She was my dog: apologies to none

Press, 11 December 1976, Page 13

She was my dog: apologies to none

DERRICK MANSBRIDGE

My friend is a Job’s comforter. He tells me that it is sheer selfindulgence on my part to mourn the death of my dog when I should be considering that she consumed in her nearly 11 years enough food to have kept a starving child in Bangladesh alive and healthy.

My conscience tells me he is probably correct; my heart tells me to spit in his eye. I had never considered my dog on those terms before; but nor did his accusation, which he had no thought of withdrawing, allow me the opportunity to argue the matter with him there and then.

Of course, my dog had had her meals, and enjoyed them. Admittedly, they generally had come out of tins marked “Unfit for human consumption.’’ But I imagine that, given cause enough I would have eaten from her bow) myself. I know of the statistics, even if I have never seen anyone literally starving, except in newspaper photographs and on television. But, I asked myself, would that half a tin of dog food a day that my Scottie gulped down in seconds flat really keep a human alive and healthy? But what about the biscuit that went with the main meal, dog biscuit though it

might have been? And the left-over vegetables and the occasional raw egg? And a little milk? And the tidbits slipped to her? I knew that if they added up to something less than a banquet, they were also far more than a crumb of comfort. So was that the measure for my dog and 1? That I had' to weigh up her years of companionship with the needs of a starving child? If the dog we knew’ as Tam. and the New Zealand Kennel Club knew as the Belrahn of Temiko, was my friend and companion, was not the starving child my brother? Couid I not see that millions of dogs kept by those like myself would feed millions of starving brothers and sisters? And that if we had a world without dogs, we might also have a world without starving people?

I know there is a fallacy somewhere within this argument. Someone — probably a Sunday school teacher many years ago — must have told me that we are ail God’s creatures, human and animal. That even a dog must have its day. But I could not put- aside the picture of the child, its bones protruding through its skinny arms and legs, its pot belly that was not full of food, its listless eyes and pinched face.

But the trouble is that I had never looked upon my dog as a luxury. She had not been “mine,” any more than she had been my wife’s or my children’s. We had not been her “masters” and “mistresses” She was not that kind of dog. She had lived at our home, been bedded and fed by us, dried when she got wet, dosed when she was unwell. But she had not made these human necessities a cause for her becoming a slave to any one of us.

She treated us all the same way — and no better than anyone else who called at the house. Anyone could feed her or walk her. She would allow herself to be stroked, if she felt like it, by any hand — except by the clinging fingers of a young child which tended to get caught in her rough hair and pull painfully. She spent the greater part of the first eight years of her life in the garden — her domain. — coming in only at feeding time, or to sleep, or to demand or cajole a walk or someone to play with her. She made her own game-,, whether it was dribbling a ball with either side of her nose, racing all round the house and leaping over the pathway as if she were a deer, or furiously (baking a dipper in me

way her ancestors destroyed a rat in the Highlands of Scotland. She interrupted every argument of my children, taking neither side, without fear or favour. She wanted to be part of everything that was going on, but was insistent on her own company and her own pleasures whenever she preferred them. She spent her "holidays” at the same kennels and embarrassed us every time we collected her by getting into our car as if we were simply the chauffeur or a taxi-driver, giving little sign of pleasure at our return. The most we would get was a glance out of the corner of her eyes until several hours later when she would let us know we were forgiven for leaving her behind. Not that she ever fretted about us being away, the owner of the kennels would tell us She fed Tam, bedded and walked her, and Tam gave of herself no more and no less than she would have done to us at home. in her later years she spent more of her time in the house. She wanted to go out walking less, allowed the birds to come into the garden (but no other animals), ate everything put ou' for her — and anvthing else she found — unul the last

two or three days of her life, and still remained her own mistress. She might join us in the lounge, or might not. Just as often she slept in the diningroom. on her own. Was she the “wise” dog the Scottie book told us we would find her to be? Certainly, she listened, seemingly most sympathetically, to all our tales of woe, her head dropping lower and lower. If we gained any consolation it was therapeutic. She had no more answers to this world’s miseries than we had. She was a dignified dog, so she died with dignity. She had been unwell for a few days, but was not in any obvious pain. But we knew that Tam would have to be put away. She was not eating; she did not have the strength to pull herself up. She wanted only to stay in her box in the laundry. It was a Sunday, and I faced the ordeal of taking her to the vet the next morning. Instead, she died with my wife and 1 keeping her company, on the diningroom floor, on the Sunday afternoon, but not before she had used up her last strength to pull herself up and stagger a few steps towards the laundry — her “lair.” We buried her in the natural place, in the lawn of "her garden,"

. This, then was our dog. She lived with us. not for us. We enjoyed her corn, pany, she might have enjoyed ours. We do not know for sure. On the few occasions she escaped from the garden she always came back. But that might have been by habit or because she was getting hungry — or a bit of both. Or, perhaps, because it. was her home, too We never really understood her, but we find her absence hard to bear, no matter how many times we assure ourselves that it was all for the best, anyway. Now I am told we should not grieve for her because she took the food from the mouths of star< vmg children. I suppose that means we should not have another dog. But | think we will, another Scottie. Somehow I will have to live with my conscience — as I must do when I stuff myself with more than I really need. I shall do my best not to be a health hazard and pest to my neighbours; to carry my shovel and bag when we take the new dog out for a walk — ant to pray for the deliverance of all starving peoples everywhere. And I hops that my next dog will treat me no better and ns worse than the one w< have just lost.