Resurrection of a four-legged prophet

MARK Twain once said: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated…” I know the feeling. That idiot Hesp made a song and dance about my passing last week, but I’m still here. Jauntier and hungrier, than I’ve been in weeks.

I may have decided to spend days in bed and, indeed, I did do some canine yoga to help focus the mind and reserve strength, which is why the Wreck of the Hesperus would have only seen me breathing once every half an hour.

And, yes, I did wander around the garden after midnight and may have appeared to have been a little lost. But what that over-dramatic journalist did not understand was that I had entered into a deeply philosophical state and was - as part of my dogyoga - attempting to commune with the Great Hereafter.

Trust him to get it all wrong. He even mentioned the mess on the stairs, which was unnecessary. You try being 100 years old and discovering your entire back-end has been locked with arthritis. No wonder I need to reach a canine Zen state of mind. It’s not such great fun, being ancient.

However, I can see why they thought I was dying. They know that all nine of my brothers and sisters have done just that. One by one, they’ve fallen off the twig until I’m left, all lonely, the only slightly camp dog in the village.

Which is strange looking back to puppyhood because everyone thought I was the runt of the pack. Hard to believe, I know, seeing what I have achieved in my life.

When the Hesp children came down the lane to see us all in the rabbit-catcher’s garden, they found me hiding in a cave I’d dug with the help of some the chickens that used to live there. There we were in the hot June sunlight 100 years ago (or 15 years, in your terms) - and the two kids came into the garden to see which puppy they’d like after Old Misery Guts had given in. Apparently their father had always said: “We will only ever get a dog if it’s a lurcher.”

The fool had thought that finding a lurcher puppy would be an impossible task, but then the rabbit-catcher had a lady of our clan who met a handsome male from Dunster. And, hey-presto, there were 10 of us. An entire tribe. Just half-a-mile from the Hesp household.

So the Hesperus was hoist by his own petard. And Harry and Nancy came down the lane and chose me.

Me. The runt hiding from the rough and tumble in my shallow cave. They were nice kids. Clever kids. Perhaps they had an inkling that I’d grow to be the fastest, strongest, toughest and the longest-living of the lot.

They could see, perhaps, that I was cool, calm, stable, watchful, thoughtful… A tiny James Bond of a dog, keeping out of the way while the others beat hell out of one another. Only to become leader of the pack. Or I would have been, had we been left in a pack. But we all went our separate ways. some smooth-haired, some rough-coated, some black and others blond, but all well-mannered and handsome.

The rabbit-catcher kept two, but years later when he came by with his ferrets and nets, he saw me chase up the field with his pair, and he said: “I wish I’d kept that one… I never knew he’d grow so fast and strong.”

Not that I’d have been any good to him. You see, I am a gentle soul, and do not like harming or killing things. Indeed, I have never so much as barked at another dog - or at anyone, or anything else, for that matter.

When I was young, some inexplicable urge did make me run off after a rabbit - and being, fast and strong, I caught it without much trouble. But even in that moment of primeval thrill and excitement I couldn’t find it in myself to kill the little fellow. So I took it back to old Hesp who looked disconsolate about the whole thing in that aloof way of his.

I dropped it, unharmed, at his feet. And it ran away. Which made me sad because it was as if some ancient, predestined, reason-for-being had snapped within me.

But I didn’t care because, above all else, I am a gentle, loving, sort of dog and can’t be doing with the savagery of my hunt-happy ancestors.

That is how it’s always been. And through my gentleness I have developed an inner calmness which has affected the whole Hesp clan, and other folks too.

They come up the valley and pat me on the head and sigh: “Dear old Monty…”

Then these pilgrims smile and somehow my silent aura - like the deep pool that is the well-at-theworld’s-end - is enough to wash the cares of the world from their troubled brows. Dogs and people drink at the cool spring of my inner peace.

So that may explain to you, dear readers, why I have been preparing, in my own far-seeing Monty manner, for the inevitable. The moment when I shall pass to the next phase of the multiverse.

It won’t be long now, and this might well be the last column I ever write. But do not grieve for me as I am looking forward to mastering mayhem in the next sunlit garden of a future youth.

I wish I’d kept that one... I never knew he would grow so fast and

strong...