An Email from Samantha:
Dear Jan and Gordon
I guess you get emails like this often and probably when we get down to it I’m writing this for me, but thanking you at the same time.
13 years ago on December 4th I came to your house from Chester, UK and picked up my little girl Chablis (Gilcoru Arden D’Brie). Up until then, I was a lonely career orientated single female who never went out and certainly didn’t socialise. Then Chablis arrived in my life and completely turned it around, it began by going for walks every day and then I joined the dog training club which got me out socially 3 times a week. Three years later I met Albert my first human soul mate. Ten months later we married and two months after that all three of us left to start a new life in New Zealand. The first year in New Zealand Chablis contracted Auto immune haemolytic anaemia and it almost broke my heart nursing her through her illness but our girl pulled through and recovered completely.
Three years after that all three of us moved country again this time we moved to Australia and for a whole year the three of us travelled around the country twice! Finally we settled in the North of Queensland in 2005 and Chablis learned to live with everything from snakes to the wallaby orphans I cared for as a wildlife carer.
I never had kids because I didn’t want them and of course I had Chablis. Chablis also never had puppies because I didn’t want her to do something I wouldn’t. I have run my own engineering consultancy business for the last 9 years and work from my home office. Chablis has been my shadow every single day during that time. She stayed in kennels for a mere 5 nights of her life in total because she went wherever we went and that was that.
On December the 4 this year Chablis suddenly became ill at around midnight, she was lying by the side of my bed as usual and I had my hand hanging out on her side feeling her breathing. At 2am I remember that I was doing exactly the same thing 13 years ago when she wouldn’t settle down after bringing her home as a puppy and thought that meant something. Something I didn’t want to think about.
She went into vet hospital the next day and was diagnosed again with the Immune disease, it had come back, but she had recovered before and as far as I was concerned she was going to again. I brought her home on Tuesday afternoon.
My little girl died in my arms yesterday morning at 8.30am and truly broke my heart. I’m sitting here in my office this morning and can say I have never felt any lonelier, I keep thinking how can I possibly come to terms with not having Chablis constantly by my side every day. How can I manage without seeing her.
What I have to say to you is this. You may think you merely breed Briards, but you created the best and only true friend I ever had and ever will have in my life. I will always remember you for that. I still have a really old video tape which I so dearly wish I could replace because I daren’t play it anymore because it’s so old. It’s the pedigree chum advert you did and it has Chablis’ dad Verney on it.
THANK YOU from the bottom of my broken heart.
Samantha
