RIP Rupert
Tuesday 6th October 2020
Rupert (AKA Clipperdown Ralph Lauren) left us last Saturday. He died very suddenly, and even though I wasn’t there, Mark was and Arthur was beside him. Mark believes he had a massive heart attack and it was quick, too quick to come and get me.
It is sobering – in fact, terrifying – how a standard Saturday can turn into one of the worst days of your life, in the blink of an eye. In one moment, that shivers and that you cannot hold onto, your world passes from ‘normal’ to nightmare. That Saturday, I was teaching at a venue in Devon where I quite often teach. It is by the sea, in Dawlish and so whenever I teach there, Mark and the boys always come with me. I teach, and they wander into town. They get coffee, they mooch, M has the pram for Roo and in case Arthur gets tired. They inevitably have a walk on the beach, and they always get a sausage roll from Gay’s Creamery. The sausage roll is divided in half, between the boys. Then, they climb back up the hill to where I am teaching, the dogs get into their beds in the back, for a sleep, and M reads the paper.
This Saturday, it was very windy and wet. A big storm was holding the south west hostage that weekend and we’d driven down in rain and gales. And so, that Saturday, when I got my bags of teaching things out, I was holding the bags, the door, the hood of my coat – and it was so windy – and I didn’t lean into the back seat, as I always did, and say: see you later boys, be good! I just shut the door and I walked off. I didn’t nose-bump Roo, as I always did. I didn’t look into his cloudy eyes for a moment of connection, as I always did. I just walked away.
I taught a workshop on steeking and two-handed Fairisle. By 1 o’clock, we were having lunch having tackled the steeking part. One lady said: there’s a man on the patio. I glanced up, and it was Mark, beckoning me, holding his hat on in the storm. So, I went to the door and called him but he indicated that I ought to go to him. Quite moodily, I put on my shoes, but didn’t lace them as I knew I’d be back in a minute, and I put on my coat but I didn’t zip it up.
As I got closer, and the storm was revving up for another onslaught, Mark turned to look at me for the first time. And he was crying. I stopped in my tracks, some steps away. I knew. I just knew, right then, that it was the worst news and that my darling Roo was dead. All I said was no, and then M came to get me to walk to the car. And Roo was in his bed, with Arthur in his bed beside him. Roo looked like he was asleep, only his eyes were open. So, again, I didn’t believe it, and I picked him up and held him tight. But of course, he was dead.
Somehow but I don’t know how, Mark got me into the front seat, he did up my shoes and we drove home, with me holding Roo. We drove through pelting rain and vile winds. The M5 was awash. I do not know how Mark did it.
When we fetched Roo from his breeder, in Hertfordshire, I held puppy-Roo in my arms all the way home. He wriggled and squirmed, and he wanted always to be climbing up and over my shoulder. And so I let him, and there he slept. Forever after, no matter what, when I held Roo – and even as an old dog – he wound his neck round my neck, and I held him like that, until he went to sleep. It seemed appropriate – circular – to hold my old boy in my arms, as we took him home for the last time. But he couldn’t push into my neck of course, or settle into the crook of my arm. So I did that for him.
On the way, still cuddling Roo, I rang the partners of Florence and Lily. I couldn’t tell them, if they were alone. So I rang to check, and they were. So I told Will and Jack and we arranged to meet at home.
When we got home, I carried my boy into the kitchen. I laid him in his kitchen bed by the AGA, took off my coat and shoes and picked him up again. We decided – hastily, and with what I now think of as weirdly cold detachment, to bury Roo in the garden, under the lawn where as a younger dog he loved to play with balls and apples; and as an older dog – a much older dog – he liked to lie on a rug or on the swing-seat, in the sun, having a cuddle.
When Roo was 4, he first had an episode of IVDD. This is a degenerative back condition, that often affects long-backed, short-legged dogs. In the nightmare of that, the surgery, and getting him back on his legs which took weeks, my friend and Rupert-worshipper, Hilda, knitted him a sleeping bag, and I felted it. This bag was his pride and joy. He ripped a hole in it, and he abused it, but it was his comforter, his refuge and he adored it. When I washed it and hung it over the AGA rail to dry, he’d jump and bounce until his little teeth got a grip and he’d drag it off, still wet, and lie on it. He just couldn’t wait.
Lately, this bag had lived in my office. It lay on a large cushion, and both dogs could just about squeeze in. This is where they lay in the hours I spent writing reports, or drafting patterns.
