Another obituary that I didn't think I would be writing for a long time!
About two years ago, we went to a cafe in Pran Buri. Lovely cafe, open air, just across the road from the sea, activities for the children. A man arrived during our time there with two black Labrador dogs. Fully grown dogs as far as I could tell but they were calm, well behaved, playful and no problem with the children running around.
I let that stew for a while and then I said, I would like to have a dog like that, so Mrs W set about finding us a dog like that. And she did. A new born pup in Bangkok, female, pedigree. We watched short videos of her as we waited to pick her up and by the time she arrived, she was already fairly big and chunky.
She was a house dog at first but then as the moulting fur built up and it became clear that she would chew anything and everything, we moved her outside. At first, she tried to dash in the house whenever anyone opened the door but she quickly got used to the idea that she was an outside dog now.
She chewed everything. Whatever the kids left on the floor ... chewed. Electricity sockets, covered and built into the wall ... chewed. Washing on the lines ... chewed. Full size bamboo poles, dragged down and chewed. We built a small fence to lock her out of the part of the garden we wanted to keep neat and tidy and that kept us partly sane.
If we or the kids weren't fully attentive when leaving the house, she would bolt through the gate for freedom. She was pretty easy to coax back, though, so no harm done. usually.
She was a very sociable dog, though, desperate to meet other dogs and other people. So much so that if I didn't have an iron grip on her lead when we went out for a walk, she would be tugging and pulling and choking herself half to death, trying to greet someone!
We had her trained at a police dog academy and that did some good but it wasn't the whole dog training that I was expecting but I could get her to sit and stay and I tried to teach her to stop when a motor bike was passing or a car or when other people, especially older people and children approached us because she would jump up at anyone she could get that close to.
In the end, we decided that she was still too immature for a family and she was ruining the garden and so many of our possessions. So we took her to Mrs Ws mother's house in the country, in a small village,for her to stay there. A much bigger garden, a big secure fence, more people visiting and so on. She settled in well and was there for a couple of months.
Then on Sunday just gone, as Mrs W was on the phone to her mother, Lisa got out of the garden after the father left the gate open. She wandered off over the field and then came back to the drive and up to the road. It's clear from the video what happened next, even without sound, as mother and father hurried to the road and through the trees, I saw a pickup truck stop, reverse and drive on.
That was the start of the last four hours of Lisa's life. Broken bones immobilised her. She was dragged under the front wheel of the car that hit her and must have had other internal injuries.
They laid her down to be at peace: she couldn't move and appeared calm. Then after two hours or so, she let out loud screams of pain as something burst or broke and caused her intense agony. Another two hours and she was gone. A year and a half old. A pleasant dog, a family dog and it took just two minutes from the gate being left open to the bone crunching meeting with the pickup trick.
Sorry for that, Lisa
An image of Lisa and Robbie, as imagined by AI
DW 16th May 2024
