Never leave them with strangers

Last Wednesday Ruby, our dog, died.

Pets, dogs in particular, have a way of burning themselves into your heart, the same way special people can – maybe more so. It’s their unwavering trust and the joy they express when you get home. People aren’t built like that.

In return, your dog trusts that you will look after them their entire life – every minute. That’s the deal.

It’s a while back now, when my partner brought home a golden retriever puppy who was more white than golden. Her son named her Ruby. My partner loves retrievers. Bella had been her closest friend through dark times, before we met I should add. Ruby arrived a year (or so) after age caught up with Bella. Little did we know how much this little white ball of fluff would impact our life.

Ruby was beautiful, as puppies are, but she was sickly. After several vet visits, she was diagnosed with renal dysplasia - she basically had no kidneys. They gave her a year to live – eighteen months at the outside.

The trip home from the vet felt like we were taking her home for palliative care.

Stop. I need to tell you about a different pet first, a cat.

Noddy, a tough orange cat, was my first pet. I say “my pet” but he more owned me. He wasn’t my parent’s cat either, he was the neighbour’s, but he preferred vaulting the fence because they lived in a small flat and our house had a massive garden he staked out as his territory. Like cats can do, he split his time between homes.

When the neighbours moved, buying a house on the other side of town, they took Noddy with them. I was seven and I remember saying goodbye. I can’t remember if I was sad – it’s too long ago.

When Noddy was around, my parents had to shut the windows at night to stop him breaking into his second home – he was a skilled cat-burglar. With Noddy gone, they started leaving the windows open again.

Two weeks later (maybe three, my memory is sketchy on detail), our former neighbours rang to say that Noddy had gone missing, had we seen him? We hadn’t.

It took another two weeks (maybe three) for a thin, battered and scarred Noddy to make it back to his second home. This time he didn’t sneak in, he sat in the middle of the hallway and miaowed as loudly as he could muster. My parents fed him steak and he slept on their bed, purring so loudly they said it was hard to sleep.

We rang the neighbours with the news. They said, “if he wants to be there so badly, he should stay”. It was a selfless act, they put the cat first. Society was different then.

Noddy lived a long, happy life prowling our property, fighting off cats and even the odd dog who foolishly wandered into his territory. He didn’t always win. We were regulars at the vet having his abscesses treated.

I was fifteen when Noddy started losing condition. Concerned, I took him to the vet, leaving him for the day. They said they would ring but told me that he didn’t look well. I wasn’t prepared for the phone call that said he was fine, come in and pick him up. I was ecstatic.

When I arrived in my cool-in-the-future V-Dub to take Noddy home, I learned there had been a mix up - I had been given the wrong message. The vet, old and sour, lectured me for not looking after Noddy, telling me he needed to be euthanised. I was fifteen, I needed that word explained. In the end, I didn’t feel I could say no. He was the vet, an expert. I was fifteen. I went home without Noddy.

Noddy died with strangers – it still upsets me four decades later.

The vet practice where Noddy spent his last day closed long ago. It is a house now on the corner of two nondescript streets. When I must drive past, I remember Noddy sitting in the sun, eyes closed, and I silently tell him, “I’m so sorry”.

Back to our sick puppy – Ruby.

When her disease was diagnosed, she was already a few months old so her time on Earth was to be short. As I said, everyone in the car was grave except for Ruby who was delighted to be out of the clinic and back with “her people”.

I had an “aha” moment.

“She doesn’t know she’s sick,” I said. We determined to make her life, however short, wonderful. The sombre mood lifted.

Ruby also didn’t know how long she was expected to live. My partner developed the ideal low-protein diet and Ruby’s health improved. She went from strength to strength. A year passed. Then eighteen months – the outer limit of her predicted time. Two years, then three. Ruby was a fully fit, active retriever. The vets were pleasantly surprised, “keep up the good work”.

Ruby seared herself into our hearts.  

She was a fanatical retriever, specialising in sticks, socks, balls and any toy she could find – other dogs’ toys were her favourite. When not retrieving, she loved to hang out with “her people”. Her diet meant she didn’t grow as big as female retrievers, who average 27kgs. Ruby was a 22kg pocket rocket. Even after her puppy days were long behind her, people would ask, “how old is your puppy?” To be fair, she acted like a puppy all her life.

The years past, we became “Team Ruby”. Without her unwavering energy, the Covid lockdowns would have been unbearable. This year, my partner and I sold our separate houses and bought one together. Ruby kept us going through the real estate slump that had us all but defeated.

To borrow from Harlan Ellison (Ahbhu – Deathbird Stories), she wasn’t a pet, she was a person - a member of the family. We didn’t have to anthropomorphise, although we often did, her larger-than-life personality drew people to her. She was memorable. I would often stare into her huge, brown eyes – she would stare right back. Each trying to figure out the other.

Ruby had turned eight when the real estate market relented, we moved into our new house. Weeks later the time bomb that were her kidneys detonated.

Ruby couldn’t keep her food down. We took her to the vet, her lab results were worse than dire – days, maybe weeks. Ruby stopped eating, she wasn’t sleeping and was struggling to go the toilet. I took her for a short walk to one of her favourite parks. Halfway there she stopped and just stared up at me. Her look told me everything I didn’t want to believe - I couldn’t conceive of a world without her in it (Ibid). We strolled home slowly, our last walk together.

When Harlan Ellison (ibid) came home to find his dog sick, “he was lying at the foot of the stairs, covered with mud, vomiting so heavily all he could bring up was bile. He was matted with his own refuse and he was trying desperately to dig his nose into the earth for coolness.”

We didn’t want to find Ruby like that. To madly rush to the vet. Everyone upset. Ruby scared, in pain. Ruby’s last day was filled with love and comfort. We spent the day outside in the sun, she still had enough puppy in her to chase a ball. We lit the fire and she slept contented. When it was time, and it is never time, she slipped away with familiar, soothing voices, hugged and stroked by “her people”.

It’s hard not to replay her last day, her last few minutes. The spot on the carpet near the fire where she slipped away, I will see each day. Now, it’s raw. I well up. My heart weighs a tonne. I feel sad, guilty and more than a little confused. Time will heal and when I see the spot I’ll remember the wonderful impact Ruby had on our lives. And I won’t need to say, “I’m so sorry.”

NB - This story was influenced by Harlan Ellision’s little known story Ahbhu. It’s worth a read but hard to track down.

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