Loyalty in twelve pieces

It began as formulaic storytelling but soon fell apart. This is a true story, I wrote. It’s a true story about one family, one dog (and the dog before her), I wrote next. It’s a story about loyalty, I wrote next. It’s broken, I wrote next.

This was the problem, a story broken and played out over many years. Recent events must be set within/against prior events. The story could not be composed or ‘reassembled’ in customary ways. It lay scattered around my bare feet in shards of glass mirroring episodes of grief, shame, and betrayal.  

I had hoped I might, by choosing loyalty as my theme, gather the shards into a single, unifying piece. A beginning, middle, and end. Writing as a small act of atonement in the narrowest sense of the word: the story should show that I am sorry for doing something bad, something wrong. For days into weeks into months, I tried to tell it, this broken story with loyalty as its theme. Soon, I was neck-deep in false starts, opening lines, middle passages, and even a few endings. But every effort to unify fell back into pieces. Every session sent me running from my desk. I thought about abandoning it for other, easier writings. But this story monstered every path. I must slay it or write nothing at all.

Loyalty remains my theme, but I cannot glue the shards of glass back together. The disparate elements and moments of my story remain fragments of a broken mirror, some larger and more important than others, but most with sharp edges that never will soften. I can only carefully pick up one piece at a time, hold it, cut my fingers on it, gaze at it, write it, and then gently put it back down by my bare feet. In the end, I may (I hope) rise to the balls of my feet ballerina-style, and tip-toe away from the past. Not to forget or let go of the past (I don’t believe in that), but to live forward more calmly.

Here, then, are my twelve pieces:

~one~

As a word and idea, loyalty must carry me to disloyalty and, I hope, back again, because there is never one (loyalty) without the other (disloyalty). The world is overrun by opposites. We can only give meaning to one in its relation to the other: so here, loyalty-dis-loyalty-dis-loyalty-dis… and so on until the end of life.

~two~

If loyalty suggested itself as a theme when I sat down to write, it is because of something my father said to me in a conversation that seems, in retrospect, to mark the beginning of this story-in-pieces, or at the very least, its prequel.

In April 2011, I called my father from London to tell him that my marriage had ended suddenly and painfully. It was not a long call. As always, Dad was clear in his questions, solid and supportive in practical suggestions, and emotionally intelligent. He could do all this, my dad. Maybe that’s why I miss him so much when things go wrong.

But he was human and we are all overly reliant on words. At the end of the call, he made one small remark that did not feel clear, carried no practical advice, and did not feel immediately supportive.

“You are about to learn the meaning of loyalty,” my father said.

After I put the phone down and at various points during the months that followed our call, I wondered what my father meant. I still wonder. I never asked him. And the time for asking ran out a year later when he died as unexpectedly as my marriage had died. Now, here in 2024, my life has taken a turn that makes me wonder about it again. You are about to learn the meaning of loyalty.

So, what did my father mean at the time?

Was he referring to disloyalty, suggesting that I ought to grow up a little and not be so shocked by the all-too-human disloyalty of others? Was it a kind of tough love, a life lesson my father was sharing? That I should sip the bitter wine, then make my choices and go on living (or not) with a disloyal other. Forgiveness, in this scenario, was a pragmatic possibility. “Life is sad, life is a bust, all you can do is do what you must,” sang Dylan in the background to the question.

Or was Dad siding with me in a kind of paternal allegiance by passing judgment solely upon my husband? Yep, Amy, you’ve got a disloyal one there. As your father, I say time to move on. A conservative old guy from the previous generation, he would have considered my husband’s affairs to be acts of disloyalty, and plain wrong. Perhaps he was giving me a lesson in how not to forgive. Was that his meaning? He could be severe in his judgments, my dad.

