TV, I think, what you are sensing here is my own sense of disbelief too. I don't even believe it and I am 49 years old and seen some very strange things in my time. I'm the one it happened to and I wake up with that creepy feeling. Also I'm changing my mind. I thought it was control-freakery behind this, but now I'm tending towards my bitcoins having been stolen long before I tried to retrieve them. He hasn't said anything because what can he say?

He didn't expect an English woman who bought coins in 2011 to try getting them back all of a sudden in 2013? Maybe that's it. He didn't think they would be missed. That's my current best guess. He has a dog himself and refuses to travel abroad because of it.

Now I know psychopaths can display a mawkish sentimentality towards kittens etc. that fills the gap where real empathy should be, but still. A dog lover who won't leave his own dog but will kill mine? Something is wrong with this picture, I quite agree.

Something has happened. Something he can't talk about. If he hasn't pinched the coins there's an Unknown Unknown going on.

Strateman, if there is something I need to know and you can't tell me - there are email services that send self-destructing read-once emails. Whatever you want to tell me will never be told to another living soul and if I think the reason is plausible and a good one, this thread will vanish. You may also send such a communication via a third party.


Tulak,

Buddy looks fine to me again. He is sleeping at my feet right now.

[Anyone doing healing visualizations on Buddy, skip the rest of this message!]

The vet gave him pills to slow his heart and I monitor his heartrate a few times a day. It is getting worn out though and it is already human-sized.

Imagine a circle of garden hose with a pump circulating the water. Now imagine someone treads on the hose just as it exits the pump. It is a strain on the pump and there is variously too much and too little water in different places. You can reduce the pressure using vasodilators (increasing the diameters of the pipe away from the pump) but these can lead to a sudden fatal drop in volume at the pump itself. It needs the water as there is fuel in it.

The drugs will extend his lifespan, by slowing the pump, but the lack of flow and increased pressure on the chambers in his heart cause enlargement. Enlargement means you can pump more volume, but after a while the elasticity of the cells is lost due to the constant strain they have been under for months and months so that contractions are weaker. This is the change from 'compensated' to 'decompensated' heart failure. It is the decompensated (inelastic) stage that kills. I should imagine you can detect decompensation via comparing systolic and diastolic pressure readings, but I haven't had the vet do that yet as there isn't anything we can do about it anyway except get him an angioplasty.

I don't know how much time he has left. These dogs simply keel over dead unexpectedly. Untreated, by age two I think. Sometimes you can revive them, sometimes not. He has been revived once.  I do know if the operation is to be performed, it should be done before he is two years old and he is about at two years now. I think if it is not performed, the accumulated damage renders it pointless anyway. I have heard of these dogs living several years on medication and the world record holder (so far as I know of) lived five years longer than other dogs, but Buddy has such a severe constriction you can take his heart-rate just by sitting next to him, it is so loud, and sounds like a washing machine. It is a grade six murmur. The scale doesn't go any higher.

He is a lively little thing though. In fact, I am going to go hunt for some doggy tranquilizers. It should give him extra time.