Melancholy lines upon the death of a dog

No dog lives forever but I hoped he would be the first. Kola, my Labrador. Kola, my trusted friend and confidant these 7 years. Kola who has seen my children grow, almost since they were babies, and has loved them every minute. Kola, the glory of his breed and the friendliest member of his household. Kola, bone-chewer, ball-chaser, beach-swimmer, humper of male dogs and feared destroyer of several chickens.

He was named after a teddy bear that my son had when he was two years old. The bear had come all the way from China with a tag that bore the name of Kola. I don’t know why they called it that. Maybe they were trying to spell Koala. My son loved that bear, it slept beside him and he dragged it around in the dirt wherever he went. He must have imagined that getting a dog was the same kind of thing as having a teddy bear. So the day the puppy came bounding into our lives – the first pet we ever had – my little son declared that the dog’s name henceforth would be Kola. And that is what we called him.

We soon learned that a dog is even better than a teddy bear. Because a dog is not a thing. He is not a person either, I understand that, but he dwells somewhere in the borderlands of personhood. Anyone who doubts that animals have souls has never reckoned with a Labrador. Whether the dog brings his soul with him into the world or acquires it through constant communion with the human soul is a moot point. At any rate the dog is more susceptible to humanisation than any other animal. He feels joy and doubt and affection and cunning and anticipation and contentment and shame – what human ever felt more?

The creature of whom I speak used to sneak under the covers of my son’s bed and lie there on the forbidden mattress, a huge Labrador-sized lump under the covers beside a sleeping boy, hardly daring to breathe in case I found him and banished him to the unwelcoming floor.

Once when I had taken him to the beach he saw me body-surfing and was seized by a sudden terror for my life. He snatched the leash up in his mouth – I had left it lying on the sand – and plunged into the waves and swam out to me, whimpering horribly until I consented to take the leash in my hand, whereupon he turned and swam to shore, pulling me behind him. I thanked him for rescuing me, it was a considerate gesture, and I informed him that I would now continue swimming. But he – he who loved beaches and knew them so well – was very distrustful of the waves that day and sulked mightily when I tried to get back in the water. So I trusted his instincts and lay down on the sand instead and he laid his wet head upon me in satisfaction. And I never drowned that day, so maybe he was right. Who knows how much a dog knows?

Once, when I had left a carton of eggs on the kitchen table, he crept into the room and climbed up on the chair and somehow got the carton open and removed the little unfertilised parcels one by one without cracking the shells or making any mess. One by one he smuggled the eggs outside. I saw the carton right where I had left it on the table and saw that it was empty. I searched the premises and eventually found the crime scene: a black dog, looking rather bloated, lying in an orgy of eggshells in the back yard, licking his dripping whiskers in mournful self-reproach. “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame”: Shakespeare must have been thinking of Kola and the eggshells when he wrote those words.

Today he died.

He left our lives almost as suddenly as he had arrived. They said it was a cancer of the spleen, it happens sometimes they said, the invisible malignant growth advancing secretly and one day bursting and then, before you can say fetch, the Joy of Nature is lying very still and watching you with infinitely patient eyes and telling you in little whimpers that he is sorry but he cannot get up, not today, that he does not feel like playing anymore, that he will not be needing breakfast, not today, not ever again, that you should go along to the park without him and let him lie there in the shade a while with the ants and beetles creeping all around him.

By the time we got him to the vet he was nearly dead. We gathered round him, my children and me, and whispered our sweet nothings in his floppy ears and caressed his good kind face and anointed his gentle paws with our tears.

We did not lie to him. That’s not how we do things around here. We did not tell him everything would be all right. We told him that we loved him and he was dying and we would never see his face again and we would never forget him. He had walked his last walk, he had chewed his last bone, he had fetched his last slobber-filthy tennis ball. He looked me in the eyes and trusted me completely, in dying as in life. He had never died before but he knew I’d get him through it.