Or were his 1950s (organization man) conformist tendencies in play? Maybe he was embarrassed by both of us for allowing this to happen to our marriage. Maybe he was wondering how he might present me to his friends when I visited without a husband on my arm. As a proud man who liked to ‘show off’ his daughter, and a man whose pride might be bound up with notions of the ‘loyal wife,’ was he casting some of the shame upon me? Was the break-up my fault? In this scenario, my father was resisting the collapse of my marriage for a not-very-good reason: a daughter should be married.

I know – as I write this – that the meaning of loyalty is becoming murkier by the minute. I’m good with that.  

I suppose my father may not have known fully what he meant. To him, it was an unremarkable remark. He was growing old. He was losing his eyesight. “Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to keep an old car on the road,” he once told me, a Ford man to the end. So, as an old guy, a widower aiming to enjoy his twilight years, he hoped not to worry about his children anymore. The collapse of my marriage would make him worry all over again. I suppose some part of him hoped for an eventual reconciliation. This may explain why after that phone call, he never uttered a word - good or bad - about my ex-husband, not to me anyway. Keeping shtum was just good policy.

~three~

A few working definitions of loyalty (and my humble advice as a writer: never write a piece without getting hung up on at least one word. Its meanings and usages, its missed or lost meanings and misuses, why we love or hate it, how it fools us, how we get it wrong, how we make it our own and bend it to our purposes, and so on.) Lose days over that word if you must. Here are the words that are currently bothering me: loyalty/disloyalty, trust, fidelity, empathy. There will be more by the end of this piece, but I won’t bore you with them. You surely possess your own.

In the case of loyalty, there are private and public meanings, the latter to do with patriotism and allegiance to one’s country. I am interested here in the private meanings:

“Loyalty is the quality of staying firm in your friendship or support for someone or something.” (Collins Dictionary)

From a Dictionary of Etymology:

loyalty (n.)

c. 1400, from Old French loialte, leaute "loyalty, fidelity; legitimacy; honesty; good quality" (Modern French loyauté), from loial (see loyal). The Medieval Latin word was legalitas. The earlier Middle English form was leaute (mid-13c.), from the older French form… Loyalty is a matter of both principle and sentiment, conduct and feeling; it implies enthusiasm and devotion ...

disloyalty (n.)

"want of loyalty, unfaithful behavior," early 15c., disloialte, from a variant of Old French desloiaute, desleauté "disloyalty, faithlessness, marital infidelity," from desloial, desleal "treacherous, false, deceitful" (Modern French déloyal), from des- "not, opposite of" (see dis-)…

And from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a few helpful passages:

“Loyalty is usually seen as a virtue, albeit a problematic one. It is constituted centrally by perseverance in an association to which a person has become intrinsically committed as a matter of his or her identity. Its paradigmatic expression is found in close friendship, to which loyalty is integral, but many other relationships and associations seek to encourage it as an aspect of affiliation or membership: families expect it, organizations often demand it, and countries do what they can to foster it.

“But feelings of loyalty are probably not constitutive of loyalty… Arguably, the test of loyalty is conduct rather than intensity of feeling, primarily a certain “stickingness” or perseverance—the loyal person acts for or stays with or remains committed to the object of loyalty even when it is likely to be disadvantageous or costly to the loyal person to remain so.

“…one need not (indeed, ought not to) enter into associations blindly, or—even when they are initially unavoidable (as with familial or national ones)—accept their demands unthinkingly. Moreover, once made, such commitments may be forfeited by the objects of loyalty should there be serious failure on their part, or they may be overridden in the face of significantly greater claims. One loyalty may trump another; other values may trump loyalty.”

~four~

In the heat of those days surrounding the phone call with my dad, loyalty – in all directions – entered a protracted crisis. Certainly, the theme of loyalty had definitively entered my life and my specific thoughts about marriage, if not yet my writing.

I’ve now had more than ten years to think about loyalty in marriage/relationships and I’ve concluded that too often, it implies fidelity, staying with the other person even at the cost of loyalty to oneself. As such, loyalty - at least in the context of marriage - is not something I rate all that highly. I rate honesty higher. Or I might put it this way: honesty – to oneself and the other - is a better way to show loyalty. It is about speaking and what is spoken. Had my husband spoken (however hard, and when it was needed), things might have gone better between us, whatever our eventual outcome.