We took the bag and laid Roo inside. Much as I know Arthur would love the bag, it was Roo’s and dogs have so little, and he loved it so much. A few short hours after he died, we laid him deep in the ground, in the middle of the lawn, and he was all wrapped up in the sleeping bag. Now, I wish I still had the bag, just to cuddle it, but as the few days have passed, I am also glad he has it. It’s been so wet and cold and windy; and everyone knows how much all dachshunds but especially Roo, hate the wet and cold. I have sat in the night and watched the stormy garden and howled at the thought of my boy, lying in the ground, alone. And literally the only thing that even come close to comforting me, is knowing he is snuggled in that sleeping bag.
The grief has ripped through me like a saw. I have never known pain like this, since the awful year both my parents died. It is agony and I can’t hide it. Nor can I cope with it. All I can do is wait. I am waiting for the moment, which so many lovely and well-meaning people have told me is coming, when I will not howl and sob. The moment when coherent speech will resume. When sleep will be restful and not snatched, jagged episodes of barbed hope that are always crushed by the awful waking moment, when I know it is real.
I am trying, urged to do this by friends who have more experience than me, to think of the good times. To be comforted by the 16 plus years we had together, to see him walking with me, not taken from me. But I can’t do it. I want him back. That’s all I want. Or, I want that day back, that Saturday, when I didn’t nose-bump him. Or say goodbye. What if we had not been there but had been at home? What if I had been with him, in those last moments? Could I have made him live on, a bit longer?
There are times when I am calm. I have been to a work training event and no-one would have known, because no-one had ever met me before, and cared not one bit for me or my dog. I got there, I participated, and I got home. But this massive hole in my life just yelled at me, all the time. I feel like I might never get out of it, and sometimes, I feel that I don’t even want to.
Then, there is Arthur. Arthur is 4 years younger than Roo and unlike me, has never lived without Roo. So theoretically, I know how to live like that, whereas Arthur doesn’t. Mark tells me that as soon as Roo died, Arthur moved close to his body. He sniffed Roo, and he nuzzled him, very briefly. And he got back into his own bed and half turned away. I have no recollection of Arthur at all, in those moments. I didn’t even see him.
Arthur knows, though, because he was there and saw Roo, that he isn’t coming back and he does not look for him, or cry, as he did when Roo was on one of many trips to the vets or the hospital in Bristol. He’s been sleeping with me, and has spent not a moment alone. In the two days after Roo died, Arthur trembled a lot, shaking as if with cold. He’s better today.
Somehow, Arthur and I, who were always with Roo, have to navigate a world we do not want to be in; or at least I don’t, Arthur is fairly easily consoled with treats. Nothing will ever console me, I just know it won’t.
I always knew that I loved Roo too much. Too much for my own good. I knew I was setting myself up for this, but what can you do? I just couldn’t help it, and fearful though this is, I am glad. I always put him first, before work at times. I remember being scolded for not teaching a workshop on the day before I had to take Roo for his first (and worst) spinal surgery. The retailer, in fact the owner of Get Knitted in Bristol, rounded on me for being unprofessional. Then, and I do it again now just for good measure, if they are still there, I called down every curse in my considerable power upon them, their business and their sorry, pathetic lives. Roo came first. People who can’t understand that are unworthy of me, or you.
He was the first dog of my own, you see. I fostered Ralph, the master-dachshund who started it all, but Rupert was my own puppy. He adored, dominated and ruled me. I adored, served and loved him.
We’re not doing so well, Arthur and me. Maybe one day we will. I certainly can’t imagine sustaining this level of agony for much longer. I see him wandering on the paths of the garden, I see his face, blindly in the recent past, looking for mine. I can feel the slightly rough texture of his coat, so much coarser than Arthur’s. I can feel the depressions in his ancient face where the fat was gone; and I can feel the tram-lines along his spine, where the surgeries took place. But I can’t ever hold him again, or nose-bump him.
And I just don’t want to be here, without Rupert.
Ally, so sorry to hear of your loss. It’s always devastating to lose a beloved pet who is a big part of your life. Our beautiful Rosie (big grey silver spot cat) had to be put to sleep in 2013, because she had cancer? I still really miss her. We’re a cat people, and currently have a fur baby called Milly who we adopted from Cats Protection in 2004.
We believe she was about four years old when we adopted her as she had had two previous homes. So, she’s now about 20 years old, a bit creaky and arthritic, but we love her to bits, even my other half, who never really liked cats. He is now besotted with her.
We know, she won’t live for many more years, and can’t bear the thought of losing her.
At least you know that you gave Roo a kind and loving home, which sadly so many animals don’t get.
Give yourself time. Keep yourself safe and well for your family and Arthur.
Mary x