Apart from dying, it had been one of the great weeks of his life. For it was only a few days ago that he, Kola, the somewhat fat and lumbering Labrador, caught a young rabbit that had been grazing on the lawn. A hundred years of selective breeding came good at last. He caught it. He brought the rabbit to me. He nursed it in his mouth as gently as an unbroken egg. It hung from his jaws, alive and apprehensive, the two long bunny-ears twitching in dismay. He stood before me: Kola, catcher of rabbits. He laid the bunny at my feet as worshipfully as the Magi bringing gifts. His eyes burned with a holy pride. I paused from washing the dishes and looked at him and told him to take the goddamn thing outside this minute: which he gladly did, and with all ceremony.

I think of him now with that rabbit and I thank God for it. I am glad the dear boy finally got a little taste of heaven before he left this world. He had caught chickens before but that was years ago and it was only practice. The real thing, as everybody knows, is Rabbit. The prophet says that in the world to come “the wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together, and a little child will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). If that is true, then even as you read these tear-stained lines you must picture Kola curled up with his big face resting on his paws, lazy as ever, sleeping like a dog beside the tender and ever-living rabbit in that peaceable kingdom where cancers never grow, only joys, where all the leashes are lost, and where every hour of the day is breakfast time.

A guide dog at holy communion

On the mountain where my parents live, deep in the rainforest, there is an unassuming red-brick chapel where the people go to pray. I went there one Sunday morning, following the winding way through the forest, past the winery and the empty cafés and the smoking chimneys where the villagers still slept nestled among the trees. I parked the car across the street near the old log sign. The organ was playing. A plump of ducks crossed the road in front of me, preening themselves and gossiping amiably like the clucking women who waddled their way into the church. High in the treetops the whipbirds sung their morning antiphons. I stepped over a puddle and went inside.

“The Lord be with you.” The service was led by a white-haired skeleton, profoundly old and happy, a long-retired priest who laboured over the prayerbook, scrupulously working at each syllable and then looking up and beaming deafly at the congregation whenever we replied. “And also with you!”

When we all came forward for Holy Communion I noticed a man I had not seen before. He stepped out from the pew right at the back. He was wearing sunglasses, which would have been strange enough in church, and he had with him a dog, a labrador, who led the man into the line and brought him step by step towards the altar. When they reached the front, the dog sat down and faced the altar while the priest put bread into the man’s hand and raised the cup for him to drink. As soon as the cup withdrew, the faithful dog was on his feet again, gravely leading his master back to the pew. He was a good dog, anyone could see that. He behaved with all the ceremony and propriety that you could ask of someone who has to go to church wearing a collar. He was not himself a believer, not exactly, but he respected the thing for what it was and loved it because he knew, by an unerring instinct, that his master loved it.

After church I met the blind man outside and asked about the dog. He loved the dog and told me how they went to church together every week. For ten years the dog had led him and they never missed a Sunday.

I told him how impressed I was by the dog’s behaviour at Holy Communion. “I have a labrador,” I said, “and he would never have the discretion to wait facing the altar while I took the bread. He would sit there, sure enough, but he would turn his face towards me and his eyes would silently implore me for a crumb of consecrated bread, and then, when I refused, his hopeful eyes would brim with mourning.”

“They are good dogs,” the man agreed. “Their respect for food is very deep. That is why he understands the eucharist. He grasps it not as an idea but in its real depths. It is food. He knows that.”

“Ten years,” I said. “That is five hundred times he has gone with you to the altar.”

“Sometimes,” the blind man said, “I have felt his hunger. There is a holiness in all God’s creatures. The bread is offered in thanksgiving for all that lives.”

I said, “Perhaps in heaven there will be a eucharist for him.”

But the man said, “No, I don’t believe it. There will be no eucharist on the other side, no church or priest, no bread or wine. We have these things now because we need them. But on that day, need will be no more. There will be no sun because the Lamb will be our light. No eucharist, because everything will be thanksgiving.”

Morning found its way belatedly through the trees and we stood there transfigured in the sunlight. The ducks went by again; the dog watched them coolly, with studied indifference. The old deaf priest shuffled up and greeted us one last time and went inside to close the church.

“Besides,” the blind man said as I turned to go. “He has gone five hundred times to church already. He is a working dog. It is the same with him as with a priest: church is work. Whatever else heaven might be for him, it will not be anything that includes spending another solitary second inside a church!”