~five~

I return to the mystery of my father’s words. You are about to learn the meaning of loyalty. What might his remark mean to me now, in the long aftermath of marriage and divorce? Why did I gradually conclude that, in the context of marriage, I did not rate loyalty all that highly? More than that, I found a measure of understanding for my husband’s actions, if not his lies. I saw his inalienable right to live as he wished. His right to leave. My right to leave and live as I wished. And I saw too that our parting brought unexpected gifts along with its pain. 

I once heard a historian discussing the longer lifespan many moderns now take more or less for granted. He noted that this meant marriages too – in the sense of ‘till death do us part’ – were expected to carry the bonus of longer lives. And that this was, at least for some humans, a burden. Some happily stay the course; some dutifully stay the course. But we also know that the very idea of marriage, the pressure to marry, the pressure to remain together – all of these have weakened considerably and for good reasons.

Might it not be acceptable for couples to experience a general weakening of desire, shared dreams or interests, daily compatibility, or whatever particular threads tie any two people together? Might our added decades of life make it possible for us to meet and desire a second or third person with the fervor of first love? Or might we come to regard romantic love as of lesser importance than friendships and other life projects? We begin to see love in its glorious diversity. Those of my generation may recall the 1971 film, Harold and Maude, a love story between an old woman on the cusp of a planned and desired suicide and a suicidal youth searching for reasons to live. I was not yet twenty when it came out, but the film dared me to rethink love’s scripts or, as Cat Stevens sang on its soundtrack, “There’s a million ways to go / You know that there are.”

Beyond the questions of romantic love and marriage, some of us begin to feel diminished by the requirements of coupledom itself. Some of us might not wish to answer every question about our doings with the answer we, but rather with I: I am doing this or that. I am going there on holiday. I am thinking this. Married people often describe their lives in the first-person plural. The prevalence of ‘we’ is one of the first things that newly single people may notice about their married friends.

These are tiny, but significant observations. They have a way of piling up. Yet, even as we free ourselves of them, we may continue to long for the we, for the pursuit of I can be as scary as it is tantalizing. Yes, it would be a lie to pretend one can land wholly on one side of the question or another. There’s the rub.

In 2019, some seven years after my marriage ended, I opened Deborah Levy’s book, The Cost of Living. A few pages in, I experienced a flash of recognition, my own ambivalence perfectly rendered: 

“Life falls apart. We try to get a grip and hold it together. And then we realize we don’t want to hold it together… When I was around fifty and my life was supposed to be slowing down, becoming more stable and predictable, life became faster, unstable, unpredictable. My marriage was the boat and I knew that if I swam back to it, I would drown. It is also the ghost that will always haunt my life. I will never stop grieving for my long-held wish for enduring love that does not reduce its major players to something less than they are.”[1]

During the years between our break-up and Levy’s book, I did a fair amount of complaining about what a rough time I’d had of it all. But in truth, I was already swimming in Levy’s waters. I was growing powers that had not been realizable in my marriage. There was a new happiness born of agency, autonomy, and the knowledge that I was singularly responsible for my choices and changes. If I sometimes longed for romantic love and the faithful company of one other, then this was, increasingly, like the ghost described by Levy rather than any real belief. I came to accept that I was stronger and more contented single and with good friends than married or tied to a partner.

~six~

And I had a dog. I have previously written about Agnes, the Labrador left to my care when our marriage ended: her life and happiness were in my hands. I was her world. For a long while, I felt trapped in ways I had not experienced before. Leaving Agnes for more than a few hours, staying out all night, travel, longer holidays away – these became difficult or costly. Every walk, every meal, every act of love must come from me. There were few choices I could make about housing, about where and how to work and live that did not have Agnes at the heart of them. At times, she seemed to embody a larger grief. Agnes was both the last reminder of my marriage and the last unsolved problem of divorce.

