Soyara’s A Shade of Difference

May 28, 2000 – March 19, 2008

We lost Rufus last night.

Ordinarily a house dog, Rufus was moved back out to the kennel because of the puppies and bitches in season as well as heavy recent rains leading to flooding in the basement.

Last night I went out to the kennel to change water and fill feeders. I found Rufus covered in mud, whimpering and unable to walk. We got him inside, cleaned him up and took him to the vet. There we found he had a catastrophic separation of his hip, with ruptured ligaments. Probably he was fence-fighting with another one of the boys in another pen, slipped in the mud and injured himself.

We have known for quite a while that Rufus was living on borrowed time. He had a tumor on his spine that was causing issues with his movement and which ended his show career one major short of his championship. This may have had something to do with his injury; perhaps because of it he wasn’t able to recover his balance when he started sliding.

Surgery was a possibility, but the vet said that with the extent of the injury, his existing issues and his age the prognosis for a successful recovery were very poor. Rufus slipped from this world quietly, hearing soothing voices and feeling gentle strokes.

Rest well, big guy.