March 25, 2008: Tippy and Tui.
We've been looking forward to Easter since Christmas. It was shaping up to be a great weekend. We came to Scotland to go to trials and, with 6 trials on over Easter, we were really excited.

Then, on the Thursday night before Easter, Tippy took ill again. Tippy had been sick before with some mysterious ailment that mimicked meningitis. He was doing fine on steriods, even working sheep in short bursts and coming along great. He showed terrific feel for sheep, and he was keen and getting keener. On Thursday he took a turn for the worse. His temperature spiked to 106 and things went downhill from there. We rushed him into the vet. A horse-sized dose of steriods later and his temperature was down, but he did not rebound like he usually did. We had been through this drill before. This time was different. He was suffering. We brought him home, and had to make the very painful decision not to let him continue suffering. His last night with us was hard but he lived for the last few months of his life in the house with us, and he loved being fussed over. Unlike our other dogs, Tippy knew what refridgerators were for and he was always first to volunteer to help polish off the contents - politely, of course! On Saturday, we eased his pain and said Goodbye with very heavy hearts. He was such a sweet boy.

As heartless as this sounds, we did go trialling. But our hearts weren't in it. We went up the hill to set out sheep for a few hours, if only to be alone with each other (and Bailey, of course), and not have to face the other competitors or explain why we didn't feel like talking or socializing. There is something therapeutic about the repetitiveness of the task of setting sheep.

We arrived home late on Saturday night, and on Sunday awoke to a message that Tippy's litter sister, Tui, has gone missing. Tui belongs to dear friends of ours. She got spooked out of her brains when a gun went off (one of those really noisy guns used to scare birds away from crops) and she fled. It was a freak thing, and it could happen to anyone of us who owns dogs. We feel really bad for the person who was with Tui when she fled. How helpless this person must have felt. It's sure been a wake up call for us. While all our dogs are microchipped, we had neglected to update contact information in the event a dog went missing. That has been rectified!

We went trialling on Sunday with heavier hearts and agonizing over our guilt at not being out looking for Tui. The day did not start well, finish well, and everything in between was just - well - let's just say, we really should not have been there. We only went because we had promised to volunteer, and we didn't want to let people down. It seems we did anyway. Some days you wish you had just stayed in bed!

Monday - more trials. Excitement had, by this time, turned more to dread. Another day, no word on Tui. No sleep. We didn't feel like being there but we had promised to volunteer. Our poor dogs tolerated us. Kelvin managed a 3rd place with Blade on the hill (he even beat Serge van der Zweep!!!) and Angie got her first placing in an Open trial with a 5th placing with Roy. The thrill of a placing in an Open trial in her first year of trialling was dampened by the events of the whole weekend - the knowledge that Tui is still missing, and Tippy wouldn't be waiting by the front door ready to race in and steal any piece of Kelvin's clothing he could find.

We can but hope next Easter will be better. At least this year we got one Easter egg each! That's a huge improvement on last year. For chocoholics, Easter is supposed to be like Christmas. It is odd that this seems to be the one time during the year we do not eat very much chocolate. We'll have to rectify that too!

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