Epiblog for St Lucy's Day

It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley, downhill all the way now to Christmas, with your feet off the pedals. And just to prove it, the weather’s turned dark, cold and wintery, first with Hurricane Bawbag lashing Scotland, and Arran cut off – in fact, all the Western Isles were, as Calmac pulled all its services for the day, and the performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at Lamlash Village Hall was cancelled. Then with snow, hoar frost and ice. Winter is gnashing its teeth with a vengeance.

It’s also been a sad week in the Holme Valley, and here I am, by my fire, on a Sunday teatime, typing the Epiblog I hoped I would never have to write. Tiggy, our beautiful, wonderful old dog, died at 5.15pm on Tuesday 13th December.

This fact, this single, overriding fact, has dominated all our waking, to the extent that the normal sort of knockabout stuff that happens and usually finds its way into these pages, has either not happened, or happened and gone unnoticed.

True, there was the occasion when Debbie was watching some science programme on BBC4 about microbes, and the commentator said they were invisible to the naked eye, prompting Debbie to shout at the TV, “Well, I can see them!” only for me to point out the “X15” in the corner of the screen which indicated a certain amount of technical expertise had been employed by the cameraman in enlarging them; there was the programme we were both watching on church restoration, which featured a guest appearance by Sister Wendy Beckett, and Debbie asked when she was going to get her guitar out and sing; and there was the time when, admiring the chestnut roaster in the hearth, I told Debbie that William Morris recommended having nothing in your house that was neither useful nor beautiful, and she retorted that in that case, I had better start packing my bags.

But humour has been sadly lacking. Even when I had my annual assessment of my needs from the NHS and/or Social Care (all these people tend to merge into one after a while) and they asked me how I was getting on with my dialysis and recovering from the stroke I had two years ago, it barely raised a smile. The best I could manage was a feeble comment that it was actually indeed about two years since I had last had a stroke, but not the sort she was thinking of! Needless to say, they were reading from someone else’s notes. You can see how people go in for an eye operation and end up losing a leg, sometimes.

We’d been watching Tiggy for what the vets call “clinical signs” ever since they told us, back in September when she had the cancerous growth removed from the side of her mouth, that there were probably secondary tumours, too deep inside her to do anything about.

I wrote in the previous Epiblog that we’d had to camp out downstairs a couple of times when she’d been bad, but lately she had been having better days and worse days, and on her better days, you’d hardly have known there was anything wrong with her, other than general feebleness and old age.

She'd had a really bad day on Saturday, but a much better one on Sunday and an OK-ish one on Monday, though she was obviously getting weaker and there was only ever one way it could go. She'd been snoozing on the dog bed and she woke up, and I trundled over and held up her water-bowl so she could lap some water out of it, then she just suddenly keeled over to one side and that was more or less it. I shouted to Debbie, and she came and knelt by her, stroking her and comforting her, but it was all over very quickly – probably in under a minute, though it seemed like hours at the time.

Anyway, we're all in bits here. Granny came round and was in floods of tears. So I had to organise a doggy funeral. Tiggy was - as far as we knew - about fifteen years old, maybe a bit more, which is something like 108 in human years, so she had had a good innings, bless the old sock.

We spent the evening after she’d died playing music, sitting by the fire and talking about her, totting up how many miles she'd done with us, she'd been down to the South Coast, over to East Anglia, up to Alnwick and beyond, she'd been up Blencathra, Cat Bells, Helvellyn (via Striding Edge) Scafell Pike, Scafell, Fleetwith Pike, Coniston Old Man, a few more Wainwrights we've forgotten, Mam Tor in Derbyshire, Goatfell on Arran, she'd been to Tipperary (and that's a long way to go) and she'd been up Snowdon, and to Anglesey, and .... well, you get the idea. She had swum in every major lake in the Lake District, and done the entire towpath of the Lancaster Canal the other year, when Debbie kayaked it. She was once patted on the head by the Duchess of Hamilton, which is more than you can say for me.

And now she is no more, at least the physical shell of her is no more. I like to think that the Tiggyness of Tiggy goes on. We decided to have her cremated by the Pet Crematorium at Rossendale that did Granny’s old dog, Lucy, when she died. And, oddly enough, Tiggy died, of course, on St. Lucy’s day.

I have to say they did a very good, caring and professional job, albeit in a rather strange profession that hadn’t hitherto impinged on my consciousness. We were allowed to put some things in with her, so she went wrapped in her blanket, with an envelope into which we’d put some pictures of her we’d printed out, some of her favourite dog treats, some sprigs of dried heather from Arran, and the Arran Tide Tables to remind her of all the times that she and I had sat in the camper, snoozing, waiting for Debbie to come back to shore.

We brought her ashes back home on Friday, in their little casket, and we’re going to make a special place for her in the bookcase in the kitchen, so she will always be with us and always at the warm heart of the house, hearth and home.

Yes, it will be an enormous void. It is, already, an enormous void. No question about it. And yes, we have talked about getting another dog, to get me out of the house and to keep me company, even if it's only trundling up the road to the post box. But no, another dog will be a different dog, no-one could ever be Tiggy, and she'll be a hard act to follow.

It's far too soon to say whether we will or not. There are also practical factors to consider. But at the same time, I guess there might be some poor abandoned mutt out there, scared, frightened, maybe turned out of doors over Christmas, that will eventually find its way to an animal shelter and thence to us. That was the route Tiggy arrived by, and she did OK, in the end, as it turns out. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears, so the Zen saying goes, and maybe when the owners are ready, the dog appears.

But for the moment I am just going to get stuck into all of the things I should have done last week, and didn't, and try to remember the good times. We've still got little Kits to take care of, who has been wandering round and yowling as if she’s looking for Tiggy, and we'll still be dogsitting Freddie and Zak on a fairly regular basis, in fact we'd already arranged to look after them over Christmas, as Deb's Mum is going away, so the house won't be completely empty.

I could go on, to write a religious aspect to this Epiblog, and try and draw out some lessons about why Tiggy had to die, when there are evil bastards and murderers still walking the earth drawing breath, but to be honest, I am too tired, too raw, and too drained. And in any case, something like this does give your faith a severe knock. The best you can say is that it’s God’s will, and that sometimes, God’s will is completely bloody incomprehensible. I tried every prayer I knew, to anyone who’d listen, in the days leading up to her death, praying for spontaneous remission. Somehow, I thought that if she could make it to the Solstice on Wednesday, then we might have her for another six months. But her time had come, and that’s that.

Anyway, Tig, you were always a good dog, a loving accomplice to Debbie in her role of pack leader, Tomboy, and chum to the meek, and always willing; and if Debbie had jumped off a cliff and cried "Come on, Tig", you would have followed unquestioningly. You'll leave a massive hole in our miserable existence.

As it says in the song:

“You filled all my days, held the night at bay, dearest companion”

Bestest Doggie All World. Go Sleepies.