Hello.
It’s been a while, but I’m sure you don’t mind.
Anyway, this is going to be a quick post, because it’s about death and death makes me sad. It’s a quick summary of thoughts too, so apologies if it’s a bit scattered.
We went away for a few days to Center Parcs in Longford here in Ireland and it was lovely. We left the new puppy, Frodo, with Tracy’s sister, and asked the local dog walker to call in on our other two dogs – Juno and Bronson – to make sure they were happy and fed.
The two dogs are quite old. We got Bronson about 14 years ago and Juno a year later. They were both rescue dogs.
Bronson was less than a year old when we got him, but Juno was maybe 2 or 3. She’d been badly mistreated at a puppy farm and was underweight and pregnant when we got her, though we didn’t know about the pregnancy until we took her to the vet. He told us that she was carrying puppies, but that couldn’t survive a pregnancy. In fact, he said she had to have an emergency hysterectomy.
So, all that was done and we minded her – and Bronson – for the next 13 years. She was scared of strangers, but she loved us and we loved her.
Anyway, she’s been deteriorating for quite a while. She was never completely OK – apart from the nerves around strangers, or even close family – she was very tender on her feet and didn’t eat well. But over the past year or two she’s found it harder and harder to get around. She used to love going down to Donabate beach and paddling in the sea, but we’ve not even been able to bring her there since at least last summer.
But she was gentle with the kids, she still kept us company and pottered around the garden. And even this summer, she loved sitting with Frodo – and he loved sitting or sleeping next to her – once he arrived in early June.
She was a good dog.
But on Wednesday at lunchtime, while we were on our holliers, we got a message from the dog walker that she wasn’t OK. Overnight, she’d gotten very sick and he didn’t think there was much life left in her. So Tracy took Emily home and, well, he was right.
They brought her to the vet, where Juno was put to sleep.
And so I’m thinking about death.
The fact is that dogs have such an accelerated lifetime compared to humans, and as owners, we see the whole lifetime play out in front of our eyes. It’s different to friends or siblings – who you grow old with – or parents – who you never knew as children.
With dogs, you remember them young and full of life, and then they get old and weary before you do, and then they die.
And when that happens, not only do you remember how young they once were – how small and playful and excited (and Juno was, at times, even though she was never the liveliest of dogs; Bronson, on the other hand, has always been a bit hyperactive, even if now he’s half-deaf and mostly-blind) – but you also remember what you were like back then.
As for me, I had different dreams, some of which have since died. Other dreams have been born, and all my perspectives on the world are different now.
I’m a different person. Tracy is a different person.
The kids weren’t born, so they never lived in a world that didn’t have Juno and Bronson in it. Which means that now they’re adapting to a new world they’ve never experienced before.
Dogs are a reminder that time passes, and while it moves so slow-quick that we barely notice it much of the time, one day you wake up and one of the companions you’ve had for half your adult life is gone, and it makes you realise that half your adult life has actually passed.
And that’s sad. But then a lot of things are sad.
Which means we have to cling on to the happy things as much as we can, and make the most of them when we can. If we don’t, then the sad moments will come along anyway and (if you’ll excuse the language) fuck us up.
Martin J Gilbert's blog of writing and thinking 