"This is not the end....

Gunner 6 July 2015

Well - we were very lucky. Our Very Nice Vet rang on Monday (6/7) to tell us he'd booked Gunner into a Vet Centre in Grimsby for Tuesday morning. That was a relief.
"Soon we'll get to the bottom of what's up with him" I thought.
We did.
The young vet (YV) had spoken with our vet and received Gunner's clinical history from him on Monday. Nonetheless, he asked me to go through the whole story since I first noticed Gunner was not "right" - which I did.It wasn't easy to be chronologically accurate but I got most of it in sensible order. Then the YV told me exactly what he was planning to do.

"Vet's not much good at the poodle-parlour bit" 8 July 2015

 Firstly, he would take blood and analyse it. Then he would do 4 xrays, 1 each side and 2 from the 'bottom' of Gunner's chest. Those would inform him where to focus the ultrasound, which he anticipated would fill in the picture for him. If necessary he would put a camera down Gunner's throat to see if there was a blockage in his tubes which might explain his heavy breathing. I signed the consent form and went home confident that the YV knew exactly what he was doing and that the BestestGundog in all the World was in good hands. He said to phone him at 1430-1500 if we'd heard nothing by then.
As it turned out a very charming receptionist rang at 1345, told me all the work had been completed and that I needed to make an appointment to speak to Michael - the YV. The earliest I could get there was 1500 hrs so we agreed to meet then. 

"I'm watchin' you" 9 July 2015...

Michael took us calmly through all the work that he had done: explained the blood test results; showed us all the x-rays and then the ultrasound film. There had been no need for the camera down throat. He was calm, considerate and thorough leaving no question unanswered.
The conclusion was unequivocal.
Gunner has a 'bleeding' tumour close to his heart which is leaking fluid into his chest cavity, as a result of which his lungs occupy a fraction of the space they should. Basically they are collapsing. Hence the heavy breathing. Michael suspects there are further tumours outside the area covered by his ultrasound. Also Gunner's kidneys are not functioning as they should - hence the amount he is drinking. Although that is also a result of his blood haematology which shows an extremely low red cell count and equally high white cell count... resulting from his body fighting off the 'infection' from the tumour. It is also responsible for his anaemia, which in turn is the reason for his lack of 'bounce'. On the plus side, his prostrate is perfectly normal and healthy. So it's not all bad news - at least the prostrate hyperplasia was not the cause of all the other things.

#TeamGunner training session 9 July 2015

To say we were devastated is an understatement. Michael was of the opinion that we should end Gunner's suffering immediately though he didn't try to persuade us against bringing him home. His concern was that the tumour might suddenly bleed out and cause pain which we could avoid by taking action now.
I don't want my best pal to have pain but he's far from ready to leave us. He is on prednisolone which has eased any pain he might have had and for the past two days he has been happier than most of the past two weeks. So much so that he is eating two meals a day, joining in training sessions with the youngsters and generally strunning (think of a cross between a stroll and a run) around quite happily. He certainly doesn't want to stay sat in the shade where I 'put' him!
He is quite adament that there is "life in the old dog yet".
So the deal we've struck is that he will tell me when he's had enough. Until then we shall post a story a day on this blog for all his pals (in twitterland and across the world) who may not have shared all his history. After all, he is not The Bestest Gundog in All the World for nothing. And we'd both like to go back over "old times" .
Not all the stories will be as long as this one but we wanted to get all this recent history out of the way first so there are no questions in your minds about what/how/why this is going on.
We're happy to have you along with us and hope you enjoy our little meanderings over the next days, weeks....... however long we've got.

Had the Op but

So, the BestestGundog in all the world had his jewels removed on 17th June as planned, and at the same time, as requested, the vet took some x-rays. I asked him to because I wasn't liking the shape the dog was in. Literally. His ribcage had been looking distended and, with his diminished appetite, I suspected something going on inside.

This sun's a bit hot

The xrays confirmed my suspiciouns but the vet was unable to work out what was causing the odd picture.
"It could be fluid" he said, prescribing a course of water pills and a repeat xray for 10 days later.
This showed a picture which was a little clearer on the lhs of his chest but on the rhs there were a couple of distinct
 "bits that shouldn't be there".
Again though the vet was unable to distinguish precisely what those bits were.
"To be honest" he said "I've never seen anything like this before" (and he's not exactly a spring chicken!).
So he referrred the xrays to 'experts' in Newmarket. But they could not give us an answer about what's going on either. They recommended ultrasound and drawing some fluid off Gunner's chest.

