Woof - better than you'll ever be.

July 23rd, 12:40PM.
I’m going to tell you a tale.
Cast your mind back 15 years or so, if you will. What were you doing?
I’ll tell you what I was doing, shall I?
I was 7 (nearing 8) years of age, and my one and only brother was 3 (nearing 4).
We were living out in a little place called Lara, which at the time was slowly heading into one of the first of many expansionist phases (which to this day have tripled its size and eaten into the surrounding farmland), and we were in sore need of something to occupy our time, so as to stop us killing one another.

Scene is set. Cue first act.
Enter into our little story one friend of Father. This friend worked at the pound attached to the council that father also worked at. One day the pound was overfull and a new pup came in, for which there was no safe place. Father was asked by this friend to take home this pup for a week or two, till one of the cages emptied or till the pup had grown a tad bigger.

Father was a tad uncertain about this, as my brother was quite fearful of dogs due to our previous one (a little dog named Maggy) which was one of those little yap yap yap things sprinting around our yard and jumping all over people. That dog was gifted to a friend as she had been gifted to us from a teacher who was leaving the school we lived at. She had been old when we got her and grew older still as the years went on. This is not her story.

What finally convinced father I shall never rightly know (for he is a dreadful spinner of falsehoods and can lie quite convincingly. I have never met a more honest man with stricter moral principals and yet is able to lie like that) but that pup came home with him that day. The poor thing had been found in a box near a river, its owners apparently having tried to drown it. We’d brought it home and it lived in the laundry for three days, then Mother and I went to the Vet with it.

There is an age at which dogs are allowed to go home, can be taken from their mothers and given away. This pup looked about the right size for this. The first thing the Vet told us is it was so very much younger than that. So young, in fact, that it should still be with its mother and its eyes would have only just opened not that long ago. Weeks old, perhaps, I do not remember. The Vet also told us it was a mongrel and it was mostly part Mastiff and part Great Dane (mastiff head, GD body colour and markings). At the Vet that day was a fully-grown GD, larger than me. We realized we’d just got a BIG dog.

I cannot remember who named him. Mum says KJ did, but I think she did (and is hiding behind KJ). But he was named, and we named him WOOF. This was in part because he’d bark these big deep barrel-chested woof woofs and in part because he’d wolf down his food in no time flat.

The Vet had also told us that his two front legs were in a spot of bother, and one was quite broken. They told us we’d be better putting him down right away so as not to get attached. My parents told the vet we would do what we could for the thing and if we only managed to give it 6 months, then we would.

Plaster casts for both front shins, a touch of surgery, and a lot of care. I can still remember him trying to vainly to step up the brick lip of the house he was that small. A tiny thing, all floppy head and running around silly. I remember the Styrofoam box we used to keep him in the laundry but in sight. I remember he learnt that by butting his head against the door it would slowly lever the box out of the way. I remember the old doona cover we’d used to cover the box to stop him from eating it. I remember him pulling it off to sleep on and eating the box anyway. I remember having him sit at the foot of the grey couch and silently farting when we entertained guests. I remember him getting into a whole bowl of peanuts and eating the lot, shell and all, only to throw it up minutes later.

I remember my parents (with our help) planting a bamboo tree and 30 smaller trees in the back yard. I remember him eating them all (the bamboo tree lasted a few years of his chewing, but eventually it went too) within the week. I remember him bouncing around with us, devouring every ball sent out into the yard bar one, his red football.

It wasn’t even a real football, just some cheap plastic auskick thing, but he loved it, and loved playing tug-o-war with it and fetch and “I’ve got it and you don’t, ha ha ha.”
He kept it for years, one day years later chewing the ends off it, then 6 months later it was eaten.

I remember the myriad times he ate washing off the line, presumably in protest for not enough walks. Somehow he almost always managed to get to the most expensive thing on the line, that favourite jumper of mums, my only good pair of school shorts.

I remember he loved carrots. I’ve never seen an animal so addicted to those things. Even today he chomped down as many as could be fed to him, and then some. I remember training him, feeding him, cleaning his never ending piles of crap. He has been with this family for most of my life, and I remember so much more than I’ve been able to put down here.

How he used to get out and go for a walk himself, down the same path mum took him down. How he’d sniff at the cat and how she’d try to ignore him and fail. How he’d know you were leaving so he’d climb in the car too and refuse to get out. How he’d woof away at 2am and wake everyone. There is too much to remember and too much to write, and not enough time, so I shall save it for another day perhaps.

Suffice to say that this member of our family grew old, and ill, and was unable to properly stand, and so just after noon today, moments before I started writing this, he was given an injection, and put to sleep.

I miss my dog.