It breaks my heart to write this but I just know we need to acknowledge the passing of the dearest, sweetest, gentlest boy Charles the Rottweiler.
Charles really was the poster boy for rescues and for debunking any nonsense about Rottweilers. We often met him in the park and Charles used to walk past our house on his way to Richmond Park, he was always so, so happy to see us, even on the other side of such a busy road he would stop, smile (no really he did) and wag the waggiest of tails. He would jump up to look in the car if we were parked or just setting off, just to say hello.
I used to think it was because we owned Woofs and that he could detect treats and dog food but no, so many people said the same, he was often mentioned in the shop. He touched the hearts of so many he was just a genuine, lovely spirit of a dog and was taken way too soon.
Read his story here by Linda Lally, written Friday 10th Dec
Farewell to Charles
He was born on 1/3/2011, we found him at Battersea Windsor and took him home on 30/3/2015 when he was four years old. I took three weeks off work expecting it would take that time to settle in but as soon as we brought him home he laid down on his new bed and went straight to sleep - he was chillaxed from day 1. Early days of walking him in the park we would come across people who expected he would attack or eat their dogs (too many horror films!) so would often see people changing their route. But over time, more and more people became familiar with him, and he them, realising that he was a very sociable dog. That didn’t mean other dogs wouldn’t shout or attack him - he often came across smaller angrier dogs so used to run away from them to keep the peace. He was incredible patient with people nervous of dogs and young children/toddlers. He was very well trained so would happily sit or lay down on command. He would also skate paws, roll over and shuffle forward if it helped or got him a treat. Charles favourite pastime- like many dogs - was to find and play with sticks. His other joy was finding and rescuing lost tennis balls and bringing them home. We have a big rubber bin in our front garden full of rescued tennis balls found in Richmond Park these past six years. The question is, do we donate them to passing dogs on the way to the park to release the tennis balls back to where they were found or will that undo all of the work Charles did. In later years he discovered the joys of Kingstonian vanilla kiddie cone ice cream Rico the owner was more than happy to oblige. More recently, Charles discovered the joys of Pen Ponds cafe sausages on weekends - the staff would happily oblige and chop the sausage in to small pieces to prolong the dining experience. These past couple of weeks have been difficult. For a couple of years Charles has suffered from arthritis. His hind left hock developed some fluid on the joint. This was deemed arthritic fluid and safer not to remove. This limp suddenly got bigger a couple of weeks ago and Charles was struggling to walk and put any weight on it. He was stayed and it seemed there was a darkened area be,ow the hock believed to be cancerous. We were reordered to a specialist clicking in High Wycombe where Charles underwent tests and a CT scan. The result of this was that the hind left hock was cancerous and had developed enough that it had fractured that bone/joint hence the reason Charles couldn’t stand on it. Amputation was discussed but as Charles suffered arthritis in his front legs, this would not have been a medium/long term solution. To add to this, CT scan also presented other cancerous masses found in his tummy, chest and liver- this meant our options were limited. Given Charles reduced mobility (we had to carry him to the garden and to the car for a trip the was greatly impacting Charles quality of life. The result being his departure from us earlier today.
If anyone had said two weeks ago that we wouldn’t have Charles now/at Christmas, we honestly wouldn’t have believed them. We are reeling from the shock of how quickly things have happened. We can’t help but look around different rooms in the house and see what he was doing 24hrs ago or even 12hrs ago. I see tufts of his moulting hair and really don’t want to have to sweep them up.