It’s only a month since Bella died and yesterday I received the dreadful news that my cousin Dudley has died too. He’d been for a biopsy on what they thought was a cancerous tumour and he didn’t recover from the operation. I’m really sad. Even though Dudley didn’t want to play with me he was a lovely dog and really very handsome. He was a Collie and a very good looking one at that.
It has all left me thinking about the mortality of dogs. You humans seem to think it’s funny to compare things to a number of ‘dog years’, multiplying everything by seven. For a dog, it doesn’t feel seven times longer, it just feels the same as it does for you, but there’s less of it. A day is still a day. We still get 365 days in a year, it’s just that we only get a few years. Not for us your ‘three score years and ten’ with increasing longevity over time. Our life span is often little more than 10 to 12 years, for Bella it was tragically much less. There isn’t the investment in research into the medical conditions that we die from. There aren’t the charities to support us through our later years. It is frustrating feeling so powerless and knowing that one day it will be me.
You start thinking what’s it all for? I can’t pass my genes and my wisdom on to the next generation. I can’t watch my own little puppies growing up and making their way in the world. I need to find my own way of making my mark. I founded the Pet Dogs Democratic Party to make a difference to the lives of dogs and next week I shall be sending the first year of my diary to publishers to see if I can be immortalised in print. Perhaps I should dedicate them to all the dogs who have gone before me, blazing a trail, especially Bella and Dudley.