News 2012
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March 18th

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March 15th

What a wonderfull day it was today.
A really nice early spring day.
With the boys we went to our regulair playfeeld and we took te camera with us.

The boys had so much fun together and that gave us a big smile!

Click here to watch the pictures of today.

***

March 14th

And Again we have a first day.....
Today has to be Jinaki's Birthday....
What do we say on this day...
What do we do on this day....
It is a very very hard day...

But like one of our friends said, you can also try to make a party of this day (thanks Sylvia),
and that is what we try to do, not only think about the big question, "why Jinaki, why one of our dogs, why bonecancer, why so young,
not only cry about this day and what happend..."

But also think of the 4 birthday's we enjoyed with her, the sweet memories we have about her, the many many times she made us laugh,
the great show succes we had together, everything she learned us and just the great girl she was for us and the boys"
Yes we will do that, and of course we miss her today even more and of course we cry, but yes we will try to think at the great time we had with her.
And tonight we will drink a nice glass of wine, and cheer on Jinaki!!!

Unfortunally I could not find the picture of jinaki's first birthday (it was on the old website)

I Still cry (Ilse DeLange)

I'm making flowers out of paper
While darkness takes the afternoon
I know that they won't last forever
But real ones fade away too soon

I still cry sometimes when I remember you
I still cry sometimes when I hear your name
I said goodbye and I know you're alright now
But when the leaves start falling down, I still cry

It's just that I recall September
It's just that I still hear your song
It's just I can't seem to remember
Forever more those days are gone

I still cry sometimes when I remember you
I still cry sometimes when I hear your name
I said goodbye and I know you're alright now
But when the leaves start falling down, I still cry

I still cry sometimes when I remember you
I still cry sometimes when I hear your name
I said goddbye and I know you're alright now
But when the leaves start falling down, I still cry
But when the leaves start falling down, I still cry

***

March 12th

Yesterday we went to the show in Recklinhausen (germany).
It was a nice day, but also a difficult day.
Our first show without Jinaki.
Again a first time....
A lot of friends we didn't see for a while, a lot of talking about Jinaki.
We like that, talking about our girl, but it is also difficult and still emotional, to talk about her.
And to see the sweet friends, who helped us trough the last weeks.

Both Jambo and Rusty (and also Martijn) were with us today.
Of course only Rusty was enterd.
Rusty entered the open class, with total 11 males.
Judge today was Mr. Antonio di Lorenzo from Italy.
One of the first words of mr. Lorenze "You have a really nice dog, but he would be even nicer when he lose some weight".
And yes, he was right.

But Mr. Lorenzo had not that big problem with Rusty's litlle overweight, because
Rusty became 1st place excellent!!.
Wow, we did not expect that of today.

So we had to stay for the best male competition!
When al the males where in the ring the judge asked us, "you have enough breath, ready to run?? So then run"
So we runned a lot :-)
The champion class male became best male but Rusty became 2nd best male!!

Akeron Great DéJa-Vu Luanda
1 excellent CAC VDH
2nd Best Male Res. CAC DZRR

Of course we had to drink on this great day. Cheers my boy ;-)
 

***

March 6th

Last Sunday, we had a nice walk with a lot of people form the "Limburgse winhonden renvereniging".
We walked in our nice area, with i think 20-25 dogs, and it was great.
All did well togheter. Our boys (as the only 2 ridgebacks, between all the whippets and greyhounds), had much fun.
 

Try to find the ridgebacks ;-)

After the walk we had a nice cup of soup, made by Laurens.
 

And we also got a sweet present from the group. A wonderfull picture of Jinaki, with a beautifull text.
It is so nice.  Thank you all!!

The teks ont the photo is (in dutch):

"Dierenliefde is een wonder,
Deze vriendschap was bijzonder,
Zij was een goede kameraad,
Die haar sporen achterlaat."

And this is so true!!!

In 2 weeks we hope to start running again! We are looking so forward to start the season again.
 

***

March 2nd

This evening the dutch Rhodesian Ridgeback Club organised a seminar about
breeding with dogs. We talked about the proces untill the start of the birth.
We talked about fertility, fertility counseling, insemination and more.
The seminar was given by Dr. Jeffrey de Gier.
It was a very interesting evening, and we learned a lot again.

***

March 1st

No big news at the moment.
Just a short message about our boys and us.
It is now a litlle more then a month after our big loss.
The las month we lived with ups but also a lot of downs.

In the beginning Rusty was down. Rusty always had contact with Jinki, and we saw he missed that.
Jinaki and Rusty where always laying next to eachother and Rusty always touched Jinaki with his leg.
We saw that he was happy when we started doing thing with him.
So I started obdience training with him again. We train at home and on Monday evening we going to
dogschool coyotes, to train with a nice group. The first evening we where there, Rusty was waggling his tail all the time.
And now a month later he is doing better. We have the feeling that he accept that our pack is changed.

