When pets die
After my Golden Retriever Macy, who I traveled with extensively, died prematurely in 2007, I wrote about how I felt, as a pet owner, losing my dog. The story was published in The Independent and the next day, in The Daily Mail. The story stimulated a heart-felt response from readers, more than for anything else I’ve written. Here is what I wrote.
Dog gone: Mourning a pet
Why do sensible, level-headed people find the death of a pet so hard to cope with? Recently bereaved vet Bruce Fogle reflects on the complicated, and often heartbreaking,relationship between a man and his best friend
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
I’m unanchored. Emotionally adrift. Not because my marriage has hit the skids, or because my children are unwell. I haven’t lost my job. I’m not even moving home. My mind’s in a stew for a banal, some of you might say a really trivial, reason: my dog died.
It’s not that my dog was anything particularly special. She was a family dog, a six-year-old female golden retriever, one of the umpteen dogs you might see every day being exercised by their owners. But she was my dog, a warm, soft, beautiful, loving thing.
Macy was a thoughtful creature, a considerate being, a trusting and worthy part of my family. She was my travelling companion, accompanying me on long travels we took together around North America and New Europe.
There are some, and you may be one, who dislike the anthropomorphising of dogs: the humanising of their personalities, their feelings, their emotions. To me, there are shades of this. I hate seeing dogs in party hats or wearing antlers at Christmas. But can you seriously refuse to grant a dog the complexities of emotional feelings? Many do, but I can’t accept that. I can’t believe that dogs don’t have emotions and the only words I have to describe those emotions are ones I’d use to describe a fellow human.
My dog Macy was “jealous” when another dog took one of her toys, “thoughtful” before trying anything unfamiliar, ” joyous” when she met people or other dogs she knew, “contented” to be left alone, “purposeful” when investigating the natural world around her, “circumspect” in her approach to unknown people, ” contained” in her display of emotions. Helen Mirren in The Queen reminded me of Macy – guarded, wary, restrained, but no less ” human” for it.
But there’s a trickier emotion. Can you describe love? Can you put your own feeling of love for someone into precise words? Can you capture in a sentence or a paragraph that feeling of love so that someone reads and understands what you mean?
I know the look of love in my wife’s eyes, but can I describe in words what that look is? (I know, too, her look of exasperation, or annoyance.) You can’t dispassionately describe love from the outside. You have to feel it from the inside in order to know what it is, so you’ll have to take my word for it. As trite as it may sound, I loved my dog and I know my dog loved me.
Why do we love a species that so depends on us? We guide our kids from their early reliance on us to eventual independence, but the dog’s dependence is permanent and we love them deeply for it. An evolutionary biologist would say that’s the dog’s trump card – her ability to convince us that she needs us for ever and ever. They thrive on our lifelong need to nurture.
Macy did this in a number of ways. First, there was that look in her eyes. It was exactly the same as the look of love in my wife’s eyes. So why is it any different from the love Julia need not put into words?
There’s another look she could get in her eyes – absolute, unmitigated, concentrated interest in me. An uncle of mine had that look and women generations younger than he fell in love with him because of it. So why can’t I fall in love with that look in my dog’s eyes, a look that told me she thought I was the most interesting and vital person she’d ever met?
Then there’s physical contact. Golden retrievers are particularly adept at this. They press their bodies into you. Each time I returned home, Macy pressed her head against my legs when she greeted me. Sometimes she did this in the park, too. Just because. If I were sitting, on a chair or in the grass, she’d come over and press her chest against me. It’s as if she were saying: “I want to squeeze you I love you so much, and this is the best I can do.”
And silence. Is that not the true glue of love: the ability to be together, to do together, to understand each other without the need for words? The ability to feel love certainly predates language. Being with a dog, understanding her moods, her wants, her feelings, her emotions, without the need for words, returns you to the core of your being, to a time before words, when body language said everything.
