Four Legs and a Tail are Forever

Bunny with the first of her babies, PipSqueak.

You know how late at night, or lying in the bath – often one and the same thing – you are occasionally drawn into reviewing your achievements in life, or lack thereof?

I sometimes wonder if God, reclining in his celestial tub wielding his back-scratcher, looks back on that epic week at the dawn of time and wishes he could have a second crack at it. 

Or perhaps just at some parts of it – because admittedly, by and large he played a blinder. In the interests of transparency, I’d have to say that personally I think there were one or two – well, hiccups. I reckon, given a bit more time, he might have re-thought the whole arachnid thing, and who knows, given the chance he might have scrapped homosapiens.

You have to agree – as a general concept homosapiens are - breathtaking!

Anatomical design: brilliant.

Psychological infrastructure: well – staggering, anyway.

Overall success: hmmm – decision postponed.

Don’t get me wrong, I mean no disrespect, but maybe he just peaked too soon. It happens all the time, and after all, it had been quite a week.

Do you think he wonders, when he’s scrubbing his toes, whether he should have stopped while he was ahead? Like when he got to dogs.

Surely one sight of that wagging plume, that head kicked just a little sideways – ears up, eyes locked-on – surely that should have been enough to tell him: ‘this is as close to perfect as you can hope for.’

The apogee of creation.

Four legs, a tail and a heart the size of a small country.

Going to the seaside

Dogs are on my mind at the moment.

Actually – that’s a total lie. There’s no ‘moment’ about it – dogs are always on my mind. How could they be anything else, with the divine duo lying at my feet day in, day out? (Metaphorically speaking, of course. They have extremely comfortable, cushion-lined baskets, thank you very much, not to mention the spare-bed for restless moments, so don’t be picturing them stretched on the remorseless floor, now.)

Anyway, it’s not the divine duo who are occupying my thoughts. They aren’t even occupying their own thoughts today. They are momentarily comatose. Despite a cold wind flinging hail, they have checked the hens over, raced around the orchard, their feet have walked in the high places, Under-Dog has rinsed his pyjamas in the river, Top-Dog has pee’d on the farm gate (hard work, but someone's got to do it) and they have both hoovered up bowls of delicious scrumptiousness. The prospect of the Master’s return and a long, lazy basket-afternoon are enough. Their joy is complete.

It is the hounds of yesteryear who prance on gentle, ghostly paws through my mind. My neighbour had to have her dog put to sleep. She was a fabulous black and white collie called Finn, and for 15 years they had been inseparable, so she will be sorely missed. 
Sorely missed.
Oh glory be, what a huge gap they leave behind.

You're only a puppy once

 

Lord Oaksey was once asked on some radio programme whether, looking back over his life, he had any regrets. (A bathtub moment, if ever there was one.) After a moment’s pause he replied that yes, he had. He regretted all the dogs he had loved and lost over the years.

I have to say I am at one with him on that. They just don’t live long enough – I think their gene motherboard got muddled up with parrots. Or sparrows.

(Either that, or God in his wrath decided that actually, shortening a dog’s lifespan was a better punishment for us than either serpents, childbirth or being cast out of Eden.)

But it’s not just Finn who’s in my thoughts. It was at just this time of year – late January – that one of my own dogs had to be put to sleep many years ago. Her name was Beshlie, but she was more often called Bunny, and known to her nearest and dearest as Djibouti-Botswana-Babbetina-ShishKebab. (I have no idea!) She came from a rescue home when she was 6 months old, and we had her until she was over 13, a fantastic age for a lurcher, but it’s never long enough, is it? 

Her preferred method of sunbathing

I took her for a last, slow walk on our favourite beach when I knew it was the end, and we pottered along the shoreline, stopping and starting, gazing out across the wide blue edge of my world to her world beyond. And early the next morning, before the vet arrived, we went into the garden together one last time, a white butterfly leading the way, and she was happy. She knew, and she was ready to go. There was so much understanding and trust in her eyes that morning, I felt as if she was the grown-up, I was a child on the edge of loss.

I found a flat, heart-shaped stone on the beach, that last day – which I still have. And I still have the poem I wrote for her, but most of all I have an impregnable store of memories, and in all of them she is full of joy, full of life, full of love. 

Her heart was the size of a small country.

For the short time they are with us, they make life inexpressibly better, don’t they – dogs? I just wish they didn’t have to go.

My husband once summed it up perfectly, and his words still break my fall, still catch my sadness and hold it tight:

‘We don’t have them forever, but they have us for their-ever.’

They surely do.

No such thing as an orphan when Bunny was around

                         

 

                        Talisman for a Hound

I find a keepsake on our last day.

A heart-shaped stone, cold and

grey in the sea. It is the clone of

my heart without her.  But castaway

in the foam, it is her old

and faithful heart given finally

into my keeping.  I hold it fast,

folding my hands around it,

folding the past in on my creeping

grief, seeking some hidden alchemy,

to leech from stone some vast,

last, heart-rending relief.

Her thirteen years dissolve with the foam

on my hands, with the rain, with the

tears.  She is ready to go, fearless,

waiting to roam another shore, and her

silent ghosts are baiting her this

morning, warning me as they lure her on,

that she is already half-gone, gone,

done with her life, skittish on suddenly

sapling legs that prance her to the

edge of the wind.  And I am left,

pinned to this world, watching a

butterfly dance, new wings unfurled.

And the heart that I found in the sand by the edge of the sea,

beats for her still, though it’s years since she gave it to me.

LF

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