A Muddy Dog

I know there are some of you that log onto this for their daily chuckle, and I’m usually more than happy to oblige. Being the funny one comes easy to me, and I often call this blog my free therapy. Even by rights when something shouldn’t be exactly amusing, it comes out that way and I read it back to myself and actually manage to cheer myself up when I see it in print.

But I’m a bit down tonight I’m afraid. This afternoon a friend of some 13 years passed away. That friend was Muddy, a border collie cross blue cattle dog that magically just ‘followed me home from work’ one day. Tonight, Muddy, the funny dog with the big smile is no more part of this world, but no doubt keeping those on the other side company with his wagging tail and sunny smile.

Muddy came to me by accident. I was doing a brief stint at a Veterinary Clinic when someone brought in a litter of pups. He was the unplanned result of a blue cattle dog having its wicked way with a sweet border collie and Muddy and his siblings were the result. Muddy from memory was the smallest of the litter, and resembled a border collie but for his blue speckled nose and paws. Despite the fact I lived some 40ks from work I still maintain he just ‘followed me home’. His fate rested in mums hands as I was still living at home at the time, but mum, like me, is a sucker for animals...Muddy stayed.

He didn’t take long to grow on us. Being border collie breeding he loved to be ‘doing’. While we lived on acreage it wasn’t a working farm so his main chore for the day, in which he excelled and looked forward to daily, was getting the chooks away for the night. We called this “chookin’ lookin’ and Muddy took great delight in this one big job he had. Till the day he died, as a retired overweight dog living the good life down the south coast with my also retired parents, Muddy still pricked his ears and got excited when you said ‘chookin’ lookin’, and would look frantically around the backyard like the chooks my soon appear and need his assistance.

In his youth Muddy was an energetic ball of fun. I recall the first time I took him to the vets for a check up, and her remarking that his had the best muscle tone of a pup his age she had seen. He didn’t stop much back then. If he wasn’t chewing toys, he was on the look out for chooks, accompanying us behind the horses during rides and generally getting in the way of things. He was also hands down the best childrens dog we have ever come across, ever. Considering his breeding this sometimes amazed me. I walked out once to find him on top of the concrete water tank with the kids. How did he get there? (actually how did all of them get there) One had pulled him up by his ears and the other pushed his legs from below. Didn’t worry Muddy though, he just loved to be part of the action. We have had the pleasure of many breeds of dogs over the years, but none have honestly been as trustworthy as he.

He also developed a strange love for my nephews slippery dip, and would amuse me for ages jumping up the ‘steps’ at the back and slide and jump his way down it. It achieved nothing really, but like a kid, he didn’t care, it was all in the doing!

When he was around about seven Muddy lost his other mate, my mums dog Mishka. It took him about four years before he even uttered a bark again after she went. We realized that the only time he had ever barked in his life was when Mishka did. He’d hear her and have a yap then shut up. I think half the time he had no idea what he was barking at, just that it must have been called for ‘cause the other dog was! After Mish went I think it was around four years before he uttered a bark again, and that was at a blue tongue lizard that took up residence in the backyard down the coast. Till yesterday when he left us, that lizard (or perhaps relatives of it) was still the only thing that made him have a woof. Clearly, a watch dog he wasn’t. Muddy would be more likely to lead someone to the door and come in and show them around had anyone tried breaking in.

Just last year mum rang me concerned Muddy was lonely and might need company. Not wanting to get another animal she suggested a concrete chook statue. Now, Muddy wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but I’m pretty sure he would have known the chook was concrete, besides of which he always liked his chooks moving anyway!

Fate stepped in as about that time I moved and wasn’t able to take my cat with me. Scarlet the Cat and Muddy the dog soon bonded, though as bossy cats often do, Scarlet could be seen sleeping in the dogs bed while Muddy slept on the concrete next to it. I don’t know how animal minds work, but I think they were close friends anyway in their own funny way and could often be founding together in the back yard.

I wasn’t really prepared for Muddy leaving us today. He had seen me through a lot over the years. He has celebrated countless family celebrations with us, and watched the grandkids grow up around him.

But tonight he was tired and decided it was time to go. I think he planned it you know. Muddy’s one big fear in life was storms. Mum had rang me an hour or two before with the news Muddy wasn’t well and in at the vet clinic. We worried about the storm on its way and how he wouldn’t like it.

He didn’t get to see that last storm, and I suppose in one way I’m grateful.. I like to think he simply closed his eyes and slept his way to a storm free heaven.

I have cried tears at work when I heard the news he had gone, and got home to be comforted by the poodle where I cried yet more tears at animals and pets and what they bring to our worlds.

I’m not ashamed to admit I’m an animal lover, I haven’t really had a time at all when they haven’t around me. Horses are my big love, and my respect for them is worthy of an entire blog of their own. But any animals I welcome in my home. I love cats for their sometimes uppity attitude and the way they think they own you instead of the other way around, and I love dogs for their sheer devotion and trust. I can tell when I walk into a home that doesn’t have pets……..some essence is strangely missing and its doesn’t feel quite complete.

For all the times I have cried as my pets have passed over the years, they have been worth every single tear I have shed for them in tenfold. They have often brought me more than a person could even hope to try, and the lessons they have taught me are something that you just can’t learn anywhere else. As corny as it sounds, they enrich my life, and I guess only an animal lover reading this will understand what I mean when I say that.

So tonight I bade farewell to Muddy Dog. In dogs years he was 91 when he passed, and was as wide as he was high. It had been years since he had done anything more energetic than a wander by the river and too sit on the grass while dad listened to the cricket near by. He had a great life, he was loved and I like to think he knew it. I’ll miss him as anyone would miss as friend when they leave them.

For the tears the family have cried over him going today, he easily gave us just as many smiles. I just hope he is happy in his storm free world now, and I look forward to seeing him again some day.