Category:

GOOD DOG: GOOD VET

7/4/2015

My dog Pete is dead. The house feels empty. I feel sad.

For twelve years my Fox Terrier has been a loyal witness to a life writ small: part of my everyday domestic life - the cooking and eating, reading, sleeping, the brushing of teeth, the washing of dishes. His enduring wordless companionship helped me through bad times and added joy to the good. He took me beyond my own front door and connected me, when I most needed it, to the life of street, park, hill, river, beach.

Looking after him reminded me to look after myself - what made life good for him, shelter, food, warmth, security, company, exercise, rest, stimulation, purpose, made life good for me too. Pete’s unselfconscious enjoyment of the everyday taught me to relish the simple pleasures of life: a patch of sunlight; good food; a warm glance; a loving touch; a cool drink of water. Nothing very spectacular, but knitted together these moments make a life.

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EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE

10/2/2015

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We were each given a card with a card with a photograph of Oliver on it, taken on one of his expeditions to Alaska as a cameraman for National Geographic. His head and shoulders were covered in a frosting of snow, his face and mouth swaddled in hood and scarf. Though his eyelashes were spiky with ice crystals, his gaze was direct, young and intelligent.
There might also have been the hint of a smile in his eyes.

Unfortunately, a recent change in my contract Fairfax Media means I can no longer post my Grey Urbanist columns on this blog until 3 months after their publication in the Nelson Mail.

However, you can read the rest of this column here on the Nelson Mail website.

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WET WEATHER BLUES

30/6/2014

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I'm in the kind of low mood which makes reckless displacement activity seem perfectly reasonable - getting a drastic new hairdo, running off with an unsuitable man or boarding a plane to Somewhere Else. In the far distant past I once managed all three at once.

This morning the back yard is moody and sullen and so am I.

A dense grey mist presses itself against the windows, attempting to insinuate itself into my little flat. The washing I hung out days ago is still on the line drooping and disconsolate. What passes for a lawn is almost as high as an elephant’s eye. It’s certainly higher than a Fox Terrier’s eye.

The dog, who hates wet weather as much as I do, has made just one expedition outside, driven by an irresistibly full bladder. The long grass closed over his head immediately and the only evidence of his passage across the yard was the twitching of green stems in his wake.

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HEART-STOPPING ACTION - THEN & NOW

17/6/2014

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The Grim Reaper visited a male friend of mine the other day. Mr Reaper called by very unexpectedly at four a.m. and stayed just long enough to drop an anvil onto my friend’s chest before slipping silently away into the early morning darkness.

Death was robbed of his sting by the speedy arrival of an ambulance, the attentions of skilled and doctors and nurses, and the rapid application of modern pharmaceuticals and medical technique.

Not entirely coincidentally, I have been reading an arcane piece of literature called “Touching on Deaths” I uncovered at the Founders Book Fair. It’s a medical history of early Auckland based on the first 384 inquests held in the city. Its author, New Zealand doctor turned historian, Laurie Gluckman, spent ten years transcribing reports - hand-written in spidery pen and ink - of all the inquests held between 1841 and 1864.

Heart attack was recorded as the cause of death in twenty of the 384 inquests. Before succumbing, victims complained of “unpleasant sensations” or “uneasiness in the chest” and one 25-year-old was so agitated by the pain that observers at first thought he was ”in the throes of a nightmare”. One Charles Trainor, suffering a headache and “something pulsating under the collar-bone” did not even bother to call for a doctor. Nor did he avail himself of over-the-counter remedies like “Holloway’s Pills - The Greatest Cure of any in the Globe” or “Dr Simpson’s Infallible Worm Lozenges”. Instead he attempted to ease his discomfort by bathing his feet, then “lay down, stretched out his right arm and died immediately” of “a rupture of the large blood vessel near the heart”.

My friend would most definitely be dead now if he had suffered his heart attack in Auckland in the decades covered by these inquests: medical attention would have come slowly on foot or by horse, if at all; many doctors of the period had only the most rudimentary of medical training; analysis of blood or urine was by sight or smell (or occasionally taste, in the case of urine); the causes and transmission of disease and infection were imperfectly understood; the stethoscope, ophthalmoscope and thermometer were very recent inventions. Even the accurate measurement of the pulse was unusual before pocket watches became cheaply available in the 1860’s.