As so many dogs do, Macy bestowed unconditional devotion, an unquestioning reliability, a constancy and an immutability. Her intention was always to be there, to leaven anywhere with the familiarity of her presence. After the thrill of the chase, even when lost in the deepest woods, her purpose was always to return, to find me, to be rejoined once more. Of course, that’s at the core of the most sentimental stories about dogs. Every culture has them: the dog awaiting his master’s return, even from the dead. That’s unmitigated sentiment but, I ask you, what’s wrong with that? Can another human ever equal the unqualified, unconditional regard that a dog has for us?
Living with a dog is an ongoing process of interpreting. We intuitively interpret what our dogs, with their bodies, tell us, and when we can’t fully interpret we take them to the vet so that he interprets what’s happening. As well as her owner, I was also Macy’s vet. I’m used to that triangular relationship, you, your dog and me, all interacting with each other.
I usher dogs through life, from the faltering first steps of puppyhood, through the arc of life to the often pain-riddled last steps of stoic old age. I have a relationship with the dog and with her owner. To dogs, I provide medical care. To owners, I offer experience and advice. There are times when I have to cut myself loose from the emotional link I’ve made with my patient and speak dispassionately with her owner. “Are we doing such and such because it’s good for the dog or are we doing it because we can’t bear the emotional torment of the only alternative: to painlessly kill.” But when it’s my own dog that’s gravely ill, there’s no triad. Who do I talk to about her?
Walking your dog is life-affirming and it’s probably what I miss most now that she’s no longer alive. It’s as if you’re plaited together, one extended consciousness, awareness overlapping. I see a squirrel before she does, and then she spies one before I do. On one of those walks, rather than charging ahead in front of me, Macy unexpectedly walked beside me. Dogs develop ritual behaviours and, because Macy had deviated from hers, there in the park I examined her and felt a mass the size of a chicken egg, fixed firm in her guts.
I pretended to myself, and later to my wife Julia, that it was an ovarian cyst but knew that was unlikely. I took her to the clinic, withdrew a blood sample and found nothing unexpected but I knew I’d have to operate to see what the mass was.
That night, in obvious distress, Macy came to Julia’s side of our bed and, with anxiety in her eyes, she panted relentlessly. I gave her a painkiller and she relaxed but it wasn’t until the following morning, when I operated on her, that I knew for certain that she had haemorrhaged in her abdomen. Once the blood was cleared away I found the site of her bleeding and removed it. There was other sites too, filled with cheesy material, like pus but not pus, and I removed most of them too. But not all of them. There were simply too many.
Veronica and I operated for three hours, removing large parts of her innards. Veronica worked in emergency and critical care in California before she joined me in London, but neither of us was absolutely certain what we were dealing with. After we finished surgery and Veronica took off her face mask, I saw in her eyes what her mind was thinking: “Poor Macy. Poor Bruce.” What was in my mind was: “Why have I operated?”
Four days later, we got back the results from the pathologist. A wickedly fast-spreading cancer that had originated somewhere on her skin had invaded all her organs, spreading in sheets around healthy tissue. The cheesy material was nothing more than tissue that had lost its blood supply and died.
When we finished operating, I still didn’t know the exact cause of her condition but experience told me that whatever it was, her life would be short and probably uncomfortable. I didn’t want to lose my dog but I didn’t want her to wake up either. I increased the narcotic painkiller and took her home to Julia. There, I continued to add painkiller to her intravenous drip and, lying by the sofa, conscious but asleep, by the light of the fire, she died that evening, not having had the distress of re-awakening.
Just that week I’d received a book from an American publisher, hoping that I’d write a blurb for the back jacket. It was an intelligent and attractive tale, told by Ted Kerasote, a self-sufficient outdoorsman from Wyoming, of his life with a big yellow dog named Merle. Of course, every book about a dog tells the story of its end.
Of Merle’s end of life, Ted wrote: “Rocking back on my heels I wondered how this could be – his going off while I was cleaning his butt. Somehow, it seemed apt. A dog is always more interested in another dog’s rear end than in its eyes. Half laughing, half crying at this thought, I suddenly felt all my joints lose cohesion, as if what had been holding me together had suddenly dissolved. ‘My dog,’ I said to the empty house. ‘My dog.’”
