Farewell Django… you gave me 15 years of simple joy
I’m sorry if you emailed me about my poorly poodle and didn’t get a reply. Several hundred readers sent in messages of support, advice and stories about that most agonising adieu. It was such a glorious patchwork of pooches past. You made me smile and cry. I drew huge comfort from knowing that so many had loved and lost their dogs, as I would soon lose mine.
Turned out I was wrong about Django having arthritis. At least, he did have arthritis, but during an emergency visit to the surgery, a kindly Spanish vet suggested that his symptoms could be caused by a lesion on his brain. Django spent the night on a drip and I stayed up till the small hours researching canine tumours. As a journalist and a mother, I think if I only find out enough facts, I can fix things. But I couldn’t fix this. When I returned to collect him, he came bounding towards
me. “They’re really good at pretending they’re fine,” the vet said, “because they want you to take them home.”
I forget who it was who said that all women in middle age have to look forward to is hormones, horticulture and hounds. Certainly, Django fulfilled a need in me I didn’t know existed. Deep down, I suppose I had yearned for a third child, but I had started the baby-making business late and counted myself lucky to have ended up with a healthy girl and boy by the time I was 40. Getting a dog was a way of continuing to be needed.
So many women I know are passionate about their dogs. My friend Sara, who has a cockapoo and a lab, insists that she could bear the loss of her husband much better than the death of her dogs. Is she joking? I’m not so sure.
In the end, the decision was mine. The hardest I have ever had to make. Steroids could keep the symptoms in check for a while, and they gave us a couple more weeks together, but the vet told me to monitor his quality of life. I watched my beloved friend as
he swayed and struggled, no longer able to cock his leg, but still determined to go outside. Dignified and proud to the last.
Anyone who has had to have a dog put to sleep will know how I felt. Dreading the thought of letting him go, but desperate to make the right choice. “His eyes will tell you when it’s time,” a veteran doggy person said. She was right. Those trusting brown eyes becoming more bewildered every day: “Mum, what the hell’s going on here?”
So I called the vet and she came to the house – he was always scared of the vet’s, and I didn’t want him to be scared. Himself cradled his head as I stroked him and told him he was a good boy. The best.
In his poem, The Power of the
Dog, Rudyard Kipling wrote: “Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware/ Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.”
Perfectly true. I felt like Django took a piece of my soul with him when he died. I miss him every day, it’s ridiculous how much. I’m embarrassed to admit it. But, you know, with all that free-floating hatred in the world right now, I’m so glad for those 15 years of simple companionship and joy I had on planet poodle. A far better world, I think, than the one of politics and men.