1/11/14 Gunner waiting for the next Drive to start

Hopefully this can be done very soon because, even though he's on painkillers, it is clear my trusty pal is not feeling at all the thing. Each day becomes just a little bit harder - for him and for me.
Luckily, he's got a lot of pals on twitter who are crossing their paws for him (#spanielswithcrossedpaws) which is helping him to keep his pecker up #bowlhalffull
We all just want him well again - soon. Shooting season is not far off now......

All good things

Pepper - brother of Ginger, founding sow of the herd

Wurzel - brother of Mangal, founding boar of the herd

Back in April 2007 two curly coated pigs came 'back' to Lincolnshire to live with us at Rectory Reserve. Mangal and Wurzel were swallowbelly brothers from the first Mangalitza
litter to be born in England from the Austrian 'herd' of 16 or so imported at the tail end of the previous year by Tony York in Wiltshire.
Initially intended as 'weaners for fattening' it was only  a matter of weeks before someone was heard to mutter something about it being a shame to do that to such rare pigs and why didn't we "breed a litter".. Thus it was that not long after, Pepper and his sister Ginger came to stay. Ginger & Mangal became the founders of our herd whilst Pepper and Wurzel eventually fulfilled our original plan and joined the great pigherd in the sky.
Mangal was joined by Samson, Clyde and Black Banana, whilst Ginger's sow band grew to include Delila, Precious, Andromeda, Aster, Truffle, Victoria and Mrs Merkel.
All bearing 2 litters each per year.
A Lot of Pigs.
Whose history over the past 8 years is well documented through the backpages of this blog.

Ginger's 3rd litter

In 2007 the Mangalitza was largely unknown in the UK although the older generations of Lincolnshire 'natives' remember the county's extinct Curly Coat. Local and national media coverage plus our selling pork provisions across a broad range of markets and food events brought the previously unknown 'foreigner' into many people's consciousness.

Carefree piglets

By the beginning of last year it became clear that the herd needed to grow much bigger if their meat was to move to anything like a prominent position on the national menu. Equally obvious was the fact our mature years mitigated against our having the time or energy to invest in that growth!
With animals as in business there can be no half measures. We debated and explored the various options but in the end realised that the only way was 'out'.
For the past year we have been running down the herd and by end 2015/early 2016 we shall have just a small select group of 'pets' left.

Delila & family April 2011

Saying farewell to our breeding pigs was not a happy experience and already this year we are missing having bands of cheeky piglets running all over the place. However, the experience of living and working with these singularly charismatic pigs will stay with us. The indelible impression they have made may only become clear with the benefit of hindsight.
Hopefully though their numbers will continue to grow through the efforts of other breeders and we will be able to think fondly of the part we played in bringing the Curly Coat pig back to Lincolnshire..........................
Meanwhile, whether you're already a customer or have not had the pleasure of becoming familiar with our Mangalitza pork provisions make the most of the next 6 months.....

Meanwhile the Boy continues to shine....

#TeamGunner eagerly awaiting their afternoon 'run'

 No matter that he wasn't feeling very bright, there was no way The Bestest Gundog was going to be left behind when #TeamGunner set off on their fourth flurry into the world of Working Gundog Tests.
After incessant rain all day Saturday, Sunday morning "dawned" damp and misty.We set off early for The Bulwick Estate, Northants in the certain expectation of having at least some rain during the day. Better for the dogs though than the heatwave which we had enjoyed on Friday.
Unlike the previous events we have been to, this one was organised in conjunction with tests for retrievers ---

There is a lot of waiting to be done.....

and there were an awful lot of them (90+). By the time the chauffeurs and handlers for them and the 30+ spaniels, not to mention all the helpers for the day, had turned up the car parking area was very large indeed. The venue was an iconic piece of the best the British countryside has to offer - a panorama of rolling green hills and meadows for the Retriever tests and dense woodland providing excellent spaniel hunting 'ground'. How could a dog not go well under such conditions. Jaunty was drawn 16 and Bugler 25 of the 31 dogs, which included 10 'Open' competitors. The format for the tests was the same as previously except that the Open dogs had their first run before the Novices and 2nd runs for both followed on in the same order after an excellent cooked lunch catered at the bottom of the valley. The way the weather turned out it meant that all the dogs had a run in the cool with some scent as well as one under warm, virtually scentfree conditions. But it was a long day for 'man' and dog alike.