Ted only had his empty house. I had Julia and, although we didn’t need words, we too dissolved. When dogs are members of the family, when we know they have feelings and emotions so similar to ours, when we grieve for their passing as we do for any other beings we have formed bonds with, we need rituals to help us cope with the end of a life. Julia and I stayed with her body for a while, my fingers buried in my dog’s hair for my comfort now rather than for hers, then I wrapped her in a sheet, put her on her bed in the back of the car and drove to Sussex.
At dawn the next morning, I started digging under a low, bushy bay tree where on hot days she had silently retreated for shade. The clay was as hard as concrete but this was a satisfying ritual I’d carried out before. I’ve got two more dogs, Liberty and Lex, buried in their favourite spots in that garden. It’s a final service, a last “thank you” to an innocent. Rigor mortis had come and gone and as I carried her from the car to the hole I’d dug, her head lolled like a flower on an old stem. Mock me if you must, but I buried with her all the lost tennis balls that she’d found in the park during the previous month and proudly carried back to the car, 11 of them.
Dogs can’t tell their life stories, but sentimentally, and I dare say tediously, we dog owners tend to narrate our dogs’ lives to others. To those who have not formed an emotional bond with an individual dog, a description of the quiet intimacies in that relationship can be discomfiting. To those of you who have, let me say this, both from my own experience and from watching so many others endure the grief of losing a dog.
What differentiates the loss of a dog from the loss of a fellow human is the fact that the core values in our affiliation with dogs can be re-formed. The emotional value of living in the company of a dog does not reside solely and uniquely within that one individual. A dog dies and that particular dog is irreplaceable, but the value of “dog” can be filled by others.
Macy was the fourth dog we’ve had during our marriage, and certainly the most travelled. I’ve surprised myself by how cut up I still feel about her premature death. Maybe that’s because she died young, or because I spent so many months on the road, travelling alone with her, sharing experiences with her and no one else. Or maybe it’s because she was my first “digital dog “. It seems that every time my screen saver comes on there’s another random picture of Macy, among lingonberrys on the Russian border, ploughing through the surf of an empty Oregon beach, at Florian’s café in Venice. The memories remain, but I know too that, inevitably and joyously, she will soon be followed by a fifth.
Post Script: Six months later another Golden Retriever named LLBean, otherwise known as Lucca, entered the Fogle household. Here is Bruce’s follow up story, also published in The Independent.
Paw Putty
Let me lay my cards on the table. I sleep with a couple of blonds – natural blonds – and I love it.
I’ve slept with one of them – small but symmetrically proportional – for quite some time now but recently, with her somewhat grudging and reluctant approval, she allowed me to invite an additional blond into our matrimonial bed. My new, more youthful trophy blond is a bit naïve about life but has that vibrant and trusting optimism that so often accompanies green adolescence. Waking up to her smiling face makes me forget just how old I really am. And what a bod; a shimmering head of golden hair, taut muscles, not an ounce of flab, eyes that just ooze affection, moist lips, a cold wet nose. She’s of course my new dog.
Some of you may remember when I wrote about the premature death of Macy my previous dog that I said one day I’d get a successor. I was geared up for that before Julia, my number one blond, was. I’d say, “Let’s get a brace of Jack Russells. We can use them as pillows when we read in bed at night.” but Julia wasn’t yet ready either for jokes or for dogs. Death, even of a dog, is a real bummer and she needed more time to work through her turbulent emotions. And besides – how can I tactfully put this – she’s a bit “breedist”. Jack Russells are dogs. When she was ready she didn’t want a ‘dog’, she wanted another Golden Retriever.
A few weeks later I told her about a Golden Retriever “with barking issues” at a rescue home but Julia’s a bit sexist too and he got vetoed for no more reason than his misfortune to carry his reproductive articles externally rather than internally.