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IN THE MIDST OF DEATH WE ARE IN LIFE

24/9/2013

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Nothing makes you feel quite so alive as wandering with a dog in a cemetery on a clear spring day.
You are alive and vertical in a place where everyone else is dead and horizontal, covered in earth and lying on their backs in what remains of the boxes they were buried in. You are aware of the miracle of being alive: your heart working tirelessly in your chest, your breath, your ability to propel yourself on two strong legs, to see, to hear and to smell.

I've taken to walking from The Wood, where I now live up into the Whakapuaka Cemetery which sits on a bluff above Atawhai Drive overlooking the city, the Boulder Bank and the sea. Some of the graves are more than a century and a half old - a veteran of the Crimean war is buried here - and many of them are half caved-in, with leaning headstones.

The few marble angels and doves in the cemetery have wings blunted by decades of wind and rain. Some graves are plain slabs of concrete or are covered in a riot of weeds. Some are tall obelisks. Some have headstones which are locked into cramped cages of chicken wire. Some graves are decorated with porcelain wreaths of pink roses and purple pansies, some with fake flowers and plastic windmills. Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and Jews are buried in separate neighbourhoods in this city of the dead.

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THE BLACK DOG. AND THE BLACK CAT.

12/2/2013

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No one can see the Black Dog except you. Depression and anxiety are like that . Invisible. Which is why it feels so lonely. If you have a cough or a limp, someone will notice and commiserate . But if you are depressed - and you’re not sitting in a corner sucking your thumb or plucking the fluff off your jumper - no one notices.
If you are anxious you can look pretty normal - unless you've staggered into A & E with full-blown symptoms of a heart attack.

Image from I Had a Black Dog by Matthew Johnstone

I've been living with two unpleasant animals this week. In fact I've been sharing a kennel with them and having rather a bad time of it.
The Black Dog, which has been nipping at my heels for quite a while, suddenly took me in his jaws and dragged me into his kennel. It’s a great slavering lunk of a thing, all drool and droopy blood-shot eyes. His kennel is full of half-gnawed bones and is very dark: the dog’s lugubrious bulk blocks any light that might otherwise shine in through the door.
And if that’s not enough, there’s a Black Cat in here too. It’s a skinny, malevolent-looking creature and it has insinuated itself around my neck, resting its desiccated muzzle with the yellow eyes on one of my shoulders, and dangling its paws and tail over the other.
My grandmother had a fox-fur stole just like it, but at least it was dead. This cat is very much alive. It emits a constant sinister purr and sheds so much fur it’s difficult to breathe. No one can see the Dog or the Cat except me.

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SICK AS A DOG

18/12/2012

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I wrapped the dog in a blanket, lifted him gently into the car, and took him to the vet. Beside him on the seat, I folded a red quilted jacket I bought 30 years ago on a freezing December day in Seoul. If Pete had to be put down, I planned to wrap him in my old warm coat and take him home to bury him.

Last week, Pete my Fox Terrier, refused to accompany me on a walk. I knew then, that something was very wrong. Usually, he greets the merest hint of a walk - the chink of car keys or the lacing up of walking shoes - with tail-wagging ecstasy. On this occasion though, he hobbled to the letterbox with me but would go no further. I picked him up and took him back to the house where he lay listlessly in his basket.
Even the sound of knife on chopping block which normally rouses him from the deepest slumber had no effect. Later in the day, I found him standing stock-still in the kitchen, staring at a patch of floor as if in a fugue. When he needed to go outside he whimpered to be let out, no longer willing to execute the balletic manoeuvre required to slot himself through the pet door. I let him into the garden. When he had relieved himself he went back to his basket and curled in on himself again.
Not even the sun sprawling invitingly at the kitchen door didn’t lure him from bed.

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GOOD DOG: GOOD VET

EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE

WET WEATHER BLUES

HEART-STOPPING ACTION - THEN & NOW

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH WE ARE IN LIFE

THE BLACK DOG. AND THE BLACK CAT.

SICK AS A DOG

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GOOD DOG: GOOD VET

EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE

WET WEATHER BLUES

HEART-STOPPING ACTION - THEN & NOW

IN THE MIDST OF DEATH WE ARE IN LIFE

THE BLACK DOG. AND THE BLACK CAT.

SICK AS A DOG

BLOG TOPICS

ARCHIVE

Enter your email address below to receive postings from the Grey Urbanist by email

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