And Jambo... Jambo is doing fine. He was ok with it. The first days he searched sometimes for Jinaki, when we arrived
at places where Jinaki normally also was (like our parents). But when he did not find her, it was ok.
 

And us, the people. We miss her in a different way then the dogs do. We try to look to the future.
Try to enjoy the happines the boys give us. And yes the make us laugh and happy.
And sometimes we look at a picture or we talk about Jinaki and then we feel the pain.
A lot of pain.
We never tought there were some many first times..... Every first time, we have to deal with it, that it
is a first time without Jinaki....
And we still find a lot of Jinaki-stuff in the house; a jacket, a leash and so on.

We know the time will give it a place. And we try everyday to look at the future a litlle bit more.
And try to think about Jinaki with a smile, of nice memory's and we hope the smile will be a little bit bigger every day.

We have much nice plans for the upcoming time,
In a couple weeks the coursing season start again. So we will start running in Venlo again.
And of course we have plans for some nice coursing weekends with our friends from the ridgeback club.
We have planned our summerholiday to Austria!
In 2 weeks Rusty will be in the showring again.
Joyce planned some workshops and courses again, some with one of the boys and some without the dogs.
And we will see what future bring us more!

***

February 14th

This year started very bad for us... Friday January 27th our lovely girl Jinaki, went to sleep forever.
A month ago, we could never expect this was going to happen to us and to Jinaki.
I will try to write down what happend from the beginning untill now..

Around New Year Jinaki showed us some pain.
Sometimes when she stood up she whined a litlle bit.
We thought that she maybe hurt herself by playing with the boys. So we gave her some rest, and decided to watch it for a while.
On Friday 13th of January it was not over, so we decided to visit the veterinarian.

Our vet, Janine Pijpers checked Jinaki, and we saw some pain that looks to come from her right hip.
Janine and we had the same thought, we did not expect something very bad, and when she hurts herself by playing, it could
take a while before it was over. So we went home, with some painkillers and total rest for Jinaki for 2 weeks minimum.
We did not had any worries, and also the vet did not worry for that moment.

When I came home from my job on Sundayevening (January 15th), Jinaki came to me to say Hello. We still don't know what happend
at that moment, but Jinaki start to scream for I think a minute.
She did not know how to lay down anymore....
We took her with us to our bed, and she was laying close to me and whined the whole night a little bit.
The next morning I immediatly called our vet. We decided to gave her the painkillers directly, and have a call on the end of the day again, to discuss if they worked.

That Monday she was doing better than she was the night. But she had much more pain as she had on Friday....
She did not whine anymore when she was standing up, but she screamed a little.
At that moment, it still did not happen everytime, just sometimes, she showed us pain.

At the end of the day we had contact with the vet again, and we decided together to make new x-rays of her hips.
I asked her also to make an x-ray of her back, because I started to have te feeling, the pain is not coming from her hips but from her back.

The next morning (Tuesday 17th of January) I brought Jinaki to vet. At 10.00 am I left her there while she was sleeping.
Martijn and I talked about it. We knew there was something wrong with Jinaki, but still did not worry very much.
We thought, when we see something on the x-ray Jinaki maybe got hip dysplasia... Of course not nice but with right medication and good food, she can life with that.
So Martijn went to work and I waited for the vet to call with the result.

At 11.45 am, the vet did call. She said to me, the she was afraid, she had some bad news.
At that moment I hang up the phone, called Martijn to come home from his work and drove to the vet.
At the vet's place she showed me Jinaki's x-rays.
We saw there was something really bad going on in her back.
Her 5th lumbar vertebra, was looking very bad.
 

Janine (our vet), was very hounest with us. She said she was thinking of bonecancer. And she was afraid, we could not do anything anymore.
But she also said, that bonecancer and bone infection look like eachother very much on a x-ray.
So to be for 100% sure we had to visit a specialist.
We did not even had to think about it, of course we go to a specialist!

So totally confused I went home (without my little baby, she was still sleeping). A couple minutes later Janine called me. She had made an appointment for us
with the specialist at the University in Utrecht for the next Tuesday.

When Martijn came home, we cried togheter. We had the feeling we played in a very bad horror movie. But we also directly made plans, to help Jinaki.
We also talked about the appointment in Utrecht. Waiting for 1 week...
We did not want that, because, there was so much changed in the weekend. How was it possible to wait for 1 week??
 

So when we went to the vet that afternoon to take Jinaki back home, we talked about it with Janine. She totally did understand us.
She recommended us the University in Gent (Belgium). So she did call them for us!
The people in Gent where so friendly, and helpfull. And they made an appointment for us on Thursday. Okay 2 days waiting, we can live with that.

