Isn’t the death of a dog the most boring story ever?

Isn’t the story of a dog that hasn’t died yet but is about to even duller?

As I write this, Didi, short for Didier – I have a history of giving all my pets ridiculous names from Ganni (and Ganna and Gannella) to Mrs. Mia Wallace (mean looking but gorgeous) to Monsieur Didier – is standing next to his kennel, a dishevelled and, dare I say it, ugly version of his previous self.

He has become a shadow of everything he was. His bark, which once woke me up in alarm when a neighbour’s house caught fire (he practically saved everybody in the street before the gas tank blew up) is now some kind of yelp. He still effects it when he hears the outside door opening, as if he wants to go out for a walk, still expects that walk, but it sounds like a mixture of hoarse and panicky.

Walking him, you see, is not only useless but thoroughly heartbreaking. When was it that your back legs started to give way Didi? Did I not even realise you were becoming older and older? The last time we went for a walk with Mia you ran after her and she after you, but whereas she was galloping you were struggling to even make it up the hill. In your own mind you were forever young but your body couldn’t keep up.

When did I notice that you could not even jump up the front step? A step of not more than a few inches in height became your Everest, a sidewalk too steep a hill to climb. And what happened when I tried to take you out a few days ago? I touched you with my foot by mistake and you fell flat on your face? What was that? It seemed as if I had given you a huge kick instead. I felt – still feel – as guilty as if I had, watching you struggle to get back up until I had to lift you from the floor.

I feel so absolutely terrible, as if I did something to bring your death about. But you have had ten years of brilliant life with me Didi. Do you remember when Freddy Fenech brought you over after I had seen your pictures in The Times? Of course you don’t, but I do.

You looked a right mess. Supposedly a poodle you looked more like a banshee: black curls knotted so that you could hardly move, your eyes covered. And I tried to wash you to get that crap out. And then you could never get dry. Until I had to call the groomer who basically chopped every bit of hair off you and admonished me ‘If you had left that dog wet he would have caught pneumonia and died overnight’. Guilt guilt guilt guilt. Thank goodness I never had children – I don’t know how I would have handled that particular version.

Nobody has yet said I am foolish for crying non stop, for looking at you from behind the glass door (I hardly dare touch you) and bursting out crying every time you give me that look, the one which says ‘Why am I still here? What are you waiting for?’. It seems like most people actually identify, have been through, what I am going through. And they are not waiting with sticks and stones.

‘To me, it was like losing a child’ someone told me. Is that over the top Didi? But I don’t know what losing a child means, would not wish it on anybody. I’ve only ever had you and your other mates, the ones you used to be bullied by, especially Ganni, admit it.

The thing is, you’re not dead yet. And unless I want you to suffer more, to practically disintegrate before my very eyes, with all the more suffering that brings, I have to actually take action to help you die. ‘How does it work?’ I asked Zoran, who you always liked. Zoran explained, and through the haze of my tears, I figured out that you’d be in a total drug-induced haze, asleep, and would feel nothing.

This makes me feel better but on a scale of one to ten, I still feel like shit. I have no idea what bereavement is like and maybe for those who have lost a loved one, I am terribly stupid, silly. But it’s my pain and I still feel it.

‘Imagine what it was like last year to lose my cat and to separate from my wife at the same time’ a friend said, ever sympathetic. In fact, the outpouring of support has been just stunning. Nobody was angry at me, or disgusted at what I felt, or thought I was a total idiot. Nobody said ‘It’s nothing’ because everybody seems to know it is not.

Tomorrow The Writer will take you to Zoran where you will say your last goodbyes. Then he will take you in a field – yes like the one you sometimes ran in, destroying everything in your path – and bury you there. You will not ‘rest’ because really and truly, it’s not like you spend all day busting your balls with the amount of work you do (yes those balls which I could never bring myself to have cut off but eventually did). You will just lie there until the worms eat you, like they eat everything else.

Please forgive me Didi. I hope you had a nice life with us. For much of it lately I thought it was just your hair going grey (which it did – now that was funny), then that maybe you just weren’t that hungry, and then your hair started to fall off. In the beginning it was comical, then when it never grew back and your long curls started to come out in fistfuls as if you were undergoing chemo, nobody laughed any more.

Even the children in the street, who once loved you so much for your jolly nature, your unthreatening attitude and your sheer joie de vivre stopped calling out and started to be fearful, their parents encouraging them not to touch you as you may have some kind of disease they could get too.  ‘Let go Mona’ Zoran said ‘He is like a 100 year old man’. That made me laugh. For a second anyway.  I looked at you struggling because you didn’t want us to take more blood and laughed no more.

Didi you will not come back. This is not like your long walks on your own in the fields. Those rambles which were interminable and which once led to a bunch of sixteen year old girls ‘adopting’ you, washing you, feeding you and buying you that super gay rainbow leash because you ‘seemed abandoned’. You just loved running freely. You cannot suddenly run off from these people who are constantly trying to foster you and come back to me, barking outside the front door until I open, whereby you walk in imperiously with that look that says ‘Guess where I’ve been’.

That silly git who reported you to the council because you ran off that time and, shock horror, weren’t on a leash, will have to find something else to pick up the phone about because you won’t be around any more. And the mayor, who never ever knocked on our door for anything but had to come over because of you and your naughtiness, will retreat to his only-when-I-need-votes methodology.

Do you realise I cannot stop talking Didi? It is because I cannot let you go. Such a silly little black dog, a purebred but surprisingly so I can assure you, a dog who only barked when absolutely necessary, a dog who liked to sit on my foot but only one foot and who pounded the streets of Sliema imperiously (remember when I hid you in my bag to go into Zara because they would have stopped us?) as if you were constantly in a television advert. You are going somewhere else now. Actually you are going nowhere but that field that TW will place you in. I will not be there. Please forgive me. Please do not think I am horrible when it is cold. I hope you will feel nothing.

You will go nowhere as you will be forever in my heart. Jolly and bouncy and completely silly and peeing all over the Persian carpet because you do not give a hoot about how many knots per inch it has – it feels good to you. You will be chasing Ganni and freaking him out. You will be trying to sneak into Mia’s kennel to steal her bone until she freaks you out by giving one of her rare but terrifying barks. You will be running. And running. Because that is what you like.

I will keep you here ok? Where it’s always warm. Go now. Go.