Maybe he was right, I don’t know. There is no use dwelling on it now. All this was years ago. By now the dog will have retired from active life. By now he will have died. What God thinks of him, no one can say. But I will always remember the way he sat and waited, lovingly facing the altar, while beside him the one he loved stood blessed under the name of God and ate the world’s redemption.

Animals in the Index: A review of David Clough

A guest-review by Steve Wright. David Clough, On Animals. Volume 1: Systematic Theology (T&T Clark) 

Like most academics, I rarely find it necessary to read a book cover to cover in order to ridicule or praise it. I have far too little time and far too many books on my shelves to go about reading them all. Fortunately, within the world of theology, reading is optional. For the index is a perfectly succinct list-form summary of a book’s argument. All one has to do is cross-check the number of entries listed under “Barth, Karl” with “election, the doctrine of” and you know what kind of book you have in your hands. Similarly, any book with entries under “language, the poverty of” spills all its secrets out into the open without the need of perusing a single apophatic line from within its chapters.

A good index, however, is like a good waiter: it not only tells you what you will get for dinner, but invites you to sit down and enjoy the aromas of the kitchen while you make your selection. David Clough has written an index like this. Or, rather, I should say that his theology has spilled into his index, for when one peruses the index of his persuasively written book, On Animals, one finds that it has been invaded by animals. “Bacon, Francis” sits just beneath “baboons”; and “Crisp, Oliver” is sandwiched between “creeping things” and “crocodiles”. Just as naturally as most theological books will list “Balthasar, Hans Urs von”, “Barth Karl”, and “Bultmann, Rudolf” in neat alphabetical order, Clough lines up “cats”, “caterpillars”, “cattle”, and “cauliflower” in his index. All of this to say that Clough has produced an index of creatures – critters and all.

In this book, Clough tests one of the core teachings of Christian orthodoxy that goes back at least as far as Basil: when it comes to being, one is either the Creator of all, or one is a creature. Humanity does not occupy an ontologically ambiguous place between the two, Clough observes, but sits firmly on the creaturely side of the divide. Sticking with the core doctrines of the faith, Clough also notes that the significance of the incarnation is not so much that the eternal Word became a human, as that the eternal Word mysteriously crossed the fundamental divide to become a creature. When God takes on flesh, God takes on creatureliness. A manger was the perfect place for the incarnate God to rest.

Despite the focus on animals, Clough has produced a very human book. His reasoning liberates us from the burden of construing the human as anything other than what it is: an animal among fellows. There are always creatures in the index, but we often separate the “Persons” from the “Subjects”. I might even go as far as to claim that separating humans into their own index is a theological move, betraying at least some relative anthropocentrism. Clough favours a “General Index” filled with all the glorious creatures of God’s creation, from red pandas to onions to John Wesley. It is the best kind of index: one that invites you to read the book.

In which an intruder is murdered, and everyone lives happily ever after

In our back yard there lives a pair of guinea pigs. They live in a wooden hutch, small but comfy, and we love them. The chestnut-coloured guinea pig is named Chestnut and the ginger-coloured guinea pig is named Ginger. A couple of weeks ago we noticed that the guinea pigs were eating quite a lot yet always still seemed to be hungry. Each night we topped up their food, yet in the morning there they were, peering hungrily out from behind the bars of the hutch. We did not understand why the guinea pigs were so hungry. Not until, late one night, we noticed the adorable little brown bush rat creeping in through the bars of the hutch. There he was, whiskers twitching in the moonlight, shamelessly standing right on top of the guinea pigs' food bowl and gobbling up their food without a care in the world. The guinea pigs seemed very understanding. They ambled about unobtrusively, polite spinsters that they are, while from time to time their visitor looked up from the bowl to smile courteously, as if to reassure his hosts that the meal was excellent, quite excellent, and that everything was perfectly in order.

