the scanner, Nick explained to me how it works, with a rapid series of X-rays being taken and then built into a 3D image, enabling the vet to look inside the dog’s organs for traces of the cancer.
‘It can find much smaller things, much faster,’ said Nick.
I asked him if the future for Fudge would depend on whether or not more cancer was found, and where: ‘If, say, you found tumours in the lungs, would that affect his treatment?’
‘In that case,’ Nick said, ‘we would look at ways of making him feel good for as long as possible, but we probably wouldn’t do surgery.’
For me, it was extraordinary seeing human technology used on dogs, and I think it is brilliant that a hospital like this can now give owners a real choice about the future of their animals based on scientific evidence of what is going on inside their pets. Before technology made this level of diagnosis available, most dogs with cancer would be given a very slim chance of survival.
Another dog I met while I was there was Lola, a Labrador and a working gundog. Lola is a success story: she was back at the hospital for a check-up after an operation to remove a tumour earlier in the year. Lola reminded me of the Labradors, also working gundogs, I grew up with at the farm. She was only three and a half when the cancer was diagnosed.
‘She was such a young dog,’ said Sharon, who explained that Lola had trained beautifully to work in the field with her husband, who works her three times a week. ‘We felt we couldn’t throw all that away, and we wanted to give her the best chance of survival. It would have been a different discussion if she was eight or ten years old. But she was very young, she’d done so well in training.’
I understand how close owners are to their working dogs: after all, that’s my way of life, too. But Nick explained that it is not just owners of working dogs who will go the extra mile – and extra cheque, if they don’t have pet insurance – to save the lives of their dogs and cats.
‘For Sharon and Lola it’s a working relationship, for some people their pet is company on a quiet night, for others the pet has seen them through their own emotional turmoil and is more than a pet – it’s a member of the family. It’s a very rewarding job, being able to help them.’
He was preaching to the converted: I know full well how much we all want the best for our animals, and how close to them we are.
Before I left the hospital, I got a progress report on the dogs I had met. Lola had passed her final check-up with flying colours. Archie had the operation on the tumour in his jaw and was making a full recovery. And luckily for Fudge and Andrew, the cancer in Fudge’s leg had not spread, and Nick was confident that he could remove the tumour and save the leg.
It was an inspiring visit, and I really admire the pioneering work done by vets like Professor Fitzpatrick and Professor Bacon, as well as being totally in awe of their skills. I never doubted that we made the right decision for Dolly because of her age and the widespread cancer raging aggressively through her body. But I totally sympathise with owners who are prepared to travel miles and pay out large amounts to save their dogs, especially young ones. As every owner I spoke to said: ‘Whatever the outcome, by coming here we feel we have done everything we possibly could do. We’ve given our dog the best chance.’
That’s what we all, as dog owners, want.