I have a story to tell. Not that it is particularly happy, nor particularly sad. Just a piece of life at Casamonti. It starts with me driving home from the office in Castellina around noon in 1999. As I reached the public tennis and pool area (it was June), I noticed these three large puppies that were part collie running around in the middle of the road. It was just a question of time before someone would run them over. I stopped the car and called to them and they came right up the car door and were all happy and excited and jumping up and down - no collars and starting to show matted fur. I judged them to be about 7 or 8 months old. So I tried to coax them into the car but they were afraid of it (and never liked getting in cars later on either). I called one of the guys on the farm and told him to come down to the edge of our dirt road and bring a bucket of dog food so we could get them to Casamonti. He did and they followed him happily to our house. We put them inside our closed and walled garden and they ate and seemed to adjust very well. They got their vet visits, shots and we decided to keep them. After about a month, we started to have huge deep holes dug up all over our lawn with the threesome happily digging away...unfortunately not truffle dogs, just diggers. So we created a large fenced-in enclosure for them just across from our main gate with dog houses and clear running water and lots of space and toys to play with. They seemed to love it and dug it all up several times over. We would feed them daily and let them run around every few days. We all have taken turns during these years to go play with them and keep them company. There were two females: Ginger and Bianca and a male, Freddie. Everything was fine with them and they were totally healthy - many guests who have come to Casamonti have seem them and probably remember them. They would run up to the fence and try to get scratched behind their ears. Then one afternoon some 4 years ago, we heard all kinds of strange barking and snarling and unusual noises coming from the enclosure. We went down and found a huge viper reared back and biting Freddie. The other two females were lying to the side barking but not attacking the snake. We killed it, then checked the dogs and realized that all three had been bit. Ginger first of all, then Bianca and finally Freddie, who actually got the least amount of venom since the viper had exhausted its supply in the two females. Off to the vet and they were all kept there for a week with treatments and shots and all kinds of special intravenous liquids given to them. They all three survived the ordeal, but the vet told us the viper venom had damaged their immune systems and would shorten their lives by quite a bit. We took them home and they seemed ok. A year later, Ginger started to fall over when playing and then just completely lost her sense of balance. So off to the vet and she had to be put down since her nervous system was damaged as a result of the venom. Another year went by and we noticed Bianca was limping. Visit to the vet and diagnosis of bone cancer and she had to be put down also. So Freddie suddenly found himself all alone in the large space. He often howled at night and when we would go to visit him he was shy and would whimper at us. We did our best to keep him company but couldnt put him with our other dogs since we have two other males who are very territorial. So last week we saw that he was not moving around very well and whimpering, and off he went to the vet this past Saturday, and the vet said he was in a bad cardiac condition and put him to sleep. We now have them all three buried near each other in the middle of an olive grove that overlooks the farm. Did they have a good life or not - this I cannot judge. But we did take them off the road when they had been abandoned by some asshole, and tried to give them as comfortable a life as we could. They lived together and now they rest together. I just thought their story should be told.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:19:37 +0000
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