Second Thoughts

[I wrote this on Tuesday 21st May but couldn’t bring myself to post it until today.]

My lovely dog Maggie was put to sleep yesterday. She was about 14 years old. She loved and trusted me completely. I loved her unconditionally. She was my baby girl, Miss Maggie Moo, Maggie T Dog, Da Magsta.

I regularly sang to her, mostly off-key variations of ‘Smelly Doggy’. She twitched those expressive eyebrows and tolerated whatever I did. She accepted all the hugs and kisses from Dan and Lea as youngsters. She was stoic in the face of being used as a rest for his tablet as Dan draped her across his knees on the settee. She never flinched no matter how many times she was inadvertently kicked under the chin, tripped over or trodden on because she was like a shadow, walking and standing less than one pace behind me.

The vet that came to put her to sleep was gentle and kind. Maggie gave him one firm tail wag from her bed when he arrived. In earlier times she’d have bounced up to greet him, licky tongue extended, bottom wiggling with vigorous tail-wagging. Bouncing and licking were Maggie’s two most prominent traits as a younger dog. She has broken people’s glasses at least twice as they’ve bent to stroke her and she’s simultaneously leapt to greet them. She’s bruised many a nose and chin. Her Staffy/Lab bounce was something I simply couldn’t train out of her, no matter how many treats I tried luring her to the floor with.

She’d become stiff with osteoarthritis, and there were lumps and bumps signalling other things were going on inside too. She went off food. If Maggie had a third significant trait it was greed. Eat first, ask questions later. There were sites that had delivered great bounty over the years. In Glossop’s Manor Park there was The Spot Next To The Skip Where The Ham And Cheese Sandwich Was Discovered, which was investigated on every subsequent circuit. And the divine delivery of Pizza By The Pond was a shrine revisited too. In Hillsborough, there was the Leftover Burger-in-a-Bun bonanza near the tram stop.

At home, she’d drool over every mouthful I ever ate. She lived in eternal optimism that one day, surely, I’d just hand her the plate. It was a dream she took across the rainbow bridge with her, I’m afraid. Not that she didn’t get plenty of leftovers.

She weighed a constant 20 kilos all her adult life, apart from the year Dan started work at Sheffield Wednesday on matchdays. He’d return from his shift at the Chicken Shed with leftover fried chicken for Maggie, and her tail would beat furiously as she scoffed the lot. She gained an extra 3 kilos…and lost them again the following year when her partner in food crime was no longer there to spoil her.

But this year she finally turned her nose up at the cheap dry food she’d eaten every day as her staple diet. My partner and I tried her on meaty chunks in tins, and appetite resumed. And then declined again. So, we moved on to pâté. And more recently some horrible chub stuff that she wolfed. But then she went off that. And treats. When she sniffed but turned away from a lump of cheddar on Sunday, I knew it was all over for Maggie. She wasn’t eating or drinking. She was struggling to stand and walk.

Sunday was sunny, so I spent a little time lying and sitting with her in the back garden, stroking her shiny black coat as she lay beside me. I fondled her silky black ears. ‘My roly-poly little bat-eared girl’, I called her, my take on a Paul Simon lyric. She sighed and flopped down. I told her how much I loved her and how much she meant to me. She slowly heaved herself up and moved shadewards. I knew that she’d had enough of everything. I understood that before many more days passed, she would be in more pain, and have even less energy. I wanted her to go, as the Native Americans have it, on ‘a good day to die’.

As the vet tenderly administered the solution that would end Maggie’s life, it was still a good day to die. She was not well but she was not crying, not distressed, not lying in her own mess. She was warm and safe and loved. She was old and stiff and weak, but she was cared for and loved.

‘Go and see Dan for me, Maggie,’ I murmured to her, ‘go and give him a big lick.’

I tried not to cry too violently as she began to slip away. I imagined her arriving at some place where Dan would greet her and, restored to her energetic youth, she would go absolutely batshit crazy at being reunited with her favourite boy. How he’d laugh as she bounced and whined in delight, cobbing at his arms, licking his face. How she’d love him even more when he magically produced leftover chicken and chips.

I sobbed in big gulps when she went. And once the vet had taken her away, I sobbed more loudly, in bigger, ragged gulps. My baby girl. My baby boy.

I went for a walk, through woods I’d not visited before. I needed to be outdoors, letting thoughts, memories and daydreams swirl around as I climbed hills and listened to birdsong. But Maggie hadn’t left me. She might not be there plodding beside me, but she was still my second thought.

And it was a sharp reminder of those early days, weeks, and months after losing Dan. Where I’d have a surface thought like ‘I need to pop to the shops’ and my second thought – ‘I need to be back because Dan needs a lift to football on Wednesdays’ – would have whipped through before I could stop it, before the remembrance that he was dead. A punch to the gut, each time. Maggie became all my second thoughts after Dan, and she’s still there now.

I’ll honour her by getting outdoors for exercise once a day, which is the greatest gift she gave me. Without her daily demands for walks, I’m not sure I’d have ever left the house again after Dan died. I have so much to be grateful to Maggie for.

I’m also glad she got her own chapter in my book, sharing her story with the world. Now it’s time for me to write the next chapter with her in my heart and my mind, alongside Dan, and Mum and Dad, their combined presence never far away, not quite second thoughts, but a gentle background murmur. For now, I’ll take my daily walks alone and just pretend she’s by my side, bounding about in undergrowth and sniffing out The Treat I Should Not Have But Will Eat Anyway.

Maggie, thank you for everything X