Early in the book Joan Didion refers the pyschiartrist Karl Menninger’s work Man Against Himself, and his concept of exaggerated value. Exaggerated value, is a term that reverberated with a recognisable knell as I read it. Apparently Dr Menniger uses exaggerated value as an explantion for some suicides “…had an exaggerted value, so that when there was even a threat that they might be lost, the recoil of severed emotional bonds was fatal.”

I don’t know the fatal recoil of severed emotional bonds, but I am familiar with the, less deadly, stricken recoil of severed emotional bonds. That recoil is what I identify as grief with all of its miserable symptoms and sadness.

The two terms, emotional recoil and exaggerated value, allowed me to frame my reaction to Shortbread’s death. Sense making. I had invested an exaggerated value into one little dog, she was a Birthday gift from Mottsu – a link with the past. The loss of Shortie has left me feeling more alone than I have before, our little family pod of a couple and their two dogs is all but gone.

From the moment I first held Shortbread, as an unnamed puppy, I cupped her in one hand and gently protected my treasure. I was already afraid I would lose her, most of her life I dreaded her death. Of course dread was not my only emotion, it was present. I also adored her presence and being, we were sympatico each feeling nurtured by the other. We enjoyed a fabulous life my dog and me.

Is that what happens? Do we place an exaggerated value in people, pets, and possessions, the things we love most? I do, that’s why losing those special people, pets and possessions is so awful, so hard to bear. I’m grateful to Joan Didion who provides the words, in her pages, to give expression to the experience of loss.

20/07/1999 – 11/11/2011

My dear little dog died.

You might know the song To Love Somebody, the chorus is: “You don’t know what its like to love somebody the way I love you…” Everbody, every man, every woman and every dog has sung it. Janis Joplin’s version captures the feeling of the words, it is on Youtube, but I digress…

I have found that song running through my head when in the company of Shortie, out on our walks to the local park or some evenings just listening to her snore. There is a bond you build with your dog, and it is hard for anyone else to know what it’s like.

Shortbread actually did know what its like to love somebody, we both did. Today she took another little piece of my heart when she left. She was a very special part of my life.

Apparently the world will try to contact every man and every dog after they die.

Wally, Mottsu’s dog died February 6 2008. I dreamt of Wally last week, in the dream I had gone to stay a house in the country. A holiday. I suddenly remembered that I had left Wally at home alone, I had forgotten him. Alarmed I started running down the local roads to find him. I woke up weeping and distressed.

Two days later it surreal to receive and email headed ‘Wally Misses You’. I was startled, I certainly miss Wally and I was stunned to think he missed me, afterall he is buried in the garden. The message came from DogBook, an application hosted by Facebook. The email read:

from Dogbook
reply-to Facebook
to Anne
date 22 April 2011 14:26
subject Wally misses you!
mailed-by facebookappmail.com

We can’t wait to get you back.
VISIT DOGBOOK
The Dogbook Team

The email tells me my “..dog deserves a life”, that’s wrong Dogbook, what my dog deserves is to rest in peace.

It isn’t possible to be prepared for these unexpected messages, I am mentioning them anyway.

A string of somewhat coherent thoughts cruised through my head and left me picturing Wally. I remembered him sitting by the car one day and shaking, his whole body trembling and his little face set with misery. I closed my eyes remembering dear Wally and the way he trembled in the world, and I sighed loudly releasing air. Longing…

I (still) grieve hard for Mottsu and today I am thinking of his (our) little dog, Wally. ‘There’s only one little Wally” we used to sing to the tune of Guantunamerra, “…one little Waaa-lllll-eeee, there’s only one little Waaa-lly.”

Wally was our dog, he was Mottsu’s dog, a one dog fan club. Let me tell the story behind the memory of him sitting by the car shaking.

The day we moved in to the big country house, Mottsu’s dream house the place from which he was going to build a new career and enjoy a tree-changed life, was a day happy on the surface and dark and swirling beneath that.

There was too much invested the house, too much money, too many hopes for a different life, Mottsu was grapsing at a future beyond depression. Maybe he had already lost his centre, I don’t know, I think he was battling the high seas of depression and was helpless to make headway.

The morning of the move, we packed up one house and waited for the movers with their truck. I stuffed the car with loose bits and items, the pieces not secured in boxes. Mottsu drove off, our precious flotsam pushed up against the car windows, he went to get the key, drop off the bits, and was to be back before the movers had loaded their truck.

