This Is Troy (storytime)

Okay, this might get a little long. Maybe a bit sad for some folk towards the end but hopefully end on a happy note. I know I'm gonna get emotional writing this..

This is Troy. My first ever dog. He was a surprise I got when I was around.. must have been 12 years old. I remember it like it was yesterday, I had had a crappy day at school and my last class was Spanish. My parents had come to pick me up from school that day. The wouldn't say where we were going, and I was clueless as we drove to someplace I had never been before, to someone I had never met before's house. We went up their stairs and the woman led us through to one of the bedrooms and there on the floor were three tiny pups.

Needless to say, I was excited. Immediatly I got down on the floor and wiped tears from my eyes (I have this thing where I always get teary-eyed at cute dogs). Parents told me we had come to pick a dog. Two were girls and one was a boy.I didn't know at the time which was which, but I picked the one that seemed to be getting somewhat bossed around by the two others, who wouldn't let him go near the water or food that was out for them. I guess I saw a bit of myself there and could relate, since I tended to get bossed around and bullied a bit at school. Turned out the little one I had chosen was a boy. We took him home straight after. I was thrilled. We were inseperable.

I remember his struggling to walk on our laminate flooring,his tiny paws slipping everywhere when he tried to so much as leave the rug we had sat him on. I got one of the cushions from the couch, a gray fluffy one, and sat him on it and pushed him around the living room to the kitchen whenever he needed to go there. As he grew up, he loved sitting on the cushion and me sliding him around the floor on it. He loved his comforts like blabkets and beds too. He never ever would sleep in any of the dog beds we bought for him, and we had bought all different kinds. He would either sleep on the couch or (when he was big enough) jump onto either my mum's bed or my bed to sleep. He did this his whole life. I loved it and as much as my mum would complain that he was hogging her bed, she loved it too.

He loved the heat.In Scotland, we don't get a lot of warm days, let alone sunny days so it seemed whenever they came that Troy would make the most of it, more than anyone. If we opened the back door he would lay where the sunlight beamed in and would lay there, moving ocassionally to keep in the rays or he would go lay out in theback garden. He loved the summer because we would often have barbecues in the back yard or go for a drive to the coast near Ayr beach and have one there. He didn't like it too hot and if he felt it he would find some shade and just chill out there for a few hours.

He loved playing with his toys. Balls especially, but you could only ever throw and never take. He burst most of his toy balls and eventually years later we found a place that sold solid rubber ones that wouldn't break. Ended up buying about two ir three just so we could still throw them and play with him considering he wouldn't give up a ball he was holding onto for nothing. We must have spent close to £100 at least on toys for him. He either wouldn't take interest or he would break it. Last year I bought this cheap little squeaky toy rabbit from a pound store, ended up being his favorite toy ever. The cheapest, scrappiest looking thing ever.

He didn't care much for car rides and would /always/ cry and scramble to climb onto my lap, and/or try and jump through to the front seat to sit on my mums lap whist dad drove. We bought a dog seatbelt that attatched to his collar/harness but who knows what happened to that. Most of the time I just let him sit on my lap, as much as he clawed me to death by clinging to me. When we opened the window he didn't mind it as much as he liked the breeze in his face so I had to help boost him up a bit to let him do that.

Now and then he would get dressed up fot special occassions. He only wore this halloween coat..shirt thing once, but every christmashe had a little tuxedo sweater that he would wear. He looked so smart in it.

He was always an attention-seeker. The whole family loved him like crazy, even if he did bark at every sound or snarl and chase my dad out the door (small dog syndrome on top I guess.). He never really got along with other dogs as much as we tried to get him to socialize with my aunt and uncle's dogs over the years (he seemed to outlive pretty much all of them, apart from the more recent ones they have now).

Troy suffered from seizures his whole life. It was terrifying in the start because we didn't know what to do. I always just comforted him and let him climb onto my lap whilst sitting on the floor til it passed. It seemed to work 100% of the time. He went to the vet a few timea about them but we never did find the cause, but apparently yorkies are sorta prone to them? Who knows..

Sadly he passed away earlier this year, in May at that age of about 11, going on 12. We had taken him to a vet thinking he had a bladder or bowel infection and arthritis as he had been struggling to do his business, and he found it difficult to climb stairs, but wouldn't let you lift him. He would fight to climb the three back steps even if it was hard. He stopped wanting to go walks gradually more and more and was much more fussier about eating than he ever was (and boy he was fussy). His breathing was acting up too, almost like he was panting if I remember. I didn't like it..The vet never did a proper check despite us telling her every single thing that concerned us and just prescribed us some meds for his seizures, a worming tablet and some nutrient paste thing. He got worse and worse and a few days later we took him straight after work one morning to an emergency vet drop in at a different clinic. We waited for about two hours before we were seen, and the vet was one we had seen a year earlier when Troy had went to be seen about a stiff neck issue.

Immediatly he knew something wasn't right as soon as he saw the breathing and checked him over. Gums, skin and eyes looked healthy, but when he felt over his stomach thats when he said that Troy was trying to disguise his symptoms from being diagnosed. We left Troy with the vet that day so he could run some scans and x-rays but he was worried Troy might not be well enough to survive them or let him do them. We got a call about and hour or two later explaining that the vet had done the scans and Troy had made it through, but unfortunatly he had found that he was completely riddled throughout his bowels and bladder and possibly his lungs with hundreds and hundreds of small tumors. There wasn't anything that he could do to save him, but the vet could give him a pain reliever a d let us spend another day or two at the most with him or we could say bye to him now. It was incredibly hard, but we decided it best to let him be out of pain rather than make him suffer for a few more days and just wait for him to pass on his own. I texted my brother and explained to him (I couldn't talk for cryi g at this point I was a mess) and he and my oldest nephew who had basically grown up along with Troy since he was 2 came to say goodbye with the rest of us. It was the saddest day of my life. We have his ashes now in a yorkie shaped urn which has his collar on it, so it feels like he's still here in a way, and it looks a lot like him..God, I can barely see what I'm typing through crying now, but it's not all sad you see..

Troy with that little rabbit toy I mentioned before. My only regret is not taking more photos over the last 12 years,or backing up the ones I had from several different phones or cameras. I have a lot more photos than just these though, and if anyone wants I can upload them all for you to see.. I just didn't feel anyone would read with about 90 photos here too.

Troy would have been 12 on the 27th of October (or at least, that was the day we brought him home). You never would have guessed it because he always looked so young and handsome and acted like he was about 5, always on the go, getting into something.

I love you buddy.