Eventually The Chief relented. I’d made contacts in the curious world of Golden Retrieverdom and we acquired a female pup. Choosing a name was reasonably uncomplicated. I wanted to call her Bean and Julia wanted a name beginning with “L”. (We’d had retrievers named “Liberty” and “Lexington” previously.) Julia liked “Luca”, which I desexed to “Lucca” and she became Little Lucca Bean, or officially, LLBean. Right now she’s evolving nicely through her Lanky Lucca Bean stage into Runner Bean. (Guess what she gets named when we take her to France for the first time.)
Slipping into her impression of Maggie Thatcher, Julia decided this dog should be raised ‘properly’, should know her place and that place was in her own bed or on the floor but not on furniture and definitely not on our bed. Julia may be small but she’s tough so I went along with her edict and mentioned it to two fellow vets, Keith and Andrew, who I had dinner with a few days later.
“My scrofulous Chow Chow sleeps on my bed.” explained one.
“All our dogs sleep on our bed.” said the other, “Some under the covers.” Fortified by the clinical judgment of my peers, I returned home prepared to lay down the law. “The dog’s allowed on the bed!” I rehearsed as I climbed the stairs to confront Julia with the fact that men she knows and respects sleep with their dogs and their wives let them. No need. Home alone, she had a hot water bottle keeping her warm in bed and it wasn’t made of rubber. Now, just as all our previous dogs have done, Lucca comes over to the bed just before dawn, asks for permission and gets on it. I fall back to sleep and wake up to a smile, a wet nose and right now, while she’s still a pup, a great big lick.
After I wrote about my reactions when Macy died, many of you either posted your thoughts on the internet or went out of your way to email or write to me. And here there was a sex divide. Women posted their comments but I don’t think a single man did. On the other hand, the majority of emails and letters I received were from men, who wrote privately and personally.
Phil: “I sat for a long time after reading the paper today…a good deal longer than I normally sit when (at age 77) I get the occasional black-edged notice that one of my dwindling number of contemporaries has passed away, and then went over and put my arms around my dog Homer.”
Christopher: “It reduced me to tears because it so perfectly summed up the special relationship that those of us who unreservedly love our dogs both rejoice in when its vibrant and are torn apart by at its passing.”
David: “The emotional pull of the relationship can defeat rationality.”
Jack: “I had to put the paper down three times to wipe away my tears.”
Gordon: “As I look at my Chico – a five year old Irish Terrier contentedly curled up by my desk as I write, my eyes fill with tears when contemplating his demise one day.
Another Gordon told me how tearful he was when reading the story and finished his letter with a single word, “Courage!”
Brian Sargent wrote the most eloquent letter, telling me of triplet pups, B flat, E flat and A flat, born to the Alsatian cross mascot of the military bandmaster of the Fourth Hussars. Brian’s family eventually provided a home for B flat but in the late 1940s Brian was a student away from home, his parents were unwell and the dog was rehomed with friends in Swindon.
“Some time later I acquired a new motor-bike and in October 1950 I resolved to visit Swindon to see B flat (Biff for short) again.
At my ring the door opened, and Biff, with her customary uproar of harmless barking, bounded towards me. But one sniff, and her manner changed abruptly and radically. I’ve never seen anything like it. I can only describe it as a paroxysm of joy. She was no longer young, but she leaped up at me, contorting, yelping and whining with delight, almost hysterical with excitement. When I was invited to sit down in the living room she pushed her way between my legs, wriggling rapturously, at intervals looking up through half-closed eyelids, and whimpering in contentment. Never in all my days have I felt so humble. What had I done to deserve such effusiveness, such – worship?”
Brian finished his letter by explaining,
“In due course she was attacked by what often besets German shepherd breeds: weakness of the rear legs, and our friends described to us her pitiful attempts to drag herself around the house. She was put to sleep in March 1955. You’ll have received hundreds of letters, so don’t think of replying to this. More than sufficient if you’ve found time to read it.
