It is a day late, but I write the blogs 24 hours in advance and I forgot the date. Ten years ago today (as I write this) and ten years ago yesterday (as you read it) at 12:45, Toby, the CFZ Dog Mk 1, had a lethal injection in his neck.From Monster Hunter:
'Against her better judgment, Alison gave in to my pleadings and agreed that I could get a dog. In those days I was particularly lonely. For some reason, the NHS - at least in the Exeter Health Authority - operated a working shift of two and a half 12 and a hour days on, followed by two and a half days off, and working every other weekend. Despite my pleas that we were newlyweds and that it was causing us a considerable amount of unhappiness, the Paras be insisted on making Alison and me work as it shifts. This meant, that essentially, that although we had only been married a few months, we hardly ever saw each other. During the important parts of our marriage - the time when most couples are bonding with each other - we were essentially strangers. We only ever saw each other for a few hours in the evenings, by which time the person who had been at home all day was stir crazy, and the person who'd been at work was tired, and irritable and just wanted to go to bed. Alison had always said - with some justification - that one should not keep a dog in a small house without a garden. However, I maintained that as one or other of us were going to be at home pretty well all the time that it wouldn`t make any difference. And she eventually gave in.
During the days when I was off sick and existed in a haze of opiates, we scoured the newspapers, and the adverts in the windows of the pet shops for puppies. Eventually, we found one. We drove to a rather dishevelled housing estate on the outskirts of Dawlish, knocked on the door of the house described in the advert and would greeted by a hail of barking and scrabbling. A harassed looking man in late middle-age and so the door. He was accompanied by a 12 puppies who were rushing about his feet, tripping each other up, and all doing their best to make more noise than the others.
The harassed man explained that Toby's mother Gladys - a pedigree Black Labrador bitch - had been in his family for years, and had never evinced any interest in the opposite sex. For this reason, and also because of some unspecified medical complications he had never had her spayed. Much to everybody's surprise in ( including one suspects Gladys's), at the venerable age of eight she had escaped from the house and succumbed to the charms a dishevelled and rather disreputable male dog of uncertain antecedents which was kept by a seedy looking bloke about four doors up. The 12 puppies - who by this time were doing their best to eat my right foot - were the result.
I would like to be able to say that Toby`s eyes met mine, it and that an immediate bond was forged between us. However, it wouldn't be true. We chose him almost by default. Of the litter of 12 there were only three left that had not already been adopted. Two were bitches, and having heard course the cautionary tale of Toby's mother, and both of us having had experience of bitches in heat, howling, scratch and the paintwork, and doing it their best to escape in order to fulfill the sexual desires with any available canid, Alison and I had already decided that we wanted a male dog. Handing over a fiver in payment for the only boy puppy left we drove back to Exeter, with Toby - at that time even smaller than one of my shoes - killed up asleep on my lap.
That night, we committed what many people consider to have been a cardinal sin in dog ownership. We made to be up a bed in the kitchen and retired up to ou for room. Toby howled, cried and whined. The book that we had bought on the subject of dog ownership had warned us that this would happen, and had advised us to steel our hearts and ignore the pitiful vocalisations of the frightened young puppy. I couldn't do this. Toby's cries were breaking my heart, so in the middle of the night I walked down the stairs to the kitchen, picked him up and took him up to our bedroom. That night he slept in bed with us - a position he was to occupy for the next 15 years.'
During the days when I was off sick and existed in a haze of opiates, we scoured the newspapers, and the adverts in the windows of the pet shops for puppies. Eventually, we found one. We drove to a rather dishevelled housing estate on the outskirts of Dawlish, knocked on the door of the house described in the advert and would greeted by a hail of barking and scrabbling. A harassed looking man in late middle-age and so the door. He was accompanied by a 12 puppies who were rushing about his feet, tripping each other up, and all doing their best to make more noise than the others.
The harassed man explained that Toby's mother Gladys - a pedigree Black Labrador bitch - had been in his family for years, and had never evinced any interest in the opposite sex. For this reason, and also because of some unspecified medical complications he had never had her spayed. Much to everybody's surprise in ( including one suspects Gladys's), at the venerable age of eight she had escaped from the house and succumbed to the charms a dishevelled and rather disreputable male dog of uncertain antecedents which was kept by a seedy looking bloke about four doors up. The 12 puppies - who by this time were doing their best to eat my right foot - were the result.
I would like to be able to say that Toby`s eyes met mine, it and that an immediate bond was forged between us. However, it wouldn't be true. We chose him almost by default. Of the litter of 12 there were only three left that had not already been adopted. Two were bitches, and having heard course the cautionary tale of Toby's mother, and both of us having had experience of bitches in heat, howling, scratch and the paintwork, and doing it their best to escape in order to fulfill the sexual desires with any available canid, Alison and I had already decided that we wanted a male dog. Handing over a fiver in payment for the only boy puppy left we drove back to Exeter, with Toby - at that time even smaller than one of my shoes - killed up asleep on my lap.
That night, we committed what many people consider to have been a cardinal sin in dog ownership. We made to be up a bed in the kitchen and retired up to ou for room. Toby howled, cried and whined. The book that we had bought on the subject of dog ownership had warned us that this would happen, and had advised us to steel our hearts and ignore the pitiful vocalisations of the frightened young puppy. I couldn't do this. Toby's cries were breaking my heart, so in the middle of the night I walked down the stairs to the kitchen, picked him up and took him up to our bedroom. That night he slept in bed with us - a position he was to occupy for the next 15 years.'
And from a later chapter:
'The year 2000 had been a particularly horrible one anyway. Toby, the CFZ Dog and probably the best friend that I have ever had died of cancer in June at the age of sixteen. With his death a large part of my life was over. He had been my constant companion since he was six weeks old, and had been the one constant in a life of turmoil. The night before he died he was too weak to walk and we had to carry him to my bedroom, where he slept on my bed has he had done all his life. I knew that he would have to be put to sleep on the following day, and as Toby and I lay in bed together, I was crying like a grief stricken baby. Summoning reserves of strength that neither he or I knew he had, he pulled himself up to the top of my bed to lick my face and comfort me, as he had done every time I had been upset for the previous sixteen years. The following day I watched helplessly as the vet administered the lethal injection and I knew that my life would never be the same again.'
Not a day goes by that I don't think of him. I always swore that I would never (to quote Kipling "give my heart to another dog to tear", and it took eight years before Biggles came along and spoilt that resolution. Rest in Peace old friend.
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