Letter to Phoebe

Dear Phoebe,

Writing has always been cathartic for me.  Dumping my thoughts on a blank page has always helped me make sense of the confusing, rationalise events and reduce the worrying.  Forgive me for writing all about you, but I want to make sure that I will always have something out there that reminds me of right now.  Right now, with you right here.

You were there when everyone else had left.  The summer of 2012 saw me screw up a hundred relationships, some that needed screwing up and some that didn’t.  When I’d finished screwing them all up, you were still sat beside me, snoring your head off or trying to lick your own butt.  At this moment you are sat at my feet, grumbling away, trying to hawk up god knows what, having a scratch, staring.  Mainly staring.  At what, I don’t know, but whatever it is, it isn’t here.

We got you only 18 months ago. We had wanted a dog for a while to add to the menagerie of 3 cats that were getting too big for their boots.  I was overweight and the doctor had told me to get a dog to take for walks.  We managed to select the only dog on the planet that doesn’t like walking, but prefers to go for a sniff, maybe making it 10 yards at a time before getting distracted and quite purposefully ignoring your calls until you see us dip a hand into a pocket and bring out a treat.  When that happens, your fading hearing is suddenly turned up to 11 and your arthritis stricken legs can bimble at more than 0.2 miles per hour.

We went to the dog rescue on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and walked around that depressing place, falling in love with every dog that we saw, and being saddened seeing that some of them had been there for over two years.  You were in a cage with another Jack Russell, and we had thought you were a pretty girl but had completely ignored you as an option to join the family – terriers chase cats, right?  We showed the administrator our list of potential puppies to which she said ‘No, No and No’ because all of them were unsuitable to live with cats or be left on their own during the day.  We were so frustrated.  We wanted to give a dog a loving home but everywhere we went, there were obstacles.  The RSPCA wouldn’t consider you if you worked full time (even though we had arranged a dog walker), others we couldn’t have because children lived next door, others still had medical issues that inexperienced wombats like us would have no clue how to manage.  Dejected and sad, we started to walk away, when the woman called us back and told us she may have someone for us.  She took us back to the cage with the Jack Russells' in and said that they both might be a match and would we like to walk them to see how we got on?

Cinnamon, for that was your name at that time and a crueller fate I wouldn’t wish on any grown man than the prospect of yelling ‘Cinnamon’ across country parks and meadows, you came up to the gate first.  The woman said we could cat test you first, which rather than sitting you in a black leather chair, dimming lights and asking you questions about the history of the feline species, essentially involved taking you into a cattery and seeing if you tried to eat the cats.  We took you into the cattery and you tried to eat the cat food and completely ignored the cats. We accompanied  you for a walk round the field, you trotting along beside us and looking up every few steps as if to say ‘Am I doing this right?’  At the end of the circuit, you sat down, looked up and had a scratch.  I picked you up in my arms, you turned and licked Steve and then me, and that was that.

We collected you the next day, following a home inspection and an aside from the rescue centre as we were leaving saying ‘By the way she is half deaf, has arthritis and a heart murmur’.  They told us you were 11 and were found as a stray.  Over the coming months, we would realise how you had become a stray.  The time we went camping and thought we had lost you forever but found you in a random family’s’ tent because one of the women had a red jumper like mine on and you had decided THAT’S MY MUM!.  The time the hairdresser on the high street called me at work to say you had escaped our garden, clambered into a car outside the salon, sat there for ten minutes waiting to go on an adventure and were now licking people’s ankles whilst they got their hair done.  Or the fact that you get so distracted by other animals pee that you invariably end up a 100 yards behind us when we go for walks.

We had read all the books about making sure we were head of the pack, and you having your own bed downstairs, not letting you through the front door in front of us, not feeding you from our plates.  All the rules.  Within a week you were leaping over thresholds, sleeping in our bed and stealing whole steaks from plates.  Training never really took off with you.  You know ‘sit’ and ‘paw’ and ‘beg’ and ‘rollover’ but it is really up to you whether you can be bothered or not.  Living with 3 superior cats has perhaps meant you have adopted some of their ‘Mehness’.  Perhaps it’s just because you are such a beautiful dog that a few treats after not working for them doesn’t really matter.

When we first brought you home, we kept you in the spare room for the first day so that the cats could get used to you, and you to us.  This was a useless waste of effort.  Within 10 minutes, Esther had come up to the baby gate, you had sniffed too close and she had smacked you in the face.  She was boss.  Audrey sulked on top of the kitchen larder for a week.  We didn’t inherit Charlie until last Christmas, but even when he joined the family, you were nonplussed, letting him literally walk all over you, big cat paws squishing your face as you lay on the sofa.  The past week, all three have seemed to always be where you are.  Esther is curled up in front of the radiator.  Audrey on the armchair and Charlie keeps coming in and head-butting you every now and again.  Do they know?

We were too scared to let you off the lead the first couple of walks, in case we lost you so soon after finding you.  You managed to gnaw through the extendable lead after three outings and even if you could run away, you’d be overtaken by a sloth before you got too far, so since then you have always bumbled along at your own pace.  You never got angry at other dogs, letting even massive ones come and play.  You’d only ever bark if a puppy got too playful around you, at which point you’d yelp like you’d smoked 40 a day for 40 years.  Countless children come up to you in the street and stroke and kiss you.  Adults smile when they see you waddling along or if we are being ‘those kind of people’ and have put you in your jumper because you tremble in the cold.  You let toddlers ride you, grandmothers stroke you for hours and let us cuddle you and cuddle you and cuddle you.

