This one’s more just a small thought ramble splurged onto a page rather than a straightforward post, so if that’s not your thing, cool. Just using it as a way to lament my border terrier, who had a peaceful death recently in our garden attended by vets and family.
This particular Pooch was my first pet (aside from a smaller dude we had a while before that, but he was more of my brother’s pet. Kudos to that good guy, and I hope he’s still munching on some good broccoli, wherever he might be). And he was a pet we picked up six months after I’d finished cancer treatment. The last bit of that treatment was radiotherapy where, where I was face down in proper position with my weird ass face mask on to keep me secure. Yeah, shout out to that face mask too. I unfortunately had to chuck it recently as the material was getting a tad mouldy, but that guy also won me the school photography competition and featured in an art piece online.
Anyway, the reason I mention radiotherapy specifically is because, while sitting on my front wearing this weird pink apron thing, I got to look at some pictures. One picture, although I had a few to choose from, which I had selected earlier. One had the front DVD cover of Blade Runner: The Director’s Cut. Was I too young to have watched that? Perhaps so, but that’s a story for another time. I can’t remember what the other one was right now, but the third picture was a border terrier, which I was rather obsessed with at the time. I don’t suppose you can trouble yourself to guess which picture I chose during every radiotherapy session? You guessed right, it was the border terrier one. I was rather smitten with that guy. Six months later after finishing treatment and following a damn fine trip to New York, we got a real one. A tiny little bundle of joy who we saved from the claws of The Big Bad Witch. Or this nasty old woman who was pro dog hunting and emanated a lot of bad right-wing vibes. Anyway, Pooch was saved.
He became a stalwart companion and the exact balm the house needed after a really difficult time. His toilet training was surprisingly easy. I’m not romanticising anything here, it was. Dude knew it was respectful to do his sinful business in the outside world. Sure, he had some mini vices of his own (a preference for cushions over real dogs, a love of all food, toxic or otherwise), but he was darn good innocent boy. Did he traumatise my younger cousins one time by running upstairs and savaging them a bit? Sure. Did he interrupt a young couple in his spiritual home, and nearly get hoofed by a cow in the same realm? Indeed he did. But he came on all our holidays up until a few years ago, he was always on top form. Maybe not so much after a particular seaweed-related vomit session on one trip or when he just needed unload quickly in a holiday home, but he was still having a great time. And he was super agile too, manoeuvring up high hills like nobody’s business. Running around, playing with balls you threw for him but never giving them back. He never quite got the hang of the ‘drop’ trick. Or a lot of other tricks. But no matter. He was always a reliable companion on the sofa, too. Maybe our dog trainer said one of the main rules was not to let your Pooch on the sofa, but…come on now. How can you not let your best bud sit with you? It’s too sad, my guy.
When we made the impossible decision to send him to the doggy beyond recently, the pain was something unlike anything experienced before. It’s not even worth trying to put in words while typing on a keyboard. It’s good to have somewhere to try and express your grief coherently rather than attempting and failing to express those points vocally, at which point I’d just burst into tears and become even more incoherent than I normally am. Which is saying something. He was the first dog I ever had and he arrived as the perfect gift after a really difficult period in my life. He left after spending all of his life in over half of mine, and a family member has now left the house absent and silent. A chapter of my life has closed with him. His absence and the silence are about as heart wrenching as each other. It’s not as if he was doing a whole lot of barking in his last year. But it was those squeaks that let you know he was there, he was thinking, he was talking in his own doggy way.
Now, none of those noises are here. Now, when I come in from the shops or from visiting the cinema, the house is without his noise. Now when I arrive, the house is without his basket. It’s without his rug. It’s without his many hairs that plagued our rugs as I hoovered them up this morning. It’s without his many toys that we collected over the years. It’s without his numerous kibbles and treats in a draw that’s now empty expect for a dog and water bowl that I can’t look at without tearing up. It’s without the laughter, frustration and love that lived here for sixteen years. It is without the friendly Pooch who you’d see whenever you opened the entrance. It’s without so many things and feelings that prose is a useless tool to describe them. Despite my atheist beliefs that remain, the need to see that dear Pooch again at some point remains strong. A loyal friend and family member has left, and my heart is broken and shattered.
‘With these words he entered the palace and went to the hall
where the suitors were assembled at one of their banquets.
And just then death came and darkened the eyes of Argos,
who had seen Odysseus again after twenty years’
(The Odyssey, translated from the Greek, by Stephen Mitchell)
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