I like dags. I always have. My first dag was a basset named Sammy. My memories of her are a blur. I know my family and myself weren't the best family to her. When we moved to England, we put her down rather than taking her with. Life was different in the '80s.
I remember learning to train dogs with my mother. Some are easier than others. Some are nigh impossible to train. Take a basset, the most untrainable dogs. Some think it is because they are too stupid to train. I have the view that they are in fact too intelligent to train.
I have had many types of dags in my life, but bassets are by far my favourite. Big dogs on little legs. Silly buggers. The next basset I recall quite fondly was Melissa. She was a pup when I was "going to university". In reality, I was staying home, smoking weed, reading and making music. I was obsessed with the blues and doing my best to teach myself how to play.
I used to be a punk. I would go to this amazing guitar shop after school and just hang out. Ronnies allbang and strummit. I loved the place. I loved Ronnie. He was so fucking cool. I was just some dumb punk kid, too concerned with how others saw me and focused and trying to be cool. One day Ronnie took me aside and told me I was an idiot. He then taught me about the blues. He had some vinyls of some blues, something quite uncommon in white suburban South Africa.
I would smoke weed, listen to Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker and try and imitate their sound. Melissa would join me and sing along. Honest. She had a fantastic blues voice. Now, I will admit, she liked the smell of weed smoke, and from a young age, I would give her the occasional blowback. Not a good thing, but I was a young and foolish man at the time. This may have contributed to her somewhat eccentric personality.
Then came my ex wife into my life. She changed everything. Red flags fucking everywhere. But I was too young, too high and too stupid. We got quite serious and later on, adopted two dags. Shiva and Shanti. Lovely dags. Sadly Shanti passed away at a very young age, leaving just Shiva.
Shiva and Melissa did not get on. A parallel to my ex and my family. This ultimately had a tragic ending years later with the final moments of Melissa. I loved that dog. She was so damned special and unique. What a character!
Years passed and my ex and I moved to Spain, Valencia. One day, waiting for an unreliable friend, sitting outside a bar having a drink or two, we both saw the cutest little Amstaff pup, walking into the street. We both reacted and dragged her back to the man who we thought was the owner. "I'm just looking after her, actually looking for an owner.".
Sold.
That is how Boni came into our lives. What a sweety. She went everywhere with us. She changed so many things. Walks to the parks, trips to the beach. Always happy, never sad. She loved other dogs. She made friends with all the dogs in the neighbourhood where we first lived in Valencia, Buen Orden.
Then a colleague came to work with a skin and bones pup named Dennis (after Bergkamp). He looked like the perfect Clyde for Boni.
That weekend Boni met Clyde. They hit it off immediately. He was a nervous rescue pup and was scared of me at first, but then after time, he became my shadow.
Not long after came a house in the village, Boni and Clyde became Boni, Clyde and Bella.
Then came the Pandemic and Biggles.
Dags had become the centre of my life, my routine. I would wake, walk and feed the dags. Then go to work, come home, walk and feed them again. In between work and workouts there were more walkings and feedings. As you can imagine, four dags is quite a handful.
Then came the collapse. My marriage ended and I had to leave them all behind. Them and the memories. It was easier to leave some things behind, but it has never been easy to leave the dags behind. I love dags.
Then came today. Today I signed the paperwork handing ownership of Boni and Clyde over to my Ex. Dear reader, I cannot begin to express how much that simple action hurt. I am honestly looking forward to signing the divorce papers in the near future, but signing over my dags to that woman hurt me to my core.
Is it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?
I don't know. What I do know, is never be too high, too young or too stupid to see the red flags for what they are. Toxic people are unlikely to become not toxic, no matter how much you may wish for them to. Sometimes you will just need to walk away and carry with you the weight. The weight of what you can carry and the weight of all that needs to be left behind. Regardless, learn to carry the weight sooner rather than later.
