Dog’s nose and I know no bounds

I have spent the morning scrubbing a braai I found in the shed which wasn’t cleaned after its last outing a decade ago, simply so that my dog can have a raised stand for his bowl.

Before that, I spent rather too long mashing food into porridge for him, spreading it in a “slowdown” bowl, finally resorting to hand-feeding him from a height.

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But that’s nothing compared to what I spent on Friday; for on Friday I spent (you may need to sit down) R30 000, trying to find out what was wrong with him.

Yes, R30 000 on the credit card, and we’d only just paid it off too. It looked better in Euros: €1 600. Now that I type it out, I see how ridiculous it is: R30 000! Is it immoral? Is it insane? Probably a bit of both.

I could try justifying it – a fancy new computer would cost as much; you’d pay three times that for a Chanel handbag – but what’s the point? Because this is my dog.

If you are a dog person you’ll understand. He’s new in our home, arriving four days before Christmas, a rescue with a badly broken leg who’d had emergency surgery to insert a metal plate.

He’s beautiful, a lanky, blond Spanish Galgo, which is a working greyhound of sorts, a breed known to be subject to abuse.

Not in our house though. From the moment we first made eye contact it was love. He looked at me like I wish Brad Pitt would look at me; he looked at me like he thought I could do magic.

At first all was well, then he started vomiting. It got progressively worse. Now, R30 000 later, we know he has an oesophageal stricture, like a fibrous elastic band around his gullet.

It might have been caused by the accident, or triggered during anaesthetic – but it was growing progressively tighter. The gap was just 6mm.

Solid food couldn’t pass through, so he was always hungry, always regurgitating dinner unless I blitzed it to mousse and spread it thinly like icing. They’ve done what they can for him but the prognosis isn’t good. We’ll do our best too, we’ll keep him happy and comfortable.

Still, R30 000? I’ve always been dog-mad. I suppose actual insanity was simply a step away.

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