This is a memoir for our best friend Ruby - our market dog.
We have lost a dog. Ruby was a market dog since the market began in 2009. She was always up and waiting on Friday mornings. As she got older she was ready to go on Thursdays. Ruby our devoted short legged long haired Jack Russell died on Friday Feb 10th just after the market that day.
In dog years she was old, around 15 of them. She had lost her hearing, was losing her sight and her agility for longer walks. Instead she preferred dreaming, hanging around familiar places, watching at the market and of course the children. We had become many of her senses, helping her through the day, until we didn’t.
Yes she was just a dog but she was so much more than that.
Her world view was at a different level to ours. Which may have explained why she loved children so much and they her. By the time we added her to the family, we were a perfect match. She was a good ratter in her youth and still manged to have the nicest of natures and the friendliest disposition of any dog we ever owned or knew. She had lived a wonderful life.
Ruby’s death was tragic and came totally unexpectedly. We knew her time was running out but we had not prepared for her to go just yet or in such circumstances. Like any sudden death of those we love, it caught us off guard and threw us into nowhere.
Her memory is part of her doggy legacy which is immense. Apparently dogs have been domesticated longer than rice. Her four legged fraternity’s effect on humanity is well understood to be of the close and emotional kind. It’s a powerful thing. Dogs have co-evolved with us for so very long, become attuned to our behaviours, language and emotions that they have become an integral part of our lives. Human cultures, reaching right back to the traditional hunter gatherers made everlasting bonds with dogs. We certainly had one with this little dog, as did everyone who met her.
We are different people because of the relationships we have had with our dogs. Ruby taught us how to be calm, patient and loved. She responded acutely to our words and our actions. She gave us a sense of belonging, comfort and gave us an extra purpose. We needed each other more than we realised. Her absence is like children leaving home, it is now silent and still, different.
Ruby, like so many of the other market dogs, loved being part of something happening, some action. The market is the place for great socialising. People, families with or without dogs gather. Many stallholders come to the market with their dogs. Dogs are part of our lives. Even though we have a no dogs at market policy everyone who’s anyone knows, some rules are there to break. Dogs are good at breaking rules. The happy dogs and happy people we see is a wonderful thing.
Good dog owners are not unlike good parents. Couples who can’t have children often have dogs, families with children have dogs. Dogs become family. They bond us humans. They bring us together whether we like it or not and they don’t harbour prejudices. They draw us towards people who would be otherwise strangers. With love and affection they in return respond to how we feel and how we act. You cannot hide your feelings from a dog. They remind you when you are angry, sad, and distracted. Their love is unmoored, non-judgemental. Like children, dogs are a big commitment. They stop us doing some things, slow us down, and hopefully teach us humility. Good parents will do anything to protect their children. Dogs too will often go to great lengths to protect their owners.
Evolutionary biologists say from an evolutionary perspective, any pairing normally requires some kind of devotion. We love our pets, our pets love us, we love our kids and they us.
We are now at a loss. Ruby defined us as a couple. She defined us as a family. She defined Us. She was the certainty, a reminder. She made our home a home. One of the last links. She who had been part of our daily routine for over a very long time, now suddenly gone.
Ruby had a smiling face. She was honest. Having a happy four legged little bundle of white hair with the bushy eyebrows greet you was a joy. You could not help but notice. She was always happy to see every one of the two legged kind. She had an unbridled eagerness and enthusiasm, always. Her trust in us was unfathomable, her love was constant, dependable and given with no strings attached.
But behind Ruby’s friendly exterior lurked a more reserved character usually only exposed to her own kind. She had over time experienced unkindness from black tall dogs and being of such short stature and deaf never heard danger coming. Consequently she became wary of the other four legged kind. She like Laurie Andersons dog Lollabell, in her beautiful heart wrenching Eulogy to her husband Lou Reed and her dog, Ruby developed an almost agoraphobic fear of that which comes from above. Open spaces with other dogs were dangerous places. The market place is an open space. What could have become a problem for Ruby with her anxiety issues and diminishing use of her invaluable senses, was not. Instead we became her senses and helped her, until we didn’t.
The space Ruby filled is now a bottomless abattoir of sadness. A void. Grief is immense and we are reminded of her absence everywhere we go, everything we do. It lurks in places we are familiar with, places that once comforted us have become empty and and silent.
No more little white movements out the corner of your eye. Just deathly quiet and still.
We look around and can’t see her. Her little white blur is not there wandering around the house to remind us we belong here, we are needed here.