Now your Australian bush rat is a fine little animal. He is not at all like his European cousin, the black rat, that intolerable propagator of iniquity whose nature is nothing but a laboratory of diseases drawn about by two sharp teeth and a stomach as insatiable as the grave. The bush rat is a good-natured fellow. His ears are the shape of buttercup petals, not at all like the satanically pointed auricles of the black rat. His tail is short and sweet as a lullaby, bearing no resemblance to the sinister tapered whip of the black rat. Our Australian rat has created no plagues, provoked no policies of national flooding. He has, as far as anybody knows, never devastated a civilisation. He does not invade houses. He is a rather shy, well-mannered little creature who would rather scavenge discreetly at a respectable distance from human habitations before retiring at dawn to the domestic comforts of his cosy burrow. The black rat is a problem for philosophers and experts in theodicy; he is the trump card of Manichaean heretics and all cosmic pessimists. But I bless the Australian bush rat. I have no hesitation in regarding him as one of God's creatures. If I would not, perhaps, offer him my seat on the bus, I would certainly tip my hat to him and wish him good-morning.

And yet, reader, the dear little critter is dead, for I have killed him. I would not want you to get the wrong idea: I am not habitually a murderer. Killing of any kind is prohibited in my household. I once issued my young son with a stern rebuke when he confessed that he had, with malice aforethought, deliberately taken the life of a single ant. I have on other occasions – disregarding all extenuating circumstances – prevented the children from killing each other. In order not to appear hypocritical, my wife and I have also made a conscious effort to refrain from killing one another. That's how strongly we feel about this matter.

So it was no small thing when I resolved that the bush rat had to die. I did not kill him until all other avenues had been exhausted. When we learned of his existence the children created a trap for him, and for three whole days we dreamed of capturing him and making him our pet. We would place him in a cage; we would feed him; we would take his photograph; we would give him a name. No longer would he need to steal from the helpless guinea pigs, for now he would have food and every other modern luxury, all to his heart's content.

But the trap was not as good as we thought. It consisted of a clothes basket, a food bowl, a stick, and a piece of string. It was not, apparently, constructed according to sound engineering principles. The smallest breeze could trigger it; a rat could stroll in and eat all the food without setting it off. Not only was the trap a failure, but it also led the rat to discover a secret that would, in the end, prove to be his undoing. We had placed the trap – don't ask me why – near the entrance to the laundry. That is how the rat learned that we have been stockpiling foods in the laundry. Huge bags of dog food, bird seed, fish food in plastic containers, sweet-smelling bags of hay, together with an entire plastic bin brim-full of the most succulent guinea pig food you have ever tasted. 

It was riches beyond compare. 

It was like discovering America. 

Poor little rat; how quickly power and riches can go to one's head.

Two nights later, our rat had chewed through the side of the plastic bin and was draining guinea pig food right from the source. The following night he chewed through the bird seed bag for an hors d'oeuvre. He cleansed his palate with a few liver-flavoured dog treats. He munched thoughtfully on his guinea pig food. Then finally he belched like a king, cleaned his whiskers, and staggered back home, where I imagine it must have taken quite some effort to squeeze his corpulent frame through the strangely shrunken doorway, before he curled up in the deepest corner of the burrow and sank into an even deeper sleep.

For ten minutes we stood in the laundry, my children and I, and contemplated the crime scene. Step by step we followed the trail of wanton culinary destruction. We inspected the torn bird seed bag and the nibbled liver-flavoured dog treats and the scattered guinea pig food. We took measurements. We examined evidence under UV lights. We made sketches in yellow notebooks. We interviewed witnesses. (The guinea pigs weren't saying a word. Typical.) We observed that the gap under the laundry door is unnaturally wide, easily wide enough for a small Australian bush rat. He had discovered the laundry and from now until the end of the world there would be no way to keep him out.

 

I kissed my children goodbye. I left the laundry and drove straight to the store and purchased a mousetrap. Three dollars seemed too small a price for such a lethal apparatus. I followed all the directions on the packet. I spread the trap with peanut butter. I placed it in a suitable location. I said a prayer for the death of the rat. "Thank you, O God, for this fine small creature that you have made. Thank you for his cunning ways and his indomitable spirit. Help me now, I pray, to kill him."

