Archie Went for a Walk

Or did he?

The vet said, softly: ‘He’s passed.’ Yes, but when exactly? We were stroking his still warm fur and face and ears and paws. He was asleep, we wanted to believe. Not dead. Not gone. Not passed - where, exactly, did our Archie pass to, from here? From us?

Pet owners have a strange power over the life and death of their animals. In life, we give them absolutely everything they need, or we think they need. But we know that even the longest living dog will surprise us with their readiness to die, long before we have accepted the idea of their loss. When their health fails more than is bearable, and the vet says so, we consent to euthanasia. Which is a very elegant word for ‘killing your darlings’. Gently, but still: couldn’t he have lived a little longer? Picked up that ball? Eaten his treat? Would knowing the precise boundary between life and death make any of this easier?

The vet and the nurse arrived at our home equipped with bacon treats. Both young women were so warm and caring and considerate, we didn’t have the heart to tell them that Archie, as a Jewish Labrador (he may not have looked it but his middle name was Haim), had never eaten pork in his life (unless he found some outside, which would be highly likely; as a puppy, he used to make a fast beeline in the park towards unsuspecting families’ picnics in the grass, and devoured a few - picnics, not families). So in his last hour or so, he was quite joyfully bacon-coaxed into trusting the vet to do what she had to do. It did calm him down. And he did need calming, because his initial response was definitely a nervous ‘what’s going on??’, and an anxious reluctance to go along with it - despite visibly enjoying having his family around him before the vet arrived. He was sweet and affectionate as ever, but each moment and movement was a clear struggle. Given that life must end in death, we didn’t see a more humane option to let him slip away into his forever sleep. Which doesn’t mean that we weren’t guilt ridden by it. And there is no slipping away, by the way, I’m convinced of that. It’s a struggle, whether visible to others, or not. My mother’s death, a few years ago, had been a mighty battle between her life force and something only she could see, and finally accept.

Several months earlier, when he was a bit more agile, Archie had treated himself to most of a delicious birthday chocolate cake while we were all distracted. By the time we noticed the empty carton and his ecstatic face, we were convinced he had just killed himself with the proverbial canine poison (chocolate). (‘At least he’ll die in ecstasy,’ said my son.’) The woman on the animal hospital emergency phone line asked specific questions about his weight and the cake ingredients, and calculated that the risk to his health was minimal and there was no need to rush him there. Then she burst out laughing: ‘I’m sorry. I can just imagine his happy face.’

After the vet and nurse had carried Archie’s body away, the house felt predictably and yet unexpectedly empty. The absence of a soul must be imagined as its presence elsewhere, which is of absolutely no comfort in that very acute moment of first grief. Archie not barking at a dog outside the garden fence, Archie not licking yoghurt from a bowl or gratefully acknowledging offerings of cheese as his favourite treat, Archie not waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs with a happy dance - all incongruous, because the brain and the heart does not comprehend the emptiness left by death. And when the vet called a week later and told us that ‘your Archie is here waiting for you’, meaning his ashes in a decorative cardboard container (for scattering), it was not exactly a welcome euphemism. I carried the surprisingly heavy ashes home, with a long rest on a park bench, the park he spent much of his life in. I confess that I sat there weeping, but also smiling, because there were many lovely new dogs around and they seemed so far removed from their inevitable ends that it made them appear immortal.

Archie, once a young dog in this very park, died a few days before his 14th birthday. He managed to outlive all of his friends, and even his enemies. Raising him had been an emotional roller coaster. He was, in modern dog training parlance, a reactive dog. In his case, it meant switching from perfect calm to momentary insanity at the sight of another dog when on leash. Not could he be trusted around small children. He was easily annoyed by their unpredictability. Yet he was surprisingly calm and aloof around any visitors and most people, especially builders and gardeners. Any man with a tough, noisy job had a relaxing effect on Archie. He trusted them implicitly.

For a reactive dog, he had made an impressive number of close friends throughout his life. But as he grew older, his dog friendships became less important. He loved his people, unconditionally.

I consulted quite a number of dog trainers in the course of his long life, and tried to educate myself, too. Owners of reactive dogs are nervous wrecks. I learned to spot dogs from such a distance (in order to avoid them or prepare for passing them relatively peacefully) that a mere canine speck on the horizon filled me with tense energy. I’m sure this didn’t help Archie’s reactivity. Street corners were especially treacherous; coming face to face with another, potentially also reactive dog is such a stressful experience that the rest of the day would feel like a warm bath by comparison. Yet whenever a trainer came to see us and we went for an observational walk, Archie did not exhibit any reactivity at all. One time, just as I was telling a trainer that, in addition to dogs, Archie would go crazy at the sight of cats and foxes, we actually passed a cat following a fox into an alleyway. Archie gave them a bored look and didn’t react at all. True story.

Each trainer would begin by asking for his early history, just like a shrink. And in Archie’s case, they had plenty to consider. He had come to us through a Labrador rescue charity, at the very tender age of only seven weeks. His mother had rejected her litter, and Archie, along with his siblings, was fostered by a kind family at the age of six weeks. So he missed out on the crucial mothering puppies receive until the age of three or four months, when she teaches them everything they need to know about life, and how to behave. He didn’t have that foundation to build on when he came to us. It is much harder for a human mother to pick up where the real one left off when she didn’t do her job (for whatever reason).

But did we all instantly fall in love with him? Yes we did. Did we forgive him absolutely everything? Always? Definitely. Archie had an almost human way of connecting with you. He had so much character, and personality, that any mischief was instantly forgotten. Was his reactivity caused by his unhappy early beginnings? Some trainers liked to dwell on that theory; others ignored it and simply tried to help him relax in situations that made him nervous. Neither approach really worked. Ultimately, and until the end of his life, Archie did what he felt he needed to do. To be honest, I secretly admired him for being a gorgeous badass with a heart of gold.

He wasn’t our first dog. When our children were very young, we had a very large and much loved Bullmastiff Boxer cross called Zak. He was the definition of a gentle giant, and had no behaviour issues whatsoever. None. I was so busy being a young mother at the time it didn’t even occur to me to learn about dog training, especially with a dog who didn’t seem to need any. Zak’s illness manifested with sudden seizures, and on the same day we had to take him to a veterinary hospital. We were all there, but not in the room with him, and maybe that’s why it felt so right to say goodbye to Archie at home, holding him.

After Zak’s death, my mother had told me to immediately remove all his things. She had had this experience with her own dog, and had found it helpful. ‘Don’t dwell on feeling sad,’ she said. I remembered to follow her advice this time, too. It’s amazing how strongly we feel Archie’s presence without looking at any of his toys and other beloved paraphernalia (except many, many photos). I can’t say I did the same when my mother died. Keeping so many of her special things and allowing those memories to stay alive feels like a conversation we are still having. Sometimes I wake up from a dream when we were discussing something or even arguing, and that feels good too. Sadness is not the same as pain. It can cleanse and lighten the soul.

I asked my daughter about the best way to explain Archie’s death to our two year old granddaughter Nina, who says or rather asks ‘Ar-chie?’ almost every time we speak on the phone. I thought we should tell her a story, something like this: Archie went for a walk. Archie is away on holiday.

But my daughter decided that we should tell Nina the truth: ‘She’ll understand.’

So far, despite the sudden absence of the dog and all his toys, she hasn’t asked.

That works, too.