Farewell our googly Chris Tuesday, February 3, 2009, 06:52 PM Just when I’d written about Chris’s new lease on life, things took a turn for the worse. Over the weekend, Chris (also known by his Chinese name “Sang Sang”) went rapidly downhill and had bad mobility on his back legs. Any pain was well disguised and as he dragged his body to some pieces of food in the den on Saturday. You’d have thought that the front end was completely disconnected from the back. Shuffling over for a small digestive biscuit, he curled those big, soft lips of his around my fingers and closed his eyes in complete bliss at this unexpected treat. And then he was off to have a nap. Again shuffling over toward his basket bed – remembering to pick up his hessian sack along the way – and clambering clumsily inside onto the straw. For a good 10 minutes, he laboriously arranged the sack and straw just the way he thought it should be, before settling down for a snooze. And that’s how I want to remember him today as we say a sad farewell to this brave and beautiful boy, with the scarred tum and googly eyes, who has never been anything but gentle and forgiving since the day he arrived. We don’t have favourites … much, and Heather (our Senior Vet) adored Chris too, and penned some words of goodbye: Chris was a bear of very little brain, his pleasures were simple – food and a cosy straw bed to curl up in. He arrived in 2002 with a swollen belly utterly traumatised by bile extraction – large gaping wounds dripped pus and bile and no one knew if he would pull through the long and complicated surgery to excise his rotting gall bladder. However (probably sensing that there was good grub to be found here) Chris struggled through and went on to make a complete recovery. He became best friends with Honey, a stroppy little pitbull of a bear, intolerant of all others, except for her big goofy den-mate, and enjoyed many happy years in House 3. With his distinctive furrowed brow and “googly” eyes, Chris was instantly recognisable, but it was his gentle nature and almost comical enthusiasm for all things food-related that endeared him to the whole team. In 2007, we started Chris on anti-inflammatory medication after we noticed him becoming stiffer and less active. Despite an initial improvement, this was the beginning of a slow decline for Chris. Over the last 18 months, Chris became a walking pharmacy of anti-inflammatory and painkilling drugs, given to alleviate his severe spinal and joint arthritis, but regardless of his hind-limb stiffness, his head remained young and bright and his nose always sniffing for the next lick of peanut butter. Last month, we made the difficult decision to remove Chris from his group and retire him in a small den and enclosure where he could more easily access the specially designed low beds. It was definitely the right decision. Over the last month we have observed Chris lying happily for hours in his bed chewing on browse and snuggling into straw, or burrowing into his pile of wood-shavings and sunbathing in his enclosure. Sadly his gradual decline continued and the progressive nature of his arthritis has won out. Yesterday we made the heartbreaking decision to anaesthetise Chris one last time. Slurping happily on his favourite strawberry sauce, he barely noticed the anaesthetic injection. He was gently euthanised with the bear team and our management, education and office staff around him, his body a testament to the indomitable spirit of bile farmed bears. His post-mortem examination revealed that his spine was so weakened by malnutrition and years of caging that his vertebrae had collapsed, his scarred liver harboured a large cyst and his thyroid gland was riddled with cancer. Sleep well little bear. You will be missed. The funeral was crowded – our Chinese and Western staff paying tribute to a much-loved bear who had so clearly adored his seven years of freedom and choice. Farewell Chris from your family in Chengdu who loved and respected you to the moon – and back. ********************************************************** A new lease on life for Chris Thursday, January 29, 2009, 07:51 AM Jills Blog www.animalsasia.org This was a bear who originally had a belly full of pus and a hernia the size of a football. I'll never forget Chris arriving at our door on the 10th of June 2002 from a bear farm in Dujiangyan. There were five of them – including Chris – who we heard “hooting” even before the truck had arrived. A mournful cry of misery and pain from a bear whose life was coming to an end. The cages were stacked vertically on the truck meaning that the farmer had tried to save the costs of hiring another truck by cramming as many bears as he could on just one. This had forced the bears to make the long journey literally standing up on back feet all the way for hours – a very uncomfortable position for a sick animal who naturally walked on all four paws. (Chris is second from the left). Chris was quickly scheduled for surgery as a preliminary health-check revealed his massive hernia, pus leaking from holes in his abdomen and a suspected case of life-threatening peritonitis. During the operation, it was found that the original surgery on the farm had indeed caused bile leakage which, thankfully for this very lucky bear, had been contained between the muscle layers and skin. Over the next few days and weeks, this gorgeous bear began to trust his human carers to the extent that he even allowed several “drains” to be put into his abdomen, enabling the infection to pour out of his body. He would even walk over to the bars of his den, sit up for at treat, while our nurses sprayed his tum and flushed out his wounds. Seven years later our big old goof Chris has a horribly scarred abdomen which would put Frankenstein’s monster to shame, but a placid, happy temperament – Chris is friendly to bears and people alike. Sadly, over the years Chris has also become very arthritic as a result of spending so many years in a cage. It was time for more specialised care – and a bed which was closer to the ground than the normal hanging-basket beds in his house. As blind bears Mityan and Akimo were moved to another house to begin an integration with a large group of bears, there was now a space in the enclosure we call our special-care area – or Secret Garden. Here, bears like old, old Franzi and her brain-damaged boyfriend Rupert snuggle up together, and blind Snoopy (who starred in the Christmas Kiss film previously on my blog) lives next door. Sitting here on a Sunday afternoon, I can't stop smiling as I look out onto Chris utterly adoring his new home. All morning he’s been pottering around in his garden. Happily finding food hidden here and there, and now playing carelessly with the cabbage leaves he doesn’t much care for. Once his tum is full, it must be time to play and here this stiff and arthritic bear really comes into his own. It’s not as if there’s been some miraculous recovery – he’s still on the same drugs as before – but just that this very novel area is giving him and his stiff old bones a new lease on life. For the past few hours, he’s been digging up great clods of soil with his massive, clumsy paws, throwing twigs and leaves into the air, tearing open hessian sacks with straw inside, and rolling over and over in the grass. And now he’s spotted the sawdust pit and is lying on his back, loving the sweet-smelling woodchips and gleefully finding the occasional treat hidden in the pile. Sometimes he’ll just sit and look around, perhaps enjoying the smell of freedom – and if ever I wonder just why we are here, bears like Chris let me know. Luckily vet Leanne had her camera at hand! www.animalsasia.org