She is not there to greet us when we come home, she is not there to wait for us. She no longer sits waiting at the door to be let in and out and in and out, she isn’t there at the exact time indicating it’s feed time, my man has lost his companion; she is not there when he starts up the vehicle eager to go for a drive, to do deliveries, or to just get in the car and go nowhere. She is not there eagerly waiting for the little people like Ollie and Pops and Percy when the sound of their little steps heralds their arrival, and she won’t be anywhere when people ask ‘Where is Ruby’. Even our hunter, the second hand cat senses her gone. There will be no little children to come up to pat her, no smiling strangers will lean in and let their dog say hello.
Her absence makes us look lonely, our walks pointless, our trips to the beach senseless, and going to the market uncomfortable, as though we have forgotten something. Empty handed. Lost.
All our routines, habits and responsibilities are surplus to requirements. We are left in limbo. We don’t need to say her name anymore. Her leash is limp, her collar slack, car seat empty, food bowl dry, beds are cold.
We were her senses. We swore to watch for her in the driveway when she was inclined to go on one of her ghost like auto pilot wanderings, sniffing the same old places with the only sense she had in full working capacity, her nose. She, oblivious of what was happening around her and unable to hear. We knew the driveway and all the vehicles were a danger for her. We talked about it and shut gates, and kept an eye out.
We never saw tragedy waiting for us when we arrived home from the market, we never saw it and we near heard it and neither did our loving little friend Ruby. Her pointy backward facing ears, of which dog whisperer Cesar Millan would have been most proud, would it turns out be her downfall as would our fatal moment of distraction.
Dying it seems serves no other point other than to leave those who love us, suffering, afloat without a rudder. All one is left with is grief as a life buoy.
Death and grief are things my culture does not do very well. When it happens it reminds you of the times it has happened before, but only then. In between those times we are usually oblivious of it. We don’t even have the ability to easily recognise someone who is grieving, suffering as a result of a close death, person or animal, no arm band, no black mourning. It’s as though it never happens until it does.
According to Tibetan Buddhist teachings on death, one is better to feel sorrow but not to cry. Our bowls are full of tears.
Ruby cried when we left her, once, in a kennel. The owner told me. Meanwhile we visited an old family burial compound in Indonesia. They are common features of many villages. It was in the Hindu tradition; decorative, brick and stone shrines; to mark the passing of family relatives and even much loved animals. They are sited close to the family home.
The family is celebrated as a tight unit in Hindu and Buddhist tradition, as is the family home. The old live with the new. The family shrines are personal expressions of family’s ties to those places. They matter. Change is an accepted part of life in Buddhist cultures, death is one of those changes. The significance of this is probably lost on most of us Westerners who have the tendency to shift relentlessly from house to house during a lifetime, to scale down, scale up, move on and harbour habits along the way like discarding our relatives to rest homes and dogs to homeless shelters.
Where is Ruby? Samsara is Sanskrit for rebirth in the Buddhist culture, and upon death if we do not reach the nirvana of release during our lives we will have to endure the go-around again; to be reborn at death in another form.
Nirvana is then the ultimate goal when we die, to be free, from suffering. But it depends how we lived. Kind of like a social ranking; the ‘three poisons’ if practiced will hinder our chances of making it there. They are greed, aversion and delusion. To avoid this we need to be less greedy, less judgemental, and aware, not to be confused with woke. Otherwise upon death we continue the suffering by being reborn, again and again and again and dying, again again and again.
We know our grief will wane, but her absence will always be there in those places she use to fill. Those spaces will finally be filled by Ruby’s wonderful legacy. We like to think Ruby will be in Nirvana about now. She got a free ticket. She met all the criteria for a life of rest and freedom from suffering. She was so generous with her love it was contagious and rubbed off on all who ever had the honour of meeting her. We never had a nicer dog. We were lucky.
Ruby’s cries were haunting, child like as we tried to help her in her final moments. A moment of inattention was all it took. We were not there to keep her safe. She was put to sleep an hour after closing time at the market. She had had a wonderful day as had we in her company.
It felt like the only purpose of death was to make us suffer, but no, we have come to realise after many loved ones have left us; people and animals, that the purpose of death is to release love.
Ruby we realised, was a Bodhisattva; she acted by some deep compassionate generosity of spirit within her. If you are fortunate enough to meet this kind of generosity, you know it. You cannot help but be embraced by it. She was able to express it and although generosity of spirit seeks results, expressing it does not require them. This made her a great teacher.
Understanding this makes her next journey and ours just a little more bearable. It makes the places that are empty just a little more welcoming and it provides us with hope.
We have built a shrine for Ruby, close to us, at her home to remind us.
