February 2025
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After our Christmas 2024 holiday back in the UK with the famiLY, on 27th December we returned to Shensi and spent a few weeks at Reitdiephaven, before heading off to the apartment in the Alps. It was very cold when we arrived at the boat, but happily it wasn’t long before the heating and stove were all working again and we were snug and cosy once more. Having settled back onboard our opportunity was to visit our local vet and discuss investigating Casper’s cataracts and possibly operated on. (Over recent years his cataracts have significantly worsened so that he now has no forward vision, often just walking into people and things. Plus he is virtually deaf. Both of these issues mean that it can be problematic, if not impossible, to get his attention which results in some interesting situations and encounters! However, like most dogs, his sense of smell is exceptional and therefore he has little difficulty tracking us when out on walks, and we are happy to let him enjoy his walks often offlead)
We had never really considered corrective surgery for him in the past, although we know it’s fairly routine for humans to get cataract surgery, but during a visit to a vet in France last year we were told that Casper’s heart and general health seemed very good, and thus he might be a good candidate for surgery to improve his sight – so we decided to explore this option when we got back to Groningen, but these things are never straight forward as it turned out that in the Netherlands cataract surgery on dogs is only performed at specific locations, and our vet suggested a referral to an eye specialist at Utrecht University of Veterinary Medicine, some two hours drive away from our base. Initially our local vet needed to do an ultrasound and health check before making the referral, which all went well and we then made an appointment for 5th February to consult with an eye specialist in Utrecht and assess his eyes for surgery. There, we were seen by a year one and a year five student, who spent some time questioning us on his general health and then performing various simple eye tests. As anyone who knows Casper will be aware, he is a really placid dog so didn’t struggle at all …. until a test for tear duct production was performed, which was not optimal. Eventually however we went through to see the eye specialist, who already had a group of students with her. She examined Casper in much more detail and discussed the initial findings with her students and ourselves, and after a fairly lengthy consultation, she requested an ultrasound of his eyes, which we arranged for the afternoon – as we have already mentioned, Casper is very placid and amazingly they performed the ultrasound on his eyes with no sedation. Thankfully this was all good and the students reported that the consultant was happy with the outcome and prepared to do the surgery, but first she required a series of further blood tests plus a liver and spleen biopsy to be carried out to confirm that Casper’s blood would clot properly. These were mostly standard tests, although a biopsy of his liver and spleen were ordered since an initial ultrasound at our local vet had identified some anomalies. It was agreed that we could arrange these with our local vet as it was impractical to keep visiting the University. Before leaving the University we were prescribed medications to improve his tear duct function, along with a series of medications for use four days prior to the operation.
Returning to our own vet a day or so later, it transpired that he could not do the blood tests and biopsies at his clinic but there was a larger specialist practice a 20 minute drive away that could, so we made an appointment for the blood tests and arranged with them to perform the biopsies under a general anaesthetic. The blood results came back clean and this was confirmed by the specialist. The biopsy results took a couple of weeks but eventually we received them, after which we spoke with our local vet who seemed happy that any anomalies were only age related. The results were passed onto the University who then contacted us to discuss them – their main concern seemed to center around Casper’s recent weight loss but they seemed reassured when we said that his weight had come back up and we thought the drop was due to some sickness prior to one of his visits (and, we worked out, an ‘accidental’ decrease in Capers diet). However, at last, after jumping through all those hoops, Casper’s operation was scheduled for 19th February – we were both very excited for him.
With the tests out of the way and a few weeks to spare, we took time out to drive to the apartment in the Alps and stay until just ahead of Casper’s operation, coordinating the return journey with his operation date.
Happily all went well for Casper, although for several reasons the vet couldn’t replace his lenses, so it’ll take up to a week for his vision to improve. But we left later that day with a groggy and confused dog (hard to tell any difference to normal really!), very unsteady on his feet. He is also now the wearer of an unseemly buster collar which we were told he HAD to keep on continuously for the following two weeks – an interesting exercise in the confined spaces of our boat – and the recipient of 40 days worth of various medications!
Finally though we arrived back at Shensi and were able to settle him on the boat to begin his slow recovery.
On our way to the Alps we had called into a Boat Show in Düsseldorf during which we visited a stand promoting a navigation software that we were interested in, and ultimately bought. So now, with a few days to spare, we decided to take a short cruise out of the marina; unfortunately there was too much ice in the marina for us to depart when we had planned but we patiently waited a couple more days and the temperature improved enough to clear the ice away. Still, this outing would be a chance to test out the new navigation software and get a feel for it, which proved to be pretty successful, and to confirm that everything engine related was still in good working order.
Exiting the marina onto the Reitdiep canal, it felt great to be out on the water again, and unsurprisingly there were no other pleasure craft around (not many boaters are daft enough to venture out at this time of the year it seems). This meant we had the full attention of the bridge/lock keepers as we motored along and all the bridges were prepped and ready for us as we approached; sadly the one and only lock we had to pass through was not so great – the entry gate would not open and we then had to wait around an hour for someone to come and investigate which turned out to be debris preventing the gate from properly operating.
Eventually though, we made it through and continued on our way, reaching our planned destination of Garnwerd early afternoon and able to tie up along the moorings outside of the restaurant. The new software had been better than we’d anticipated at this early stage, so we’re looking forward to finding out more as we cruise this year.
Waking up the next morning – a Sunday – we prepared to move on again, but today the software wasn’t working as we’d expected and wouldn’t play ball …. until we realised that, being out of season, bridges don’t open on a Sunday, a point clearly marked on the software but not noticed immediately by ourselves. So with no other option, we decided to walk the dogs for a while, and then settled down for another peaceful day and night. Garnwerd is a nice little village, composed of just a marina with a large restaurant on site, an old windmill, an ancient church and an ‘exclusive’ restaurant overlooking the river front, so it wasn’t a hardship to stay longer.
In the morning the weather was grey and damp, but we set off to our next destination of Zoutcamp, a small port on the canal with lots of fishing/shrimping ships moored further along it’s quay and one very interesting vessel ahead of us.
The weather was pretty bad by the time we arrived, and we moored up in pouring rain which didn’t let up much throughout the rest of the day. We did manage a quick first into the shops to collect more meds for Casper, but that was about it.
This was only a short cruise, and after three nights away we began our return to Reitdiephaven with just one more overnight stop to make at what we fondly think of as Customs Island (after a stopover there a few years earlier when customs police made an excursion across farmland to reach us). A new small property had been erected in the nearby copse, but otherwise it still seemed as tranquil as ever, and we were content to stay there for the night.
The next day we had to press on as we needed to be back in ‘our’ marina ready for dental appointments the following morning. And wouldn’t you know it, it was not a pleasant start due to mist blurring our outlook for a few hours. Still, we managed to successfully steer home, although we did have a problem with the same lock on the way back, and had to wait an hour and a half for an engineer to come out and fix things again. From there it was just another half an hour before we were in place at Reitdiephaven, and we could relax.
