Photo: N. Tester
CH. CRANSTAL CHAOS (Vashti) &
CH. CRANSTAL CHANCE (Hassan)
at 14 MONTHS

The death of Ch. Cranstal Chaos at the age of 4 1/2 was a devastating reminder of the fickleness of fate regarding anything to do with dogs! Vashti had eaten a piece of bamboo at 15 months of age and, although she had been desperately ill at the time, she had made a complete recovery and had lived a totally normal life - although we did have to be careful not to change her diet too drastically. She woke us screaming and vomiting on a Saturday morning in December 1988 and she was immediately operated on by our Vet. He discovered, once he had her on the table, that the membrane that keeps the intestines in place had split and a large part of the intestine had slipped through, with the result that the blood supply had been cut off.

There was nothing that could be done - and we had to agree that Vashti should not be allowed to come out of the anaesthetic. I still cannot talk about this time with any degree of ease - and I genuinely thought that I was going to go mad with grief when it happened. To this day we do not know if the original operation weakened the membrane or if something else caused the trauma.

Photo: Paul Shimmin AL CALIPHS FIROUZA OF CRANSTAL (Tahiba) Aged 4

To compound matters, we discovered in 1991, whilst trying to breed on from our remaining Champion dog, that Ch. Cranstal Chance (who had been used three times by various people with no progeny resulting) had a virtually zero sperm count. We had at this stage already bought in Al Caliphs Firouza of Cranstal to breed back to Hassan. When we received the news of his infertility we decided that we did not wish to mate her to any other saluki and Tahiba was never bred from. We did have a lot of fun with her in the showring - and we think that she might have been the only dog ever to get a JW from the Isle of Man.