Yours sincerely
Brian Sargent (still missing her!)
Are you touched, as I was, by Brian’s letter? I imagine most of you are and if you’re a woman you won’t mind others knowing how you feel. But if you’re a guy you might not want to be labeled a mushy, slushy, feeble sentimentalist. So let me tell you this men, you may try to hide your tender emotions but you can never get rid of them. Cognitive scientists have shown beyond doubt that love, care, compassion, tenderness, that these emotions aren’t simply the products of social changes in the latter part of the 20th century, they’re hardwired into the core of your being. Emotions and reason are not, repeat, not incompatible.
Here’s something I came across while I was researching the Australian Dingo for a book I was writing for new dog owners. In 1828, a major in the British Army, visited Stradbroke Island off the coast of Queensland, Australia. He saw a dingo pup and tried to buy it from his Aboriginal owner. This was one of the first meetings the island’s native inhabitants had with Europeans and this is what Major Lockyer wrote in his diary.
“I was very anxious to get one of the wild native breed of black colour, a very handsome puppy, which one of the men had in his arms. I offered him a small axe for it; his companions urged him to take it, and he was about to do so, when he looked at the dog and the animal licked his face, which settled the business. He shook his head and determined to keep him.”
Sentimentality lies at the core of all cultures. That Aboriginal man was just as much a sucker for his pup’s lick as I am for mine. Yet there’s a deep rooted prejudice in our society about sentimentality. Just read the book, film or TV reviews in this paper. Professional critics think an entertainment goes intellectually flabby if the writer engages in sentiment. They interpret sentimentality as mawkishness. Most critics seem to think that enjoying something sentimental is like revealing you’ve got poor taste. Sentimentality is for the simple-minded. It’s anti-intellectual. It has no intrinsic value. Talking about your dog, talking about your emotional attachment to your dog is like admitting you watch soap operas but let me nail my flag up. There ain’t nothing wrong with being sentimental.
When my pup Lucca hops onto the bed in the morning, dive-bombs head first into my chest then stretches herself out between Julia and me she’s doing no more that triggering my biologically hard-wired tender feelings. There are a few simple reasons why I respond the way I do. One is that the very shape of her, her large eyes, her still slightly clumsy movements, trigger an innate, biological nurturing response. I can’t help but want to care for her. As I write this, she’s just proudly trotted into the kitchen with my pyjama bottoms neatly rolled up in her mouth. (I wear boxer shorts so they wrap into a neat small package.) I don’t know how she got them and I don’t want her parading them around yet my reaction to the pride in her walk is a feeling of disarming tenderness.
“Too much feeling. Too little common sense.” you say? You’re right that sentimentality can be excessive or misdirected but there nothing wrong if a book or a film or a TV show or an article in a newspaper or a six month old pup snuggling with you provokes your tender emotions. Those who argue against it are just frightened by displays of emotion. I bet they’re frightened of their own suppressed emotions. Sentiment triggers tender feelings – care, compassion, sympathy, grief but these feelings are also necessary for their consequences such as gratitude, or opposites such as vengeance. I wonder whether you can have a sense of humour without having sentimental feelings?
A sentimental world in which I let Lucca sleep with me, or I have a calendar made with photos of my dog, is not a distorted one. It’s an emotionally more complete one. Loving your dog is not escaping from reality. If anything it’s the exact opposite. Acknowledging that tender emotions are part of our inherent nature – ingrained over the millennia to help us survive, is a necessity, a precondition for engaging with life in the healthiest way. And now excuse me, while I take LLBean for a walk in the park, where I know I’ll be engaging healthily with the most amazing number of pretty women who stop and talk, to me, and of course, to my dog.
Yes, Bruce is Ben Fogle’s father
The name Fogle is rather unusual in the UK (although not so in Sweden or Germany. It simply means “bird” in those languages.) Ben is a writer, adventurer and broadcaster (www.benfogle.com). Bruce’s youngest daughter is a handbag and accessories designer and manufacturer (www.tamarafogle.com).
