Casey Morris

Casey was a much loved Golden Retriever who came to live with us on

30th August 2003

I had heard of Casey via Pauline (IRR) who knows the lady who bred her. Basically the marriage was breaking up, things had got a bit spiteful putting it mildly and the dogs were caught up in the middle of it all and they needed to be removed from it. Six months previous to Casey coming to live with us, I’d lost my young Golden, Lisa in tragic circumstances, so there was a huge gap in our lives

When I first met Casey she was quiet, reserved, didn’t appear to have much of a personality really (I was so wrong there), so I said yes as my old dog Emma was very, very elderly so we couldn’t take on anything too bouncy.

There were quite a lot of emotional problems and fear issues with Casey at first but I just started her on flower essences and kept pumping love into her and she blossomed very quickly. I took her to an animal healer from the outset too & she took to that like a duck to water, so much so that I trained to become a healer myself. With the healing Casey was the best teacher in the world, her body language was second to none, she would just give me a ‘look’ or position her body in a certain way and I’d know where in her body she was hurting.

Six months after she came to us she developed an aggressive mammary cancer and yet again she showed me the site, I whizzed her down to the vets and he removed it. She was really ill for a while, but pulled through. I topped her up with healing but I was too closely involved by then to be sure I was helping her so I called for help from others. During this time I also discovered she absolutely loved music, it had a really calming effect on her. Even long afterwards I’d pop out into the garden and say “Casey love, do you want your music on?” and she’d come trotting in and really chill out.

Sadly the cancer came back – at the beginning of July (4th) this year. I discovered a lump on her leg, it didn’t feel like anything too bad, I had others check it out too so didn’t do anything for about a week or so but she kept fixing me with the ‘look’ so I took her to the vet & she didn’t know what it was either, so she aspirated some of it and sent it off for testing. A week later the vet phoned to say it was a mast cell tumour and it needed to come off pronto and the whole lot sent to the Lab for grading, so the op was done a couple of days later.

She appeared to recover really well but at the end of July we went on holiday for a week, she went completely off her legs as soon as we got there and her breathing became very shallow. Again I gave her healing and flower essences and we just carried her in an out of the car, we’d have picnics by the lake, or we’d go shopping and I’d stay with her whilst my husband went shopping and vice versa, or we’d sit by the river. When my husband wanted to take our young IRR golden Kimba, for a longer walk, then I’d take Casey with me to visit my Mum who is in a Nursing Home (the residents loved that). I’m so glad we didn’t push her at all.

We got back home on Saturday 2nd August, she was due to have her stitches out on the 4th I asked twice that day if she could see the vet because I was really worried about her but was told he was too busy though he did phone me when he was free and decided there was something else wrong and booked her in for the next day. I stayed up until 4 am with her trying to calm things down, went to bed for 2 hours, up again 6.20 ish and she went out into the garden and died. It was such a shock, and it all happened in the space of a month, but I do take comfort from the fact that she made the decision to die rather than us have to make it for her.

I miss her very much, there’ll never be another like her, she was a “one-off”. I always told her she was “my angel sent from heaven” – obviously the angels needed her back there.

She enriched our lives.

Pam & Roger Morris
Silver Boy, Kimba (Goldens)
Bubbs & Blackie (the cats)