Roland

Roland came to us after his original owner could no longer look after him.  Once we met him, he looked around the house, looked in the garden, grunted and went to sleep in a dog bed!  He settled in quicker than any dog we had ever seen – around 3 minutes!

We had an initial crisis when we discovered he had fleas!  So, after an emergency trip to PetCo, we decontaminated the living room, bathed him and heaved a sigh of relief.

Roland loved meal times and would bark with excitement while his food was being prepared.  He also snored extremely loudly!  When he wasn’t following us to see what we were doing he would be asleep in his favorite dog bed.

Roland communicated with grunts.  He had a grunt for all occasions and had an opinion on everything!  As we discovered he did not like the rain and used his ‘outraged’ grunt whenever we took him out in the rain.  We tried to put a rain coat on him and you can see from the picture that he was not pleased with it at all!

Our happy time with Roland was interrupted when he suddenly began to bark one morning for no reason.  This continued for a while and when he was let out he did not relieve himself.  He had a vet appointment later in the day, so we were going to mention this.  30 minutes or so before his appointment he collapsed and started having what looked like a seizure.  I wrapped him in a towel, put him in the car and raced to the vet.  However, he died during the journey and was pronounced dead when the vet checked him over.  Everyone was shocked and surprised as he had been in good health with no signs of any issues.  Later, it was determined that the probable cause of his death was a brain aneurysm.

Roland was a big personality and he will be missed.  Although he only lived for 75 days, he made a big impact in our hearts.