Little bits of paper that make it all worthwhile

First of  TeamGunner to go, Jaunty gave a (to me) dazzling display of spaniel hunting. Nobody would have guessed how 'hard' he is to handle. His retrieving was equally fast and accurate if a little too enthusiastic on the first dummy.If his handler had been more on the ball she might have been able to stop him running in! Nonetheless I was thrilled to bits with his performance. We can work on the error. Unfortunately that cost us any hope of a placing.
No such errors from Gunner's boy Bugler though.  His hunting was a little less exuberant than Jaunty's (particularly when alongside the gallery in the morning) but his retrieving was spot on, needing only one redirection from me in the whole day. With the competition being much tougher than on the previous occasions I was overjoyed, and just a weensy bit tearful, that he was awarded another piece of paper during the presentations.
Gunner, even allowing for being slightly below par, was not at all impressed with the day but I can't help feeling he would be as proud as I am of his son if he understood what the piece of paper represented.
There was a fair bit of snarling & growling from the youngsters when they jumped back in the car for the homeward journey; hardly surprising since they'd been running on tension & adrenalin all day. The BestestGundog decided he'd prefer the company of humans even though he wasn't really comfortable on the back seat! By then it may have occured to him that it might have been preferable after all to have stayed at home for the day!

C'est la Vie

 My perky pal hasn't been so perky of late. At first I put his quiet manner down to the fact that he was tired at the end of the shooting season. But he stayed quite tired.
So I attributed it to the youngsters: since my attention and time is now shared amongst the three of them, Gunner is only getting a third of what used to be all his.
But that didn't explain why he stopped eating his morning and evening treats. For the past 8 years he's keenly looked forward to half a dozen bickies at either end of the day.

But not any more.
Not a good sign. He's always had a proper appetite - never greedy but always ready for his food.
Maybe it was the change to raw feed?
But the youngsters are absolutely full of energy on the same diet.
Eventually I took him to the vet.
"He's just not right" I said.
Then tried to explain all the subtle changes.
When I got to the biscuit bit the vet's eyes lit up. Anyway, he took his temperature. "Nothing unusual there" . So he did a rectal exam. And that explained everything.
"He has benign prostrate hyperplasia" said the man. "You can google it". I did.

Not good. The vet gave him a hormone injection and prescribed steroids and within 24 hours Gunner was back to his old self!
And then went downhill rapidly when the injection and the steroids wore off.
We went back to the vet who took some bloods: the results were all over the place.
Only one thing for it.
The jewels will be removed on Wednesday next and I'm keeping everything crossed that the problem will then be sorted, blood will return to normal and my old mate, when he gets over the shock, will get the smile back on his face...
Fingers crossed..............

The feeding of pigs.............

Delila snoozing in the afternoon sun

The 3 Degrees tucking into some of their 5 a day

The first Mangalitza pigs arrived at Rectory Reserve in February 2007. For the next couple of years we fed them on a diet of proprietary pig feed - weaner pellets, finisher pellets, sow rolls.
We didn't overfeed them.
Nonetheless they developed considerable girths.
It's fair to say they grew fat.
The Mangalitza is a slow growing pig; unlike commercial animals which are 'ready' in 22 weeks or so, our boys go at 8 months and the girls can be with us for two years or more. All that time on commerial feed would make them enormous.
After a while we had a couple of gilts who were being 'custodianed' at a local school which bought feed from a local mill. It turned out that this feed was 'lower' in calories (and it was a bit cheaper since it was not pelletised)
 - so we duly switched suppliers. A years or so later it was possible to see that our pigs were definitely slimmer. There was a problem with the new feed, however. Unlike our original feed it was a 'powder'. As all our pigs live outdoors, this was not entirely suitable. Wind blew it away; rain washed it away and the pigs snorted much of it away in the act of eating. Indoors this wouldn't have caused a problem because the powder would have landed on a surface from which it could easily have been snuffled up. But that was not the case outdoors.
We switched back to feeding pellets - and compromised by feeding less.
That wasn't a solution though.  The pigs were not impressed. They can be very noisy when they are not impressed.
We's visited Mangalitza breeders in Austria who milled their own feed. That seemed a possible compromise... then one of them mentioned how their pigs thrived on a diet largely comprising vegetable waste.

"We're coming, we're coming"

"Aha" we thought. That's the thing. Here we are in the midst of one of the country's main vegetable growing regions so you'd think it would be simple to find a supplier - but not so; we needed it by the tonne not the box so whilst the local Fruit & Veg shop was more than willing to let us have their waste it was a mere morsel in the context of the pigs' dinner. Another chance meeting, however, led to an introduction to one of the country's major vegetable producers and packers.

A deal was struck whereby we would take surplus or substandard veg. for the price of collection and off we went with our horse trailer to fetch it.
In trugs (like the ones the supermarkets deliver your goods in if you order over the internet).
Which we loaded by hand.
About 130 of them -  piled high. But 130 wasn't enough to make a dent in the needs of 70 or so pigs. So lots of work for little effect. We scratched our heads again.....