Mottsu left.
The movers arrived.
The movers loaded up the truck.
No word from Mottsu.

I was overcome with a seemingly irrational fear. A full body wave of terror swept over me and drew everything out, I perched on the toilet seat seasick green, clinging to notion that I was being absurd, and at the same time ill with fear. This was three weeks before he left without coming home again. That sunny Saturday morning, my body sensed before my mind had formed the thought, that Mottsu might not come home again.

Mottsu drove up.

Relief broke out and I laughed, Wally wagged and we all piled into the car and followed the movers to our new house.

We spent the day unpacking, sorting and putting things into place.
Amid the boxes and mess I didn’t see Wally for most of the afternoon, I found him outside sitting close to the car and shaking.

Wally just wanted to go where we went, he wasn’t going to be left behind. The mood of the move was distressing, a big exciting move to be celebrated with an unnamed darkness underscoring it all. Our new home was supposed to be a safe place, with paddocks and views and dreams filling every room. Somewhere below the visible reality things didn’t feel so welcoming.

Wally picked it all up, sensed the shadows and trembled, he wanted to go home, to our regular city home, I did too.

I miss Wally and his big little dog heart, his love and his fear. I love and love, I grieve. Still and on and on. The price for loving well is grieving hard.

That’s just how it is, love well, grieve hard, long and hard – and on and on…

Cross with care or cross with abandon.

My experiences shape who I am, and recent experiences, the ones I write about, have certainly taken me beyond what I had imagined was me and what I would have regarded as my limits. I have crossed edges, boundaries, and borders.

I could label my experiences as personal development but that makes travelling my course sound self directed. I’ve wandered without a destination in mind, and although I would like to boast otherwise, I must quietly admit that I’ve presented my id or passport, with trepidation more often than boldly.

It’s also true that I could never quite have cracked up and quit, not even when I sat listening to the fridge. I did what I was able to and gently pushed at the edges, redefining me as I went. It’s ongoing work.

Somewhat paradoxically, there is less control and more abandon in who I am now. I’m not without fear, any solo traveller will appreciate there are inevitable moments of self doubt and cross and I grow.

I live a beautiful life, I know that when I can smile to myself on a morning tram packed with commuters, and I swear not much smiling happens on those journeys. Then there’s the almost boundless joy of taking a deep breath of dog, or those moments when I clumsily hug someone who’s not expecting to be hugged, I make it all up as I go along.

I don’t know how it all happened, how I got to where I am. I am thankful to have crossed me and kept on growing. I lost Mottsu and I managed to find the best of me.
I don’t know how that happened.

It was just past mid-night when I was awoken by a neighbour beating on the door. The back section of my house was ablaze. It was more than I could take in; the flames, the alarm of needing to do something, the horror that my house had been burning while I slept.

The neighbour rang the fire-brigade, who rushed to the scene to quench the flames. There was mayhem, people were trying to help, it was the who firemen took control and stomped through the house, while I stood, clutching my dressing gown around me, open mouthed with disbelief.

I watched, horrified, as Wally bravely ran out towards the flames, and burned his paws, singed his eyebrow and whiskers. He was so courageous and protective, considering the scaredy-dog he was at heart. I scooped him up to console myself and he shivered in my arms, exuding the acrid smell of burning hair. I clung to Wally and watched the firemen douse the flames and investigate the damage and cause.

In the melee I didn’t notice Shortbread was missing. She had run, in the opposite direction to Wally, out of the front door and into my neighbour’s home. There she jumped up onto the couch and went to sleep. The neighbours told me that story later on, after the firemen left and everything quietened down.

Two dogs and two different instinctive reactions to the drama. Both good, each was simply being themselves. Each of us reacts to an emergency as best we can.

I feared the loss of Wally would be a grief too great, not on it’s own but compounded with the already bewildering loss of Mottsu, a grief to great to navigate with a sound mind. That sounds a bit theatrical. I didn’t want to be melodramatic and when I voiced my fears my friends brushed me off.

“Wally won’t die…” they said “he is healthy” I was told.

My head and heart knew otherwise, Wally was healthy and even so he would die one day. He was already 10, and the vet referred to him as a ‘senior pet’. The denial of existential reality distressed me, kind though the intent of friends was. I felt demented by my fears when no-one else heard them, and everyone refused to validate them.

Walking with Wally and Shortbread in the park one-day I bumped into Bill, walking his dogs. Bill was a friend and colleague of Mottsu’s, it was always good to see him. Bill asked how I was and I told him about my anxiety, my dark concern about how I would bear Wally’s death.

