Biggles

On Wed 17th January, just four days after we lost Beanie, we found ourselves back at the vet saying goodbye to little Biggles. As I carefully placed him in a spot in our garden beside Beanie – his constant companion since he was just 7 weeks old – I felt a sense of relief and closure more than anything, but I know the enormity of what’s happened this last week hasn’t hit yet.

Biggles was nearly 15 and a half years old, and for most of those years he was the most extraordinarily happy little boy. He lived completely in the moment; whenever anything good happened to him it was the best thing ever, and given that he had two meals a day he was guaranteed to have at least two best ever things every single day. Although the years had diminished him a little physically, he was still in remarkable shape: robust, strong and full of energy. Mentally, dementia had been eating away at him for some time.

Looking back I suspect I started noticing little changes in him two, maybe even 3 years  ago. In the early days it was always difficult to be sure if something was really happening, or if it was just another aspect of his – how shall I put it – “uneven” cognitive abilities. He was by no means lacking in the grey stuff; he had a tactical brain that enabled him to outwit us and Beanie on numerous occasions, and he learned to weave and open drawers and cupboards, but sometimes he proved unable to deal with the simplest of challenges.

If the above video doesn’t play, please go here: https://flic.kr/p/8b873z

Over the years I developed a very deep connection with Biggles but latterly the dementia had begun to erode it, and I would often worry about the day that I’d lose him. I did in fact lose him temporarily during a beach run in March last year, and after that misadventure the signs of his dementia grew harder to ignore, but he was also losing his hearing and his eyesight wasn’t that great, so it was easy to excuse some of the changes.

Susan had the brilliant idea of introducing a daily sock hunt to help keep him mentally engaged. Each day I took him down to our spare room and made him wait outside while I placed two smelly socks in various locations; then I’d open the door and help him hunt the socks, repaying each find with a biccie. Socks have always been a major feature in the Biggleverse, so he enjoyed this tremendously. Some days he seemed to be learning the places where I put the socks and would find them quickly, but increasingly he would struggle. Occasionally I would let him watch me placing the socks and he would still need help to find them.  Unfortunately symptoms of his decline were not limited to the sock hunt; by Christmas he would sometimes face into a corner of the room and woof repeatedly for no reason. Still, he was for the most part just a happy little old man with some odd senior moments.

Then we lost Beanie. At first he didn’t seem particularly aware that she was gone, except in the evenings when he’d go looking for her. One morning after we’d had something approaching a decent sleep, we took our pack of three to a local park. It was sunny and mild, and now that we didn’t have to worry about what Beanie could handle physically, I tried taking them all for a short easy jog around one of the park trails. It was wonderful! For a few minutes the younger, mentally intact Biggles seemed to be back. He took the lead, eagerly following all my directional cues, and I felt a level of connection to him that hadn’t been there for ages. Later that day he came to me for an ear rub, docking his head between my hands and nudging me to keep going. That had been a regular routine for us in past years, but as the dementia took hold it had just petered out. He also engaged in a tug session, another thing he hadn’t done in a long, long time! We were filled with hope that he could have some good times ahead. Perhaps his bond to Monkey and Poppy would grow, and that would stop him feeling the loss of his lifelong companion; certainly the youngsters would be happy to have him onboard, as Monkey had shown clear signs of wanting to play with Biggles and Poppy was growing ever closer to snuggling with him.

The next day that changed. He was looking for Beanie more obsessively, in a way that took on the look and feel of late stage dementia. He could not stop woofing, he could not settle, he could not be consoled, and he didn’t really seem to recognise us. We gave him a filled treat ball to roll around; this distracted him for a few minutes but as the treats fell out onto the floor he was either unware of them or simply not interested. He was becoming more and more agitated, and the only thing that seemed to calm him was Beanie’s old Thundershirt, which we’d bought to help her through the whizz-bangs of fireworks. It felt like Beanie was looking after her little brother from beyond the grave.

In the morning Biggles was much worse, and now the Thundershirt had no effect. He would go for a drink, woof to go out to the garden, immediately woof to come right back in then go for a drink again, repeating the cycle over and over again. The only times he seemed more like himself was on a walk with the pups, when gulping down food from his bowl, and when in his crate; he still knew how to do those things. We did everything we could to comfort him and reduce his agitation. Susan set up a humie-sized bed on the floor of the lounge near the warmth of our wood stove, and we took turns trying get him to settle and cuddle up for a snooze. It worked for a time, and it was lovely to be able to cuddle him, but as the evening progressed we could tell that even here he wasn’t truly at rest. It felt like the last vestiges of the Biggles we knew had gone, and now some of the odd neurological funnies he had occasionally displayed – twitching and shaking, leaning and staggering – were happening multiple times an hour.

We sat talking for ages that evening, discussing the unthinkable. We just couldn’t see any way Biggles could come back from this. The loss of Beanie had triggered something in him. In this surreal nightmare there seemed to be only one course of action available, and should we delay, there was the possibility that Biggles would spend his last moments not even aware that we were with him. We decided to call the vet the next day and make an appointment to put him to sleep.

