Tuesday 27 April 2010

The Other Dog

On Sunday, my Dad Skyped me to say that The Other Dog was suddenly very much worse than before. On Sunday night, the vet rang to say that the kindest thing would be to put him out of his misery. My parents waited until their usual vet came in on Monday morning and by the afternoon it was all over and The Other Dog had slipped away to raid the Big Kitchen Bin in the Sky.

The Big Kitchen Bin in the Sky is a great place for dogs like The Other Dog. In this happy place, it is permanently lunchtime and there are always builders sitting outside the house, eating sandwiches. It is a place where children eat biscuits and drop A Lot of crumbs. This place has a big back garden with plenty of gaps in the fence to escape through. The kitchen door is never shut and dustbins have ill-fitting lids which are never quite securely on. For a dog that likes to lie in wait under the breakfast table, a real treat is in store: no-one ever wears slippers in the morning and deliciously cheesy feet poke in under the tablecloth. Nobody complains or squeals when a warm, slobbery doggy tongue slurps between their toes. The Postman visits four times a day.

The words 'No', 'Sit!', 'Drop it!' and 'Diet' do not exist there.

He was a very lovely, friendly dog and good with children and elderly people (coincidentally also the two demographic groups most likely to spill food). With the rest of us, he was a grumpy git who stole other people's sandwiches and hid behind the sofa at the sound of the word 'walkies' after dusk, but still we loved him lots and we miss him terribly.




3 comments:

Korie said...

Awww, I'm sorry to hear they had to put a pet down. That's surely a difficult thing, even if he did steal sandwiches.

peixote said...

Is that the same dog that very nearly took off your foot no so long ago? Funny how everyone/everything suddenly seems nicer in death. We`ve seen a bit of that here in Poland recently.

pinolona said...

Korie, thanks - I think it was hard, even my Dad and my brother were very upset about it. In general we'd rather have the dog than the sandwiches.

Peixote: Yeah he bit me. To be fair, I was using the foot to separate him from food (or at least, something that in his opinion was edible).

Funny, isn't it? I wouldn't have said my dog was much of hero though...