Anaphylactic Shock in Finland

The single best advice I can offer to anyone looking to buy old cars is to get them inspected or learn what to look for. The Landrover was a good solid car, with a very good diesel engine (is that an oxymoron?). It was a bit slow but pulled well, it was noisy and dirty and it’s door needed slamming (until I fixed it) but it served it’s purpose very well, (The beauty of a slow car is that you learn a lot about conservation of speed. I terrified my Mum on more than one occasion (sorry Mum!) hurtling along at speeds that it wasn’t built for) plenty of space for the dogs in the back and happy to plod through any mud we encountered (much like my Golden).

Sadly it was during the time I owned the Disco that my beloved Golden gave up his fight with cancer. I say fight but really it was only a few months, I had discovered a growth on the roof of his mouth in November which the Vet told me was oral cancer. A cruel condition for a Golden, a dog that spent most of his life chewing and carrying with his mouth. For several months I cooked him rice and tuna for his breakfast and dinner, but the following January I discovered that removing the cancer hadn’t worked. It had been a slim chance, because there is only so much flesh you can remove from the roof of the mouth before you hit brain.

I was on a trip to Finland when I received the call from my petsitter “blood just poured out of his nose, I think it might be time. You should collect him…”. The big problem was that my flight from Oulu was delayed by snow (yes that happens in Finland too!) so I missed my connecting flight home from Helsinki.  To make things worse, on the domestic flight I ate something that I had an allergic shock to.  My eyes, my ears, my mouth started swelling up, It was very scary. I made calls to the petsitter and to my Ex and arranged for her to collect my Golden, we may have had our differences but he was her dog too and if he was going to die I would rather he was with her than a random stranger (my long term petsitter was off having a baby). My Ex collected him and stayed at my place until I got home.

That night I lay in my hotel room, 50% of my skin red and blotchy, with difficulty breathing and thought to myself that this was it, my golden and I would both die the same night, thousands of miles apart….

Needless to say, I didn’t die. I woke up the next morning with the allergic reaction under control and flew home for one last walk with my Boy. I’m glad I had that last day, I’m so glad he held on that little bit longer.

A terrible painful day…

A few weeks later I took my next trip and my Discovery died…. I left it with my trusted Garage for it’s MOT and received the bad news on the phone – “it needs a new boot floor plus a few other things. The work will be £2000”.

Well I did some research and decided that the work was more than the car was worth and beyond my skill set, so I decided to cut my losses and sell it for spares. Fortunately I had bought the 300Tdi which had a popular engine so the loss was lessened.

A quick search on autotrader revealed a low mileage well cared for Jeep Cherokee 4.0. The boot was a little small, but I only had one dog now, and it was thirsty (which is why it was so cheap) but for the few miles it would be driven each day it was perfect. So the deal was done and I had my next car.