Dubhbruja Flatcoats

Theo Labrador (Retriever)

Theo

TheoThe day after I composed the write up below we sadly lost Theo, he became quite ill during the night and we had to have him put to sleep. It's funny because although we are terribly upset to loose him it's hard to be too sad about a life well lived and he had a cracker of a life!

We are all going to miss him so much but he is in our thoughts forever – our special old guy.

March 1990 - 15th November 2010

Still with us is Theo and at nearly 19 years old is doing pretty well, we know he is not a flatcoat but he is so much part of our family that we thought you might all like to see him.

Theo was a 10 month old stray when we rescued him and was Justin's first dog, he has had a few health problems along the way (no immune system to speak off when we got him) and doesn't really like other dogs much (he was bitten when very young by a golden retriever and never forgave the canine race, although he lived with our cross breed girl Sunny, who we lost at the grand old age of 18 with out any problems) he has learned to accept the Flatcoats and it is a testament to their nature that no matter how grumpy he has been with them they all love him to bits.

Justin is Theo's first love (closely followed by a tennis ball) and then me (he also has a particular affection for Justin's Dad)! He doesn't take to everybody straight away but if he decides he likes you he will be your loyal pal for life!! Bramble, Ziva and Luna are his particular fans and just adore him and Ziva gets away with absolute murder .

Theo is extremely bright and used to fetch you the tv zapper (or a mobile phone if he couldn't find the zapper), speak when asked and he could sit up for ever if it meant getting a sweety when he was younger but now he is getting on and is a bit blind and almost deaf we have to work on hand signals (for this reason alone it's always worth teaching puppies hand signals to go with commands!) now he just likes to potter around in the garden and loves the soft grass here at the new house on his old feet. We nearly lost him twice in 2009, once when he wandered off on a freezing cold night into the dark and it took 4 of us 3 hours hunting in the dark to find him, when we did he had water frozen to his fur and we are sure would have died if we had not managed to find him. Shortly after that he had a massive infection and was saved by our vet hitting him with every antibiotic he had and a vitamin complex, 2 days after thinking we would have to put him to sleep he was wandering around the yard, he is now nicknamed Lazarus and every day we get him through is even more precious to us.

We hope you like him because he's a special kinda guy!!

Kennel - DubhBruja
Breed – Retriever X (Labrador)