a place to detangle

Yellowcraig, 28 August

So much has happened over the last three weeks, I’m not sure where to start. I’ve opened this draft to write this post a few times, but haven’t quite found the words. In my previous post, I shared about Raf having some undiagnosed pain. I wrote: ‘Given that Raf’s a dachshund, spinal worries lie front and centre in my mind, but I’m also conscious that he could have one narky trigger point that maybe needs (more) rest and physio, or some soft tissue damage. Our brains have the habit of finding the worst case scenarios, when there are other things that could be happening.’

As it transpired, that front and centre fear of a spinal problem was accurate. Three Thursdays ago, on 27th August, I was seeing my physio in Edinburgh’s Comely Bank, and when I finished the hour-long consult – Stewart, my physio, having just told me to “take it easy” for a few days – I opened WhatsApp to send Richard a message, to tell him the physio had gone really well and check on how Raf and Oak were doing, and there was a video message waiting. Richard had written: strange walk. I played the video of Raf staggering across the living room, heading to the hall, looking for me, stumbling on his ‘drunken’ back legs. There are moments when your heart falls out your body. Richard didn’t understand what he was looking at but I did. Spinal damage, where Raf was losing control of his rear legs.

Everything happened quickly after that, and with tears and panic. But I’ll skip forward to later that afternoon, when Raf was admitted to the Dick Vet hospital – the Hospital for Small Animals, where Harris and Bracken were also treated– into the care of the neurology and neurosurgery department, with pain medication and sedation to stabilise him overnight before an MRI and surgery the next morning.

IVDD, grade 3, or, to quote the Dick Vet: acute and progressive severe ambulatory paraparesis (partial loss of voluntary movement in both hind limbs).

Diagnosis: T11-T12 intervertebral disc extrusion – Right-sided T11-T12 hemilaminectomy, with T11-T12, T12-T13 and T13-L1 fenestrations.

In the previous post I also wrote: ‘How do you handle health-related issues with your canine family members when you’ve been through loss? … How do you manage anything health-related and not find yourself triggered?’ Because I was already triggered before this, by the worry over what might be going on with Raf.

How do you manage anything health-related and not find yourself triggered? You don’t. You fall apart. Your brain – my brain – rewinds back to what you’ve already experienced, back in those rooms, those corridors, that building, and then layers on the current experience, the current trauma. There’s no way round it. That Thursday was awful, a day where I felt as if I was clutching at the edges of my headspace, trying to hold it together. There was a point where I was in a consult room as Raf was being prepared for admission, and the lead vet, Ines, sedated him – an injection of a combined sedative and pain medication. And then I sat in a chair, with the lighting dimmed, holding Raf in my arms as the sedation took effect, his body growing less agitated and heavier by the minute. This wasn't my first sedation with Raf: I’d also held him on the morning of his dental last year, and then too my mind found the connection, but I pushed it away more quickly. It’s a dental, I told myself.

But here, in this hospital room, with Raf being admitted for a significant surgery, my memory was more insistent, rewinding to the last minutes with Harris, as I held him in my arms as the sedative took effect, knowing it was for the last time.

Our brains have this way of finding our worst moments when we really don’t need them.

Yes, Thursday was hard. Hard because of the reality of Raf’s IVDD, the thing that every dachshund parent fears; hard in witnessing Raf’s reactive rage coming from the combination of fear and pain; and hard because of the shadows that Richard and I were both carrying in our different ways.

These photos are from the following day, the Friday. By the time we walked over the dunes at Yellowcraig and down onto the beach, we already knew that Raf’s surgery had been successful. The surgeon, Joao, had called me after the surgery to go through the details: from a technical point of view the surgery had gone well. He was quite satisfied with Raf’s spine. He was very satisified with the degree of decompression. Joao warned me that Raf’s walking might initially be worse after the surgery. There had been a bit of bleeding. They would see how he was the next day and assess him then.

One of the things that I felt really clearly was confidence: confidence that Raf was in the right place, in the right hands, receiving the best care. This was a direct result of our experience with Harris as he had spent nine days in the ICU in the Dick Vet, before and after his thoracic surgery for a large thymoma (cancerous mass), returning home on the ninth day. Harris benefited from the knowledge and compassion of an incredible team of vets and vet nurses, from the surgeons who spent hours removing every visible trace of that mass from his chest cavity to the vets and vet nurses who looked after him every day and night. And so, with Raf, I felt that confidence. He was in the best place, in great hands.

So we took Oak for a walk, giving her a chance to run, to sniff, to be somewhere other than a home that felt weighted by anxiety, and to give us a chance to breathe. To stride out below this big sky that shifted from clouds and blue to this tapestry of light as we walked back towards Fidra, the setting sun washing the clouds in burning orange hues. It was stunning, as if nature was enveloping us, settling us, lifting away some of that weight.

Before I end this post, I should say, crucially, that Raf is recovering really well. We’re on day 19 of crate rest (20 if counting the Sunday when he came home, two days after his surgery) and, hard though this is, his legs are getting stronger and stronger. He’s walking really well. I know we’re fortunate in this. I’ve seen enough of IVDD on Instagram to understand this. Now, it’s about continued healing, and we’re back at the Dick Vet on Monday 28th September for a follow-up consult with Ines, and a plan going ahead.

In the previous post, I asked: ‘How do you build a more resilient headspace for this? Maybe you can’t. Maybe that’s part of welcoming another canine companion into your life: the understanding that your mind will be tested and triggered, time and time and time again, over years, and that this is part of life now.’

I’ve struggled with this, to be honest. I’ve struggled thinking that we shouldn’t have dogs if my mind can’t cope with the stresses that inevitably come with canine parenthood. My headspace feels bruised again, and, during crate rest, I’m not having any of those walks I usually rely on to detangle and reset. And my mind does not work well without those walks, those big skies and the sound of the sea. The wind whipping along the shore, whipping me back to life, to a place of stability. Everything feels a little muddy again.

But then I look at Raf, strong, healing, and I look at Oak being Oak, and I know exactly why we’re doing this. And we will get back to the sea, in time. And my brain will detangle again.

Yellowcraig, East Lothian, Friday 28th August 2026