So when Jinaki was back home, we started to arrange things. Free from work, sitters for the boys etc.
Wednesday, the time was going so slowly.

But then it was Thursday. 4.30 am we woke up and 5.30 am we drove away with Jinaki on the back seat.
In Gent, they started with a general research.
After a while the Neurologic specialist Sofie Bhatti, came to us to discuss the next steps.
Because Jinaki did not show any neurologic pain (she was so hard for herself), she showed the x-rays to the radiology specialist.
They where really thinking about bonecancer, and if it was bonecancer they did not think they could help Jinaki.
But a biopsy could give us 100% garanty if it was a tumor or a boneinfection.

We started with an echo of her belly, to see if there  already where any metastates. Because with a tumor there are most times metastates in the lung.
Because her belly looked clean of any tumor, they made a CT scan of her breast. Her breast looked also clean.
After that, they made a CT scan of her lumbar vertebra, and they also took a biopsy from it.
At the end of they day, she showed us the CT scan.

And oh my god, that looked so bad. Jinaki's 5th Lumbar vertebra, was almost gone....
Her spinal cord, was okay, but not for long anymore.
For the result from the biopsy we had to wait for a week.
But she also said that if the result was a bone infection, it was a miracle.
There where so much reasons, that exclude a bone infection.

So we went home, with Jinaki, a lot of painkillers and so much to think about.
For that moment we decided to keep her with us, untill she got the first sine of paralysis, and then let her go....

But the Tramadol (a very hard painkiller), did not what we hoped for.
We bought for Jinaki a doggyride and most of the time she was in it, and did not walk a lot anymore.
After the weekend, we talked it over and said to eachother, that it could not go on this way for very long.
She has so much more pain, then a couple days before.

But we also wanted to wait for the result of the biopsy, which was our last piece of hope. And on Thursday that result came.
Jinaki got an Osteosarcoma in her 5th Lumbar Vertebra..... Our hope was gone....
One thing was sure she will die by this bonecancer.
They do not see this very often. An Osteosarcoma is more often seen in a leg, but not in the back.

The specialists where talking about a treatment, to give her 1 or 2 years more to live.
And for us that was long.... We got some e-mails about a reasearch done, with 20 dogs with bonecancer in their back, a lot of years ago.
But reading the research, we tought, oh no, we are not going to do this with our girl.
Most of the dogs still had pain, and only 1 dog lived for 600 days more, all the others died in 4-5 months.

So we deceided to take a decission what was the best for Jinaki, after the weekend.
And then.... Friday morning January 27th.
We took Jinaki and the boys to our regulair playfield.

The boys had a lot of fun and we saw Jinaki looking with her lovley alert face. She wants to go to them, but.... she could not.
That gave us a lot of pain. But that was not even the worst.
When we came home, Jinaki had so much pain.
She was crying, did not know what to do.
We helped her on the couch and put her under a blanket, she was crying for 30 minutes.
She never did this before.
After that time, when she was standing up, she screamed... really screamed. (I think we will never forget that....)

And then we made a desiccion, we could help her in only 1 way.
To save her from any more pain. More painkillers was not an option, she already got a double dosis.

We called our vet, and made the hardest decission for ourself, but the best for Jinaki....
Friday January 27th in the afternoon, Jinaki fell asleep forever at the age of 4 years and 10 months.

---

We will miss this sweet little girl so much. Some moments we still cannot believe, how fast this all happend.
Live just slipped between our fingers.

We are sad, we have pain. But to know Jinaki has no more pain gave us a little bit rest.
If there was anything, how we could have helped her, we had done that.....

We just want to say thank you to our family and friends, who helped us where they could.
They let us cry when we wanted, the made us laugh when we needed that, and they give there hounest opionon when we asked for that.
You know who your are, many many thanks.
It don't take away our pain, but you really helped us to carry the pain.

We also want to say so many special thanks to our Veterinarin Janine Pijpers from Dierenklinkiek Dierbaar in our place Velden.
We know Janine for I think 5 years now, and we have a very good relation with her.
Janine had the hard job, to tell us what was wrong with Jinaki, but she also helped us, where she could, for example by making a fast appointment in Gent.
We could call her day and night, when we did not know what to do.
And at the end, she helped us by making the right decission, and she was there for Jinaki and for us at that hard moment.....

I know it is just your job, but you are very good in it!
Thank you, Janine!

But the most we say thank you to the queen herself!
Sweet girl, thank you for the 4 years you were with us.
Not the easiest to handle, but we found our way together.
Always want to work for me, always want to kiss with me!
You learned me so much about the breed and so much about dogbehaviour!.
Thank you my girl!
You will be in our hearts forever!

Jinaki thank you for everything!

 
 

***

January 27th