The Dead Dog
There is a photo of us sitting on a wall at the beach. It is Mother’s Day but I am not in the capturing of that moment on a Sunday morning in March because I am the mother, the one behind the camera, the memory-keeper, the nostalgia-collector. The children are eating bacon rolls out of tinfoil, my husband is pouring coffee from a flask, the place is deserted. One child is barefoot, her toes are red and raw. She has been in the water. There are a pair of purple flip-flops lying nearby. I posted it on Facebook because in those days, I shared the mundane, the weekend activities, the many milestones. I didn’t care so much about likes and my children were cuter so it was easier to get them. “You all looked miserable,” said a colleague in the office on Monday. I wasn’t sure whether to tell him we’d just scattered our dog’s ashes into the sea because she loved to run there, because she was allowed off the lead there, because she enjoyed her freedom but always came back there. It was a month since she had died and I didn’t think I would ever stop grieving.
I have always wanted to write about my dead dog but I kept putting it off. It’s not a universal experience - losing a pet. Only those who have been there, those who have lost too are likely to understand. We are a secret club that no-one wants to belong to. This afternoon, I decided it was time. There was no particular reason. It’s the first day of meteorological Spring, I have a new, very alive dog now, one that casts all over my sofa and has a penchant for scrambled eggs. I was blackmailed into getting him, I worry I have hardened my heart to him because I cannot bear to go through that pain ever again. I searched through my cupboards. I knew I had a box somewhere, a plain, wooden one that clasped shut. I’d bought it on eBay. It was filled with mementoes, treasured items that encapsulated her thirteen years and nine months of existence. In it, there would be a letter from the vet. It was a softening of the bill which would follow but it was a kindness that had made me weep. But, the box wasn’t where I thought it would be, not in any bedroom or kitchen cupboard nor in the plastic storage containers under the stairs filled with historical records of my daughters’ childhoods that I intend to hand to each one of them as soon as they leave. It wasn’t even in my husband’s junk drawer, a place I never usually dare to go. I found golf balls, receipts, a bottle of Saki, three teeth. One of them crumbled in my hand.
I started to panic. I wondered had I taken a photo of that letter, referenced its contents somewhere, mused on its words. What had it said? I plugged in my external hard drive, the one I carry everywhere in my handbag, navigated to ‘Deborah’s iPhone’, February 2016. I realised it had been a busy month in between Sophie’s death and her memorial service on the beach. There were weeks of grief that followed. Easter was early. We’d gone to Amsterdam, I’d wept again in the Anne Frank House, over Dutch pancakes, whilst appreciating Van Gogh. My friend had given birth. I’d stayed awake all night in a hotel beside a canal until I got the news, knew she was ok. We’d celebrated two birthdays, an eighth and a fortieth. We’d eaten mussels, manchego drizzled with truffled honey. We’d talk about both for years afterwards, how the young birthday girl ordered her own pot, stood up to get her hands right in, how the simplest foods are often the best. She is the child with the flip-flops closest to the sea. I could not forget her enthusiastic scattering, the sudden gust of wind, the dust that had blown back into her face.
We left Sophie into Earlswood Veterinary Hospital on a Wednesday. I composed an email to my mum that evening. It was saved in my ‘Important’ folder. It was full of heroic bravery. Our dog wasn’t just ours, she had an extended family. She had grandparents who sent her cards at Christmas, who took her for holidays, who walked her for miles, who came and checked on her when we were at work. I had explained that she was being given fluids, having blood tests but that there was a strong likelihood she wouldn’t be coming home again. I had said that I was preparing the children. But, she was my first child, my first responsibility, a gift from a new husband during that initial year of marriage. She curled up at my feet in the car. She’d coped with the birth of four others who continually threatened to usurp her position. She lay by their prams, watched them while they were sleeping. She jumped up beside us on the sofa for attention when the coast was clear and everything else that stole our energy had gone to bed. “Her kidneys are failing,” I said. “She is nearly blind, lethargic and disorientated”. But it was the loss of her bark that had broken me most. It had driven me mad, the ferocious noise she made, the little terrier that thought she was a big guard dog. Now it was gone. She was silent. “Russell had to carry her from the house to the car,” I added.
“Alice has cried, Lucy is stoic, Ella has asked for a hamster and Lydia has gone very quiet so they are all dealing with it in different ways. It is hard when a dog has been there your whole life,” I said. “I don't want you and dad to be sad. She has had a lovely almost fourteen years and we have to be thankful that she got to live with us”. Even now, I struggle to read what I wrote, in those final few days of knowing her life was coming to an end.
And, it was harder than I could ever have imagined. Thursday and Friday came and went. It was Half-Term. We deliberated over whether to take a trip to the North Coast. In the end, we did. It was a change of scenery. We stayed one night. I was too far away from her. I begged them to let me see her but they wouldn’t allow me in. Out-of-hours, emergency veterinary care has its rules.
On the day between Valentine’s Day and our wedding anniversary, they asked us to come at 10am. It wasn’t fair to prolong her suffering. I moved through that day in slow motion. I wasn’t ready to let her go. My theology didn’t extend to animals in heaven. There was no school to take our minds off it, nothing to offer us a comforting routine. In a trendy café, I couldn’t swallow my huevos rotas. We left a twelve-year-old in a vehicle in charge of her sisters and I held Sophie on my knee whilst the man with the beard and glasses inserted the needle. It was quick and painless. We visited Crumlin Road Gaol in the afternoon, we had a pastie supper for tea. There are no photos of that day.
“I can’t find the box,” I told my husband. He thought it was where I thought it was too. I took the advice I frequently give others. I looked again. And there it was, pushed to the very back of the shelf, stuck in behind a pile of jumpers. Someone had decorated the lid with her name. Inside, was her collar, her lead, a certificate of cremation. There was a plain, grey stone. I wasn’t sure of its significance. I unfolded the letter. It was hand-written, flourished with his signature. Seven years later, I still couldn’t read it out loud. “I’d be useless doing a eulogy,” I said to my husband. I realised how much guilt I’d carried, how I’d believed that somehow I was responsible, that I had been the one who had decided to end her life. “I was very sorry to advise you to part with Sophie on Monday,” said Mr Millar who will always hold a special place in my heart. “She has been quite a survivor,” he said “and great fun”.
“Many thanks for letting us be part of her life,” he wrote at the end before signing off. I am crying again.
Have you been impacted by the loss of a pet? Please do comment if this has resonated in any way.