in honour of Dingle the dog

I am having a run on dead animals.  This week it is Dingle the dog.

I finally scattered Dingle’s ashes at the week-end after 17 years.  Well, I didn’t exactly scatter them, but wrote his name in them rather as you do in the sand.  I quite like the idea and might suggest my children do it to me AND in my own garden if possible.

I hadn’t been able to scatter Dingle’s ashes for 17 years because I had unresolved grief about him, but I was painting the conservatory and decided it was time his story was told.  He had spent too long in a box, and even worse, a damaged box, as the last set of burglars actually opened the box he was in and disturbed his ashes.

Dingle was a rescue dog.  Long before we had our own horses, Dingle appeared at the yard we were riding at.  Locked in a stable, he would do vertical jumps to try and see over the stable door.  I had always liked jack russells and when nobody claimed him, I took him home.

Dingle, like all the rest of our dogs, was untrained, but that was our fault not his.  He had a tendency to nip the children if they put their faces close to his and could lose it with cats, but he was adorable and had great spirit.

I remember him once, excited to be out the car, doing a vertical take off over the car park wall at Sennen Cove in Cornwall.  It was a long drop to the rocks and we expected him to be crumpled on them, but there he was on all four paws, trembling a bit, but otherwise unharmed.

Apart from getting Specky the Dalmatian pregnant, he was a daily park escapee.  We had a fenced off bit in the garden for the dogs to poo in, but that was never enough and he would literally jump a fence many times his own height and go for a wander.

Every morning, before taking the children to school and then going to work in the opposite direction, I had to drive round the park and pick him up.  He always came to me joyously so he was easily forgiven for the inconvenience.

Maybe a year after FH left, I had gone for a week-end away with my then boyfriend Tom who eventually married someone else and died of oesophageal cancer.

While I was away Dingle did a runner and FH threw him in the car with such force he broke his back.  Dingle died in J1’s arms on the way to the vet.  When FH tried to touch him Dingle attempted to bite him.  Even in the throes of death he had spirit.

Now I know, and I knew then, that people can be prosecuted for doing bad stuff to animals.  But I was bang in the middle of negotiating my divorce and trying to keep a handle on myself and the children who were all over the place.  Nothing was going to bring Dingle back and justice for Dingle got lost in that maelstrom of surviving.

When I got back from the holiday and found out, Tom, after a few down the pub, went round FH’s flat to have it out with him, but he wasn’t in and Tom woke all the neighbours instead.

His Mum (who is now also dead) rang me up to tell me anyone would have killed a badly behaved dog like Dingle. I thought then, you wouldn’t be saying that if it was one of your dogs.

I don’t remember now if all the children were in the car when it happened, but J1 was.  The other two seemed to absorb it as OK, but J1 didn’t.  When people ask him why he doesn’t talk to his dad I remember this.  J1 assures me now this isn’t the only reason, but he still abhors uncontrolled anger in himself and others.

 

The loss of Dingle after the loss in that year of my husband and my mother sent me to a place of such anguish it took me years and years to recover.  I smoked and developed my wine habit during that time.

Dingle slept on my bed and was the one living thing I had left who truly loved me.  I am not counting children here because I did not encourage them to take sides.

After I scattered his ashes and took a picture I said a little prayer of thanks for him.

I am still sorry Dingle that I was not there to protect you.  I still haven’t replaced you, but maybe one day, when I stop working, I will get another dog.