The Naboo update
Hello. I have not been very good with the internet updates lately. Partially, it’s because Naboo, who crashed into our lives recently, sleeps quite literally on top of me at the moment. So I’m sleeping in a lot of short bursts and it’s kind of killing me. I’m struggling to get through the day without falling asleep at my desk. But, more than that, Naboo has started chemotherapy. Naboo has cancer.
I haven’t wanted to open up about that because it feels like a failure on my part. Which I know logically doesn’t make sense. He had cancer before he ever arrived here, so I didn’t do anything wrong and give it to him somehow. But I feel like I did. Unfortunately, it’s a contagious kind, so it’s likely that several of the siblings he was living with have it too, and they’ve all been adopted in various different countries. His brother Phil, adopted by my mother-in-law, unfortunately does have it too and is also undergoing chemo.
I probably don’t have to tell you that this is taking a toll on me. I have done plenty of just sitting and crying to the point of exhaustion. We worried we were only going to have him a month, after everything it took to get him here. I wondered if God was punishing me for something, to have me go through the grief of a deceased pet again so immediately. But someone said something to me that meant a lot; that it wasn’t that I was punished, but that Naboo was blessed.
He got to leave the war and come to live in an actual house, with a former dog trainer, and her husband – who is universally beloved by dogs – and they would love him more than they ever thought possible. So if he were to die, he would have had a good ending. Sadly, that doesn’t change how much it hurts and how terrifying it is.
We initially thought it would cost about £1000 per dose of chemo, and that he would need around 7 sessions. We just simply don’t have money like that sitting around, and we didn’t have time to get insurance before he started bleeding all over himself and the house. We wouldn’t let the cancer eat him alive, so he would obviously have to be put to sleep. So I cried and cried and prayed and prayed, and then suddenly, we got the news that the entire treatment course would be £1000. That’s still a lot of money, but £1000 is a lot more doable than £7000, so he’s having the chemo and we’re trying to save him.
He should do well with treatment. We hope he can live a normal life. But it’s scary, and the vet thinks it might not be worth putting him through the chemo. But I feel like we have to try. While I knew he was unlikely to die AT the chemo I was still really anxious, in case he had a bad reaction or found it too difficult. When he got home, he was swaying, and going so long without blinking. In fact he was lying down with his eyes opened, I was worried he died but then, he very slowly moved his eyeballs to look at me. I can only imagine how rough it feels.
Aside from that, Naboo has changed a lot since his arrival. At first he was terrified in a corner, wouldn’t let us go anywhere near him. Now, we can’t keep him away from us! To the point that it’s a detriment to our sleep. Because of how he lived in Ukraine, he still has a lot of behaviours that a younger puppy should’ve grown out of. We are trying our best to redirect all his chewing to appropriate toys. I lost so many of my dog habits when Freya died. So sometimes he’ll trot into the room holding a random object that we forgot to move out of dog-height range. Although sometimes, he brings something he genuinely shouldn’t have been able to get. He’s a little weirdo. He has a lot to learn, but he has also come so far.
Unfortunately, dogs adopted from Eastern Europe often come with illnesses like this and sometimes don’t live very long. I wouldn’t have ended up with one had it not been for the unusual situation described in the prior post. The story we were told about his mother being rescued might be true, but it also might not. A lot of places are actually repeatedly breeding dogs but pretending they’re rescues. I’m slightly concerned to see that the place we adopted him from now has a new batch of young, similar-looking dogs needing homes. It could be a coincidence or it could not. I also don’t believe that they, or at least the vet certifying him as healthy enough to leave the country, didn’t know that he and Phil had cancer. I’m a little bit frustrated about it while hoping I’m wrong.
Please enjoy some footage of Naboo in these recent videos (including when he tore down our curtains LOL)
Vily has recently gotten me into Dune: Awakening, and it has certainly been an experience. I don’t know much about the wider world of Dune, and it just seems like such a terrible place to live, where you have to get water from blood and pee and dead bodies. No, thank you. But I’ve become quite addicted to it. Even though I am not good at it, and my graphics card is simply not good enough to run it. I have to run it on “low-end laptop mode” despite having a whole-ass desktop.
It suffers from a lack of fast-travelling (like Atomfall does), but now that I’ve got to the point of having my own ornithopter, it’s much easier to get around.
Of course, there is some FO76. I don’t know how I’ve got myself into two survival MMOs at a time (well, I do, it’s because I know Vily), but the crouch and sprint buttons are opposite so it’s a struggle lol. I had a bit of a gap on FO76 because I finished the season, but now there’s a new one.
- The Naboo update - September 19, 2025
- Surprise! - August 1, 2025
- My healing journey so far - July 1, 2025