Tiggy is dead. I don’t like euphemisms. I had him put down on Monday. I’m not very good with death, so I brought him home so that I could look death in the face, literally, try to come to terms with it and be with him while he got used to it too. I slept next to him on the floor one more time of course. He was buried on Tuesday in our garden in Cornwall. After several hours hard digging through good old Cornish slate, the men with a digger finally came to rescue me and we laid him to rest.

I expect this post will be rather long. I also don’t expect you to read past here…unless you want to find out what my greatest spiritual teacher Sri Sri Tiggyji taught me that is.

Friends in the past have chastised the parenting choices I made, with ‘he’s just a dog’, to which I’ve always answered ‘he’s not a dog – he’s a person with four legs’. I never discriminated against him because of his extra legs. He hasn’t been like a child to me…he has been my child. Not as some clingy, insipid projection of a childless woman, but simply because it was Tigg who turned up in my arms one day nearly 18 years ago, so I just got on with the job of looking after him.

I’ve done that as I would for any dependent little two legged person in my care. I’ve moved countries for him, changed my lifestyle for him, slept in the sitting room with him for the last six months, curtailed all my excursions to two hours unless I had someone else to care for him and got up many times a night to help him for the last four years. I arrived in England in 2013 with a suitcase and a nearly 15 year old Tigg, expecting to be here four months while I waited out his quarantine time until I could take him back to Australia. When that time came, I just couldn’t put him through the trip, so I stayed, thinking that he wouldn’t last much longer. He lasted three years. To the day.

I’ve learned that connections are grown, not just in love, but also in extremis. Emotions bond beings. Any emotions. Even rage, hate and murderousness. Which I’ve felt on many, many occasions for Tigger. My half Dalmation, half small brown dog. Or as my friends would say half Dalmation, half Dingo. Or as I would say half Dalmation, half Shithead. That’s like a Shitzu except bigger. Whatever his parentage, he was a wild creature. Untameable, unstoppable, uncontrollable despite the best efforts of everything from dog psychologists to electric collars. He remained until the end an opinionated, unruly, stubborn, wilful, difficult, demanding little shit. He only started tolerating me in his old age because he needed me. He couldn’t run away and chase his own supper any more!

He pushed me past my boundaries of love so many times. After his first week as a 6 week old puppy I called up his breeders and asked if they would have him back. Oh I rue the day that I recanted on that one! I had him in the car to take him to the pound once as a youngster after he killed my precious rabbit. At the last turn I couldn’t quite do it, so I took him to kennels and dumped him there for four days instead until I could look at him again.

He then went on to eat our duck, our other duck, the chicken, our other chicken, have a good go at the goose, 12 mice in about 30 seconds, chase the neighbours sheep, the horses, cows, many fish, and kangaroos too numerous to mention. All topped off with scaring to death my beautiful replacement rabbit. Oh and of course smattered with incalculable destruction on a nearly daily basis. And not to mention interspersed with running away for hours or days whenever he could trick, squeeze or jump his way to freedom.

There have been a thousand times I thought I’d lost him. Not just when he was run over by a ute, or bitten by a snake and paralysed, or tied round a tree for four nights, or when he ran away for a whole week, or ate a whole packet of antibiotics for a snack, or swum half way to America, or was attacked by dogs several times, or been through three major operations in his dotage, or flown round the world between three continents. Every time he ran away I thought he would get hit by a car, or shot or seriously injured. He ran away hundreds and hundreds of times. The louder I screamed at him to come back, the further back he would pin his ‘running away ears’ and the faster he would run. I can still see him streaking like a bolt of lightening across fields away from me. Even when I was pressing top voltage on an electric collar supposed to down a cow.

Each time I realised through my rage that I still loved him. Every time he eventually came back from his safaris panting, exhausted and demanding desert and wondering what all the stony stares were, despite my rage, I would gradually soften and open my heart to him again. Believe me, we tried everything. Even growling at him and pretending to pee where he peed as the good dog psychologist told us to. But he wouldn’t be tamed. He was a Tigger. And that’s how Tiggers are.

What I learned was unconditionality. Not earth shattering news to anyone with kids I know.

But I committed to seeing if I could love just one being perfectly. That being happened to be a short spotty shithead. I failed a hundred times as I dissolved into tears of rage yet again. If he had been a person I would have kept him around about two days. But because of my mothering instincts that knew no-one else would have him, I kept opening and opening and opening my heart until I loved him completely and utterly. By half way through what was often an absolute nightmare, I loved loving him, because there was nothing in the way any more. His last years were really hard for me. I have been sleep deprived, exhausted and overwhelmed past my capacity to function many times in the last four years. But now that he has finally gone, I can rest knowing that I succeeded. I have loved one being absolutely and completely. As perfectly as I was humanly capable.

Now my life’s work is to extend that level of care to everyone else in my life. I fall so short in so very many ways. But at least I know now what I’m aiming for.

Tiggy held so many of my disowned selves. So my other task is now to embrace those qualities that I have suppressed. As well as the impossible sides to his character which seemed to induce dislike from both humans and other dogs alike, he was also one of the most alive, self expressed beings I’ve ever met. He did exactly what he wanted, when he wanted and ran rough shot over anyone who dared get in his way. He demanded, insisted and fought for his unalienable right to have his way. Now that he’s gone, I feel even more respect for his wild, intense authenticity. I also feel that I am downloading some of his strength, his tenacity and his bolshiness…so watch out!

My life is inexorably changed. I haven’t lost a dog, I’ve lost my only child. I am still in shock. Unable to cry, having strange physical experiences of hot sweats, flash headaches, shaking, faint, everything feeling dazed and slow, like moving through treacle. My mind is in one place, my limbs in another and there doesn’t seem to be anything connecting them. I look forward to when emotions return and I can have another good howl. And not at the moon.

I always said that only a mother could love him. But as I’ve reached out to everyone who’s been part of his life to thank them for their care and involvement in keep him alive so ridiculously long, I’ve been so touched to realised that he has actually weedled his way into people’s hearts around the world. His various aunties, godmothers, and stepfathers on three continents have been so very lovely. I have been completely touched by the incredible support of my dear friends. And overwhelmed by the astonishing generosity and kindness of a stranger who painted the most beautiful portrait of him on a stone.

I moved to my wonderful new home six months ago and have never slept in my bedroom. Until last night when I had my first night in my own bed. I slept through the night. What utter bliss. No more sofa beds for me! I can’t wait to see what having my life back looks like. I’m quietly ecstatic.

Rest in peace Tiggy. I love you.

25/8/98 – 2/5/16