We took you to the Caterham Carnival and entered you into the dog show,  ‘Best Veteran.’  Considering you’ve hardly any teeth, a coat that looks like it’s made of wire wool and dubious weird patches on your tummy, you did well coming fourth out of fourth.  The judge asked if you did any tricks.  We asked you to beg and rollover but you just sneezed twice and looked confused.  But you were saving it all up, weren’t you?  Waiting for your moment in ‘Dog with the Most Appealing Eyes’.  You did your beg, gave a big yawn and turned on the charm and came first out of 17, the crowd awwed and cheered for you and you had sausages for tea that day and a rosette for keepsies.

When we pick you up, your tail starts whirring like a helicopter.  When you are walking, your ears flap up and down.  When you are having a scratch you look like you are smiling.  When you walk down the stairs your bum goes from side to side, like you are skiing down them.  When you are dreaming, you yip and twitch and imagine being boss of the house, ruler of cats.  You get intent on licking Steve whenever he gets back from a run, trapping him into a corner and standing on him with steady purchase, licking his face for half an hour at a time.  I haven’t peed alone in 18 months.

Last summer, that awful time when our family broke apart for a while, you were confused and became stressed.  Barking lots when we left the house, sleeping in the hallway at the top of the stairs between our bedrooms, unsure who you should comfort first.  As the weeks passed, you’d start the night in one room and wake in another, making sure we both got attention.  You’d try and sit in your spot on the sofa, slowly edging us closer together on the chair.  I’m being sentimental of course, but perhaps you were trying to fix us in your own way.  Walking you allowed us to talk to each other and realise what was important to us.  Each other, you and the other fluff buckets.

You are a constant.  A wagging tail and a face so happy to see us when we walk in the door.  We used to try and trick you, walking past the front window so you saw us, then waiting until we came down the steps to the front door and seeing you scramble up on furniture, craning your head to get another look at us.  We have a 100 bones buried in our vegetable garden, dog hair on every item of black clothing we own and have never finished any kind of food at any time ever without you poking your snout in it at some point.  You like Prawn Crackers and whatever substance is on the street outside of Pizza Express in town.  We have spent hundreds of pounds on every dog food available, but after a week of eating it, you’ll turn your nose up and demand a menu change.  Your refusal to ever walk up the hill to our house is a source of mirth to neighbours and the people at the bus stop at the bottom of the road.

And now you are fading.  The vet thinks you are much older than 11, maybe 15 or 16.  When you had your first seizure in November, it was terrifying, seeing you look so lost and frightened and then thinking you were dying in my arms right then.  You started peeing in the kitchen and slowing down, some days not wanting any walk at all.  We thought it was your arthritis playing up in the cold weather.  Then you fell down the stairs.  Then you ate a bar of Green and Blacks and scared the hell out of us.  You had more fits.  We brought a new animal into the house, a lovely young thing but you hated her and wouldn’t stop barking or snapping and you weren’t the placid girl we knew.  There was something wrong.  We made sure Bo had a good home to go back to because it was upsetting you, her and us.  2 days after she went, you had another fit – your worst yet and we realised that you were slowing down.  Like a robot running out of batteries.  You started staring at the front door, scratching to be let in and out of rooms, walking in circles.

The vet said you had dementia and your kidneys weren’t looking too hot and you had epilepsy.  You got worse.  The next visit to the vet following a tumble down the stairs and a bloody nose said the kidney issues meant that there was probably heart failure on the cards. It means you are constantly coughing and hacking and your poor body is wracked with effort.  Arthritis, deafness, heart murmur, heart failure, kidney problems, dementia, epilepsy.  A list of all the reasons we should think about letting you go for.  The vet said we needed to make a decision because your quality of life just wasn’t there anymore.  But there is that one reason to keep you with us that outweighs all of them, for us, anyway.  It’s amazing how selfish you can be when you realise you are going to lose someone you love.

You have turned from a happy, bouncy, silly dog in November to what appears to be an empty vessel now. It’s all happened so quickly.  The Phoebe we know is rarely there now, disinterested in your treats, wanting stillness and sleep, not playing, not exercising.  You and I sat in the sunshine on the back step yesterday, you in my arms like a baby, for over an hour.  You looked at me in the eyes for ages.  You were so tired and your eyelids kept dropping until you fell asleep in the warmth. 

This morning, you slept until midday, in your basket, on my feet.  You woke up and walked upstairs then down, into the bathroom and back, into the garden and back then sat in the middle of the front room and just looked at me with your sad eyes and I knew you were too tired for this.  

We are taking you to the vet for the final time on Monday.  We are being selfish again and having one last weekend with you.  We’ll take you to the park and feed you steak and give you cuddles and make sure you know just how loved you are.  We aren’t ever going to have children.  You’re as close as we will get and people may think we are mad for letting a dog have such an effect on us but you are family.  I am so sad we didn’t get to have you for longer.  I’m so sorry if anything we did made any of this happen.  I hope you have been happy and know that we just want you to be free to chase rabbits somewhere else where your legs don’t hurt and everything isn’t quite so confusing.  I got very angry a while back at somebody who said I couldn’t possibly know what unconditional love is because I don’t have children.  Well I do.  I can’t ever recall being angry at you, just a constant affection and love.  And I see unconditional love every day in your eyes.

When you are gone, the empty space here will resound with echoes of you and the joy you have brought us and you will never, ever be forgotten, nor could you have been loved any more than by us these past months.

We love you Pheebs – let’s make this weekend the best ever, eh?