It’s a dog’s life, but a puppy can turn yours around
In 1932, the writer Katherine Mansfield wrote to her husband from France.
she had just been introduced to her friend’s little dog and said: ‘Have you ever seen a really baby one about the size of a fur glove — covered with pale gold down, with paws like miniature seal flappers, very large, impudent eyes and ears like fried potatoes? Good God!... Please let us have one!’
novelist Amanda Brookfield has also discovered that seductive power of dogs — or, at least, of her own, named Mabel, another golden puppy ‘of eyepopping cuteness’.
Her emotion on first picking up her new golden doodle will be recognised by all dog lovers — ‘feeling her warm little body and her heart beating... something akin to a maternal urge surges through me. the desire to love and protect . . . she has no choice but to trust me’.
I know all too well what it is to be ‘saved’ by a dog and this is the theme of Brookfield’s delightful and entertaining ‘memoir of meltdown, recovery and a golden doodle’.
two things triggered her ‘meltdown’. twenty years after her father’s death, she just missed her beloved mother’s passing. she stresses that she is not the kind of person who falls apart — that even the collapse of her long marriage was something from which she could (in the end) ‘bounce back’.
But it was another man who triggered her breakdown. the year after her mother died, someone she loved deeply ended the relationship. Brookfield tells us nothing about him (such reticence is admirable, but leaves a tantalising gap in a memoir), except that he made her understand the meaning of ‘heartbreak’.
the two triggers combined to floor her. ‘Grieving for my mother, I felt as if I had lost my past. now, with this new sorrow, it was as if I had lost my future, too.’
she became depressed — unable to write or read or take care of herself — and totally consumed by grief. something had to happen: a drastic change.
It was then that she thought of getting a dog, even though her sisters and brother united in their disapproval. Dogs are a tie, they warned. And would she, a writer, cope with the disruption, the walks, the training?
not entirely convinced herself, Brookfield forges ahead.
the inexplicable dog compulsion leads her to a breeder in Wales and (finally) Mabel trots into her life. the woman and the puppy quickly bond — much to the disgust of her old cat, tiger Lily.
But there are so many lessons to be learned, such as the indignity of standing
in a garden in the rain trying to make your dog do its business, the humiliation of having an untrained dog in the park, the discovery that a dog’s coat can become matted and need a lot of care, the mess at home . . . and those moments when you wonder if the naysayers were right.
After all, who will look after the dog when you want to go away?
But dog love conquers all (it really does!) and, soon, Brookfield cannot bear to be apart from her pooch. All her entertaining stories (a date with a new man ends with the sight of Mabel’s diarrhoea all over the floor) cannot hide the truth: ‘I am a damaged dog owner.’
The shock of the end of her love affair remains, but she realises that ‘learning to control Mabel is not wholly about controlling Mabel. It is about me’. living with her dog, protecting her and loving her puts the author back in charge of her own life.
After all, men may come and go, but a dog will always trust you and love you, making you respond in kind.
Even if your heart has been broken, you realise it can heal.
More than once in my Saturday advice column, I have gently suggested that a dog can assuage pain and loneliness.
Amanda Brookfield finds her life changed and improved socially. She feels convinced ‘there is some mysterious connection between all the energy my dog has brought into my existence . . . and this new stamina and engagement’.
This charming book is an account of just one ‘restorative’ year with her pup.
I promise her — there is much delight ahead.