The Long Walk

Today has not been one of my better days.  As regular readers will know, we have two concerns at the moment.  The biggest of these was under investigation at Dorchester Hospital for much of the day but we will not say more on that one at the moment.  The second concern is Tulisa - nomally that would be an all consuming worry but there are even bigger ones so you can imagine how big the biggest worries are!  Not sure that last bit made sense but you probably get the drift.

Tulisa has been rapidly losing weight despite having been wormed and Baycoxed fairly recently so I sent a fecal sample to the vet.  Should have gone in Friday but circumstances delayed it until Monday.  She was okay this morning, ate a great deal.  We still hadn't got the results despite me chasing them so I planned to ring again this evening but as I climbed the gate this afternoon, I could see her flat out.  She had died.  I had partly bottle fed her and she was tiny but feisty - one of my favourites.  Too late I got the results from the sample - but it didn't matter anyway as she was completely clear of all worms and cocci.  Alarm bells start ringing then so I organised to take her in straight away for a post mortem.  Never do I feel so lonely as when I am walking up the track carrying a dead alpaca.

We have now had the results and it was an ulcer that had burst.  She  actually had an old one on her liver which had healed itself and several more on the liver apart from the burst one.  It could be nutritional or it could be stress - or a mixture of the two.  I don't know, I will think about it more tomorrow.  The vet said there was nothing they could have done for her.

Here she is, back in October, with her Mum - Lina.