For Toby - the best worst dog that ever lived

A Eulogy

It was only two weeks ago that I was posting about the agony of trying to decide when the correct time to have our fifteen year old springer -retriever cross, Toby, put to sleep might be.

I hope you’ll forgive the self indulgence once more as I return to tell you that he died. He rallied for a few days after that visit to the vet’s to discuss our options. He was almost his old self. We joked that he had heard us talking about his last days and bucked his ideas up. For two days there was much less incontinence, there was much less dementia wandering and whining. His tail was up and wagging on our walks, he seemed happy and peaceful. It was lovely. And then the symptoms came back and once again, we were back in the land of terrible decisions. After Christmas we’ll put a plan together, we thought, and put away the stress of having to decide for a week or so.

And Christmas came and went. And then, on the 28th, on a day we were supposed to be going to a family party, his body made the decision for us and he had a stroke. On his last morning he came to see me in bed, tic-tac tic-tac, his claws on the hard floor, his soft muzzle on my pillow, a quick investigation of the betrayal of cat on bed whilst he was not allowed on it. We went downstairs and he had chicken for breakfast, his favourite. I got my big coat on and he did his old-man version of excitement, bouncing up and down on the spot. There’d been a storm overnight but when we left the house the day was still, the sky the most perfect blue. We walked in slow companionship, I looked at the storm damage, he made slow sniffs of all things, investigating and marking, occasionally looking up for me to see where we were going next. It was truly the perfect winter walk. When we got back I began packing up the car with party games and juicing a massive pile of limes ready to make party tequilas. And at some point, while I was out stacking board games in the back of the car, it happened.

I came back into the kitchen and was immediately aware that something was wrong. He couldn’t stand up, he looked drunk, he couldn’t keep his head still and we knew then, that we had to pay the piper. We had been companion to someone who we knew right from the day we brought him home as a wriggling puppy, would not last more than twenty years and now we had to give him back. The vet was called, it took them a couple of hours to come out and it that time we sat with him, stroking his head, bringing him chicken, because of everything, his instinct to eat chicken was the last thing to go. And when they put him to sleep, he did, literally, just go to sleep, his lovely old head falling softly forward.

Now I’ve told you about his death, let me tell you about his life. He was terrible, the worst dog you could imagine. He was untrainable, nothing would go into his enormous skull, his recall was appalling, he could learn, but not put the learning into practice. He knew tricks, but would do all the tricks at once without being asked, in a random, muddled order, as soon as he knew there was a treat in the offing. However, for a dog so food orientated, the very idea that he would do anything you said for food whilst on a walk was incomprehensible to him. As soon as he was outside he became a part of the outside. I thin the wild is closer to the surface in some dogs, and he was once of those dogs. When he was young he was a dog who walked for miles, who ran for miles, who would take the scent of something and be gone - down the field, through a ditch, down the next field, through the next ditch, down the next field…until he was a spot in the distance, a tiny flag of black tail miles away and me, late for work, standing like an idiot in the corner of the field holding his lead.

When I was a dog walker I would take him with me if I was walking puppies, because he gave not a fig for puppies and would completely ignore them. He would be head down walking, sniffing, occasionally looking back at me, and following the only command that he knew perfectly ‘get into the side, there’s a car coming’ which wasn't a command, just something I’d said repeatedly to him over the years that had filtered into his knowledge. The puppies would initially try to engage him in play, and when he blanked them, would instead begin walking like him, following his actions, learning what walks were for. He accidentally trained them by not being bothered about their presence.

He was a terrible thief. We used to have a fridge with the freezer on top and the fridge on the bottom which he would open and remove what he wanted from, even while we were standing right next to him. He had no concept of shame or wrong doing and simply didn’t react when told off. I once left a chicken carcass under foil in the fridge, and when I came back to get it to make soup, the foil remained on top of the plate - chicken shaped - and yet no chicken was inside it. He’d somehow lifted the foil, removed the carcass, eaten the whole thing including the leg string and shut the fridge behind him in the perfect crime. I only knew it was him because the string came out days later, like a terrible soap on a rope.

He once pulled me over when I was ten weeks pregnant with our daughter. My fault, it was icy and he saw a cat. I was exhausted by pregnancy and cried and cried because the dog was making things so much harder. But we persevered. And when we lost our daughter at birth it was him I returned to, to walk out into the lanes and around the fields, it was him who stole the snotty tissues out of my hands, it was him who would not let me stay in bed, it was him that gave me structure, it was him who curled his head on me, it was him who laid his full body against my own on the sofa or on the bed as we slept, it was him who came for cuddles, and came for head scratches, and never stopped coming for love, it was him who brought me socks in exchange for attention when I was trying to work.

It was him who made me get out of the house when I was so depressed, after the miscarriages, after the IVFs after failures and losses, and it was him who was always ready to celebrate, whatever the occasion, even if the occasion was simply someone entering the house, someone entering a room he was in.

It is a week today since we lost him. Last night I dreamt that he is on the bed and I was telling him how beautiful he is. I keep catching him out of the corner of my eye, entering the living room, or in his bed in the kitchen. I have yet to venture down the lanes that we walked for fifteen years, it doesn’t feel right. I hadn’t realised how much I constantly chatted to him - about our day, about our plans, about him - and I miss his attentive face, always ready to engage. I miss loving him, and I miss being loved by him because he had huge capacity to love, his whole being was about love, and joy and innocence. He was the most loving dog I have ever know. You all think you have the best dog, but you’re wrong, I had him. He was mine. I was his.

I would have him back. But I can’t, he was on loan to us, and has now gone back to wherever it is he came from. I hope it is this: a field with filthy ditches, and dead pheasants to roll in and rabbits to chase and an endless blue sky to run under. Or a wide, flat beach of yellow sand, rock pools to dip in and out of, some cliffs to run up and down, other dogs to roll and run with. This is how I will imagine him.

My boy. My best boy.