In the morning we thought through everything again, but came to the same conclusion. We got an appointment for the afternoon, then worked out how to structure the day to make it as good as possible for him. We went back to bed for a while and brought him in there with us. For years that had been the routine; we’d get up and let the pups out of their crates, then we’d all snuggle together in bed. For some months now he’d been incapable of settling with us, but this morning we did get him to stay put for a short while, and cuddled him as much as he’d allow. Later Susan gave him the breakfast of his dreams, he had a last walk with the pups, and we did everything we could to keep his agitation at bay until it was time to go to the vet.

And then we were in a consulting room again. Hugging a much loved little family member for the last time, again. The staff agreed that we could stay in sight of Biggles through the whole procedure, even during the insertion of the line. To take the pressure off them we moved to the door and turned our backs during that part, at which point Biggles tried to follow Susan. Apparently there was just enough of Biggles left in there to recognise us. Some part of him knew we were there.

Like Beanie, Biggles passed away stuffing his face with food. Unlike Beanie, Biggles had close to a pound of quality cooked sausages to munch on. And munch he did. In fact he munched through them so rapidly that they almost ran out before the anaesthetic took effect.

A few days before we’d said goodbye to the Beanie of the present; the soft little 16 year old who despite her age was still very much the girl we knew. This time I guess we were both saying goodbye to the Biggles we remembered: the relentlessly cheerful, cheeky and smelly little boy that we’d known before the dementia took him away. Once the vet had done his final checks and pronounced that old Biggles had passed, that younger pre-dementia Biggles seemed to enter the room.

We’d brought a familiar, smelly blanket from home to wrap Biggles in; he and Beanie had both been snuggled in that blanket on the sofa many times. As we gently wrapped him up in it, the nurse asked if we’d like something else to place under him because as she put it: “once they go, everything kind of relaxes”, and she waved her hand across Biggles’ abdomen to make her meaning more clear. My mind flashed back to that holiday where Biggles had eaten half a ton of sheep poo and then suffered what could be described – in Star Trek terms – as a “warp core breach” in the bed of our campervan (while we were in it). We said thanks, but we’d be OK. I carried him to the van and we drove off with Biggles nestling on the same donut bed that supported Beanie a few nights previously, with Susan gently holding his head and keeping him steady and safe, just as she’d done for the Beanster. En route to our home, Biggles let rip with one of his best silent-but-deadlies. He’d eaten cheese, biccies, Bow-wow sticks, salmon and a whole load of sausages that day, and there had to be consequences.

At home, Susan set up the spare room – where Biggles had played his sock games – to serve as a holding place for him until I could prepare his place in the garden. There was a canvas print of a young Biggles on the bed and a collection of socks around his temporary resting place. For the next 20 hours or so every visit to the room let us remember Biggles as he was, and we both got into the habit of talking to him when we were in there. Little things like this can help a lot.

The next day the ground was heavily frozen, but frozen or not, Biggles needed to be put to bed one last time. As before the digging was therapeutic, and I felt that this time I’d be prepared for the moment when I’d pick him up and carry him down into the garden. I was wrong; it still hit me like a train, but once his little bundle was covered with that first layer of earth, the sense of relief was incredible. He was safe, and he was together with Beanie.

Beanie was buried in her “abode” bed, but we gave Biggles a collection of smelly socks big enough to make him the envy of all other Beagle boys. Both of them have a protective fence around them, just in case the irrepressible Monkey feels like starting a digging project. Yes it’s macabre, but when you have Beagles you have to consider such things. Since Beanie already had a little light display above her, Susan put a solar-powered lighting kit on Biggles’ fencing, and just as we were finishing up a bird started singing very beautifully from a nearby tree.

As a Yorkshireman I’ve always been prone to seeing signs and portents in things that others would dismiss as coincidence. The day after Beanie had used her buggy for the last time, Susan found that a joint on the buggy had broken. The bird song of course took on a special meaning for me, but this next one was so spooky that it even made a believer out of Susan.

There’s a small LED cherry tree over Beanie’s spot; it runs on batteries and though it should operate reliably on a timer, every other day it needs a bit of manual help to turn on. By contrast, Biggles’ solar powered lights should go on automatically whenever the light level drops sufficiently. After laying Biggles to rest, we cleaned up and took the pups for an afternoon walk. We weren’t running to any particular schedule, but when we got back and Beanie’s lights hadn’t come on, Susan went down to give them a nudge. She pressed the button and on they came, then literally within 3 seconds Biggles’ lights started up too. That tiny delay between them was the really spooky bit; take out a handful of treats and young Beanie would be right by you instantly, with a sprinting, grinning Biggles slamming into your legs just 2-3 seconds later. It really felt like our little team of two was back in action.

This is how we want to remember you Biggles: our silly, happy little boy