But the mousetrap did not kill him. Two nights later he had still not eaten the peanut butter, the trap had not been triggered, and I had not woken up to find him lying in a pool of blood with a broken neck and a look of disappointment on his face. Poor rat. The mousetrap would have been so swift and painless. Even for a human being, a mousetrap would not be a bad way to go – especially if you got a taste of peanut butter just before the bitter end.

I drove back to the store. I spent five dollars on six smooth pellets of rat poison. Gingerly I unwrapped two of the deceitful little parcels and placed them in a tray. I sprinkled guinea pig food over the tray. I placed the tray near the door to the laundry. The children locked the dog inside for fear that he would eat the poison. They set up a station at one of the bedroom windows where they could maintain round-the-clock observation of the poison tray. (We have problems with another native marsupial pest, the bandicoot, who comes out at night and digs holes all over the lawn in search of insects; it would be humiliating, not to say immoral, if we poisoned the wrong pest by mistake.)

8.29 p.m. 

Out comes the bush rat, sauntering across the lawn. He can hop – did you know that? – like a tiny kangaroo. All that guinea pig food really puts the spring in one's step. Hop, hop, hop, over to the guinea pig hutch. He goes inside, orders a drink, chats at the bar for a while with Chestnut and Ginger. Then he's off again. Squeezes through the bars. Hop, hop, hop. Now he's outside the laundry. He's seen the food. His whiskers twitch suspiciously: you don't get to survive on the Australian continent for a million years without having razor-sharp instincts. But no. Poor little chap, his instincts have let him down. Like so many noble men before him, his greed has been his downfall. Quick as a flash he chews through the first poison pallet, then the second. Later, on his way home that night he bids farewell to the guinea pig sisters, who wave their silk handkerchiefs in the air as when a friend departs for a long and lonely voyage.

When I found him two days later dead on the lawn, he was curled up like a sleeping mouse. From the look on his face you would have thought he was dreaming.

I came inside and told the children that our bush rat was dead. My son wanted to know what I had done with the body. I explained that I had placed it in a plastic bag and tied the bag shut and dumped it in the rubbish bin. I saw the shocked disapproval on my son's face, and all at once I understood that there was no getting around it: we would have to give that rat a Christian burial. So now we have laid his bones to rest, and I have written him this eulogy too. No rat could ask for more.

The Melbourne Cup and animal ethics: just a bloody punt

Today is one of the most sacred events in the Australian liturgical year: Melbourne Cup day. Pretty much everyone in the country stops to watch the race and to have a punt. Even school children are encouraged to join in the fun of betting on the horses. Though I don't mean to come across as the cranky old Christian spoil-sport, I wrote a piece for the ABC site today, drawing on Karl Barth's animal ethics – Melbourne Cup: the race that tramples creation: "The Melbourne Cup is the climax of a cruel and bloody practice, exhibiting what Karl Barth called our 'astonishing indifference and thoughtlessness' regarding animals."

As for the question of Australia's pathological predilection for gambling, here's a great video with a couple of excellent satirical TV ads. The second ad is especially good – I think this pretty much says it all:

James-ism: kissing

My little boy Jamie gave his mother a big kiss on the lips. Then, very thoughtfully – like someone comparing one wine to another – he said: "Kola's lips are so adorable."

(Kola is the dog.)

Boy and dog: an anecdote

My three-year-old son, Jamie, has a unique and fascinating relationship with our six-month-old Labrador puppy. Theirs is a deep personal sympathy, a spiritual affinity, a genuine meeting of minds. As far as I have been able to tell, they regard each other not as members of two different species but as peers and colleagues, intellectual equals, comrades in all of life's hilarity, mischief, and sadness.

Jamie has developed a number of independent theological and philosophical theories about his relationship to Kola. Though some of his conclusions might sound extravagant, he is completely in earnest, and I have never had any serious grounds to contest his claims. On various occasions he has put forward all of the following theses:

(1) That he himself was a dog in an earlier life, before becoming a human;
(2) That Kola was a human in an earlier life, before becoming a dog;
(3) That the two of them are twins (I take it he means spiritual twins, since their physical resemblances are not much to speak of, unless you count personal hygiene);
(4) That he is in fact secretly the dog, while Kola is secretly the human. The fact that each plays out the alternative role (Jamie speaking and using cutlery, Kola wagging a tail and chewing up the trampoline) is all just theatrics, an elaborate daily vaudeville for their own secret amusement.