Bill spoke with calm and authority, “Anne” he said “Wally will die one day and you will be sad, you’ll be OK”.

Wally did die, I was there with him. I miss that little dog and it comforts me to imagine him reunited with Mottsu. Not floating on clouds together or playing fetch but the spirit of one consoled by the essence of the other.

Do you think that’s possible?

I say ‘was’ because Shortbread and I were in the park this afternoon as the weather started to break. The afternoon was disturbed by thunder which exploded across the sky. In between rumblings, I could hear a further agitation as the unsettled dogs across the neighbourhood lifted their heads and bawled at the clouds.

Big drops of rain percolated and plopped to earth, damping the crackle of the air, quenching the dog chorus. Shortie and I hurried home, she was hyperventilating when we got to the door, breathing more rapidly and deeply than normal.

Shortbread is unsettled by storms, panting and tail down.
Wally was unsettled by Mottsu’s disappearance.

Wally was Mottsu’s dog, it was unclear who owned who. A perfect coupling from first sight. The day we went to see the puppies to chose one, the smallest dog, the runt of the litter, threw himself onto Mottsu’s foot, straddling his shoe and clamping puppy teeth to the man’s lace. Tenure was assured for the terrier we named Wally. Ten years later, on Wally’s 10th birthday, Mottsu left.

The weather in our house changed when Mottsu disappeared. The air was fractured with mishap and disbelief, it rained inside day after day. Wally couldn’t have known what was unfolding but he certainly sensed something, and it was confirmed by his best friend not coming home.

Abandoned by meaning Wally, Mottsu’s dog, sat in our hallway and howled. His unbridled release of distress, his canine lament, further split my already ruptured heart. There is a saying that only a dog loves you more he loves himself. It’s true.

Wally wept.

Yesterday I wrote about grieving for our dogs. Our dogs grieve too, I know because Wally wept.

I saw Mabel in the street recently, she was standing on the train tracks having crossed half way, she looked a little disoriented. This was the first time I had ever seen her unaccompanied by Max. I said hello, and asked where her dear old dog was.

Mabel told me she was looking for Max, he had run away. The fact that Max’s top speed was a lumbering walk, and he had probably not run for years, was a moot point as I empathised with her dismay at the loss of Max.

A truck rattled over the railway lines and Mabel turned to watch it travel down the road. “Was that barking ?” she said, “Max might be locked in that truck.” I hadn’t heard a bark. We talked about places where Max might be, I promised to keep a look out. Mabel imagined punishments to administer on his return, no biscuits for bad dogs.

We crossed the tracks and said farewells on the next corner.

I couldn’t help but recall the refrain “Don’t die Max, don’t die”; Mabel’s plaintive pleading with Max to stay with her, a few weeks earlier. It is a bitter sweet thought that Max couldn’t die in Mabel’s mind. It is heartbreaking too that she might still believe Max ran away, leaving her to walk alone.

Today I was thinking about the experience of losing a dog, the loss of Wally. The weather in my stomach changed – a deep churning. Even now. I also know a little of the agony of waiting for someone, who is not coming home, to come home. Max would not have chosen to leave Mabel to wait for him.

My friend’s little dog died today, he was hit by a car. She said ” … it was quick though, he’s so little. it’s so quiet in the house now.” Dr Frankfurt Longbody M.D. was “the bestest ever“.

I’m sad, I’m always saddened by the death of a dog, my friend is sadder still.

This post is a tribute to the dear pets we love and can’t bear to lose. We carry a heartfelt grief when our dear dogs die, not everybody understands that your dog is not just a dog. I remember reading an article about Peter Alexander, the pyjama guy, he described his adored dachshund, Penny, as “…my heart wrapped in fur”. That’s what it is like to own a dog for some of us.

There is a lady in my street, whose heart is wrapped in fur, she has a big old Golden Retriever, Max. They walk the streets together for hours each day. They don’t go fast and they don’t go far and I never see one without the other.

In the hot spell before this one, they were out along the local shopping strip. They weren’t walking. Max and his owner Mabel were on the footpath outside the corner convenience store. Max was sprawled across the path and Mabel knelt next to him.

“Don’t die Max, don’t die.” she said over and over again. It’s a haunting memory, I knew it was important that Max not die, not on that day, not yet.

Max did make it home that day, Frankie didn’t today.