Willy - the little blue vegetable truck

Then the Big Boss rubbed the magic lamp and, hey presto, along came our little blue veg truck. It was, and is, perfect for the job - more so since we can tow another trailer from it too. Result - lots of veg. and, more importantly, happy healthy pigs. Not only is it 'less fattening' for them but, unlike commercial feed which they wolf down in a matter of minutes, it gives them many more hours of activity and entertainment before it is all eaten up. Happy pigs and happy people....

Sadly, though, all good things eventually come to an end.............. our vegetable supplier is closing down the local 'depot' thereby ending our happy relationship and our regular source of veg.
We haven't told the pigs yet. What to do???
The Big Boss has been tasked with rubbing his magic lamp ............again................. he hasn't long to come up with an alternative......................   but he will, we know he will .....

If at first you don't succeed...........

Bugler makes his dad proud

Exactly a week after #TeamGunner's last Gundog Working Test adventure, off we went again. Another early start yesterday saw us heading to Barleythorpe in the beautiful county of Rutland.
"If nothing else" said The Big Boss "the dogs are getting us to visit some lovely countryside".
The morning was dry and cool with a promise of sunshine later. Our destination was a quiet (we thought) country lane (with a distant view of Rutland Water) a mile or so out of the village. Arriving shortly after 9 o'clock - not the first by any means - we collected the 'Card' and our numbers (4 and 8) and waited for the signal to move off to the test ground. We'd been advised in advance that we would be using a white grass pasture and were, therefore, a little surprised when we came to a halt by a young plantation!
"Oh well" I thought "all that practice in the cornfields ( the nearest thing to white grass here) might still serve some good!"
Bugler was the first of the pair to 'run' - being an even number we were in front of the novice judge first. He hunted enthusiastically albeit a little further from me than I would have wished but was good on the whistle and, joy of joys, when the shot was fired he sat and looked at it, thus (for the first time) seeing the dummy thrown. That meant the retrieve was simple and he completed it quickly and cleanly. His 'blind' retrieve needed only one bit of help from me, which he paid prompt attention to, quickly finding and returning with the dummy. His second run in front of the senior judge was a lot tidier and his retrieving needed no help so I was well pleased with him.

"What do you mean 'closer'?"

Since the No. 6 dog had not turned up, each of Bugler's runs was immediately followed by Jaunty. The judges couldn't have had a starker contrast! My second dog was well fired up for each of his first runs! What a good job I'd taken the advice to buy a new whistle! It took all my efforts to 'hold' him. His worst mistake - running in to the other dog's dummy - was of my making. Since Jaunty was a fair distance from me when I whistled him to sit to the shot the judge suggested I might like to call him to me - but only by name. When I'm doing group training with the three dogs at home, I use their name to indicate which of them I want to fetch the dummy - so as soon as I used Jaunty's name he understood I meant him to go for the retrieve. Stupid of me. That cost him 50% of his marks on that run. The fact that his own retrieves were clean and prompt was a consolation but didn't improve his chances! Each of his second runs was better than the first but nowhere near close enough or sharp enough on the whistle. More practice is definitely required. He has bags of ability and style and when he finally understands why he needs to listen to me I suspect he'll be better than Bugler.

"I've had a nice sleepy morning, thank you"

The tests finished around 1.30 pm and we all returned to the lane and our cars in warm sunshine. I'm not sure that Gunner was pleased to see us because we 'caught' him sitting on the seat behind The Big Boss. Mind you, it was a good job that he wasn't in the back because the youngsters jumped in with gusto, drank loads of water and then crashed out exhausted from the excitement of the morning! Apparently the lane had morphed into Piccadilly Circus after our departure at the beginning of the morning - The big boss regaled us with tales of the comings and goings whilst we ate our lunch!

"We'll have 'em licked next time!"

It was fully an hour to wait whilst the judges deliberated and certificates were written out. Finally the call came to "gather round" for the results.
When I heard the name of the third placed dog I was slightly disappointed, thinking that Bugler might have done enough to get in the placings. I was totally overwhelmed therefore when I heard the name of the second placed dog - and it was him!!! Apparently I was grinning from ear to ear when I walked up to collect our certificate.
"Makes all the hard work worthwhile" said Rory-the-trainer when I told him later "Especially when it's a dog you've bred yourself".

If this had been Red, we'd be out of Novice so perhaps blue is best

It most certainly does. In spades.
If we never get another certificate, I'll always treasure this one.
And what a clever dog Gunner is to father such a talented son. Oh - I know it's only 2nd place but if he can get one certificate surely he can win another?
I did say we would only do three tests but we've entered already for our 4th and we've got 6 weeks to practice so I'm keeping fingers crossed for Jaunty too!
Nothing wrong with ambition is there??????????