Today there was a striking example of their curious spiritual affinity. Overcome by a sudden profound sadness, Jamie threw himself on the bed and exclaimed: “Kola doesn’t like me anymore.”

“Of course he likes you,” I said.

“No,” he insisted, “I saw from his mouth that he doesn’t like me.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, “you know Kola loves you.”

But my poor troubled boy was resolute: “I saw from the writing on his tongue that he doesn’t like me anymore.”

I'm pretty sure – and I record it here for posterity – that Jamie is the first person in the history of the world to use this evocative metaphor of the writing on a dog's tongue. We speak of a person wearing his heart on his sleeve: in the same way, is not the heart of the dog rendered legibly on that eloquent pink papyrus, the slobbery scroll of the tongue?

The story did, however, have a happy ending. Twenty minutes later I asked Jamie about it again, and he shrugged the whole thing off: “Oh,” he said, “don't worry, Kola loves me. Sometimes he hates me for a second, then he loves me again.”

Three-year-old theology: on God, monsters, and jellyfish

An intriguing theological discussion with my three-year-old boy tonight, just as he was drifting off to sleep:

Boy: "I need to sleep up in your bed, or the monsters under the house will come and get me. They'll come from far away."

Dad: "Are you sure there are monsters under the house?"

Boy: "Yes, and they will get me."

Dad: "You know, you're very safe now that we have a dog. What do you think Kola [our puppy] will do if he sees a monster under the house?"

Boy: "He will eat them."

Dad: "Exactly. Or maybe just chase them away."

Boy: "And they would run away."

Dad: "Yep. Because there's one thing monsters are really scared of..."

Boy: "Jellyfish."

Dad: "Jellyfish...? Right! And they're also scared of dogs, especially Kola."

Boy: "Kola will protect me."

Dad: "And you know who else will protect you?"

Boy: "Daddy. And mummy. And myself."

Dad: "And one more person: God always watches over you."

Boy: "Does God watch the Wiggles too?"

Dad: "I guess so. God sees everything in the world, and God cares for you."

Boy: "Yes, God cares for me. But God kills his self."

Dad: "Um, are you sure about that...?"

Boy: (Nodding sadly) "Yes, he kills his self."

Dad: "Well... God sends Jesus to us, and Jesus died for us."

Boy: "But is God scared of the monsters? Or just the baddies?"

Dad: "No, God's not scared of anything. God is greater than anything else."

Boy: "Is God as big as the ceiling? As big as the clouds? Bigger than the clouds?"

Dad: "Bigger than anything."

Boy: "So if God came into our house, he would be squashed and die. He will be dying forever."

Dad: "OK, go to sleep now."

--

A two-year-old's doctrine of creation

A recent conversation between my two daughters (aged 4 and 2):

Older sister: Do you know where animals come from?
Younger sister: From the Ark.
Older sister: (Laughter) No, God made the animals.
Younger sister: No he didn’t. Noah made them.

Every child’s dream

One of the most amusing things about children’s toys is the exaggerated way in which the benefits of the toys are described. The packaging will boast of all the ways this toy will improve your child’s learning and development.

As a father of two young kids, I’ve seen plenty of this toy-speak. The other day, we gave our 18-month-old daughter a little 4-page book of animal stickers. The front page included the following announcement:

“It’s every child’s dream to own this special playing book collecting all memories of childhood. It will record all steps of your growth and create a whole new feeling for your books.... Don’t let wonderful remembrance be lost easily from your life. Share your treasure; enjoy with your family and friends.”

Every child’s dream? Four pages of animal stickers?

Well, I don’t know if all my daughter’s dreams came true within the 60 seconds that it took her to remove every last sticker from the book. But she did look rather pleased with herself as she marched off down the hallway with a hippopotamus stuck to her forehead.