We walked every day. Long walks, short walks. Rain, sunshine, wind, snow. The two of us alone, or with friends and other dogs. At home, I turned to look at her. She opened one eye. I pushed my chair back from my desk. She lifted her head to watch me. I left the room to pour another coffee or rattle around in the kitchen. She lumbered in behind me. I went out more often and left her behind. She did not like it, but she did not object. I had friends, work, meetings, parties, outings that could not include her. But I liked coming home and knowing she was there. At the end of each day, she joined me on the sofa. I massaged her aging joints until sleep came. In the morning, we sat together on the bed, I with my coffee, Agnes with a small dish of kibble to start the day.

My rhythms began to meld with hers; we were like the two images in a rangefinder camera, coming into alignment. The pleasure of that alignment, the labor of it, ever at risk, always sought. Likewise, our immediate concerns grew more compatible. Were we warm? Did we have a place to be? Food? Some company? I saw the humbling beauty of our having satisfied these basic needs. I worried less, grew quieter, and realized that her desires were not so far removed from mine. At a certain moment, we seemed to ‘age’ together, in our bones and muscles. Our femaleness achieved some mutuality. In time, I was at greater peace in myself, and with Agnes.

Something wonderful had happened without my knowing or willing it. Together, the two of us had endured difficult losses and changes. I had resisted them in ways that my dog seemed not to. It would be Agnes, in her silent constancy, who showed me how to ‘weather’ changes without denying them. I slipped into dog-time where we were safe and unconcerned about yesterday and tomorrow.

Loyalty came from Agnes to me, and I gave it back to her. I saw her through to the end. She died at home, aged fourteen, nine years after the collapse of my marriage. Sitting with her lifeless body, I held her and thanked her and hoped I might retain all she had taught me. I understood that Agnes, in her dogness, had made me a better human.

~seven~

Not long after Agnes died:

Amy: Now, I am alone.

Agnes: You are not alone.

Amy:  You’re dead. I am alone. It’s now that I feel most unloved and afraid.

Agnes: Think of it this way. We are on a long walk. I have wandered off the path into the woods. Let me go where I wish. Love is the same wherever I am. Remember me, Amy. And keep walking.

~eight~

During those last years with Agnes and after her death, my thinking about dogs underwent a sea change. It began with readings in my own field of Cultural History where I belatedly took note of the theoretical turn to Animal Studies. I read Derrida (The Animal That Therefore I Am, and more), Donna Haraway (When Species Meet; The Companion Species Manifesto, and other texts), Levinas (“the face of the Other” / “the language of the eyes”) and numerous more recent scholars developing philosophies of language, communication, companionship, empathy, and other topics relating to non-human animals and human-animal relations.[2]

Historians were slower to arrive at the post-Humanist party (many have not arrived at all), so I was grateful to come across Eric Baratay (Les Animaux dans L’Histoire; Feline Cultures: Cats Create Their History, and more) alongside Dominick LaCapra’s Understanding Others: Peoples, Animals, Pasts) with its specific use of Freudian concepts of transference and ‘working through’ to examine human-animal relations.

“History, constructed by human societies, is always recounted as an adventure that only concerns humans (l’homme). However, animals have participated or still participate abundantly in the great events or in the slow phenomena of civilization.” (Baratay, Le point de vue animal: Une autre version de l’histoire)

LaCapra notes a growing attention to animals in some historical studies, citing for example, Hilda Kean’s The Great Cat and Dog Massacre: The Real Story of World War Two’s Unknown Tragedy, and

“the largely repressed or suppressed story of the panicked killing of companion animals by the people of London during the first four days of World War II. Over 400,000 animals were killed, a number six times that of civilian deaths from bombing during the entire course of the war. Two contrasting reasons offered by Kean are the concern of ‘owners’ for loved animals ‘sacrificed’ to avoid their suffering the harsh effects of war, and absence of provision by the government for companion animals seen as useless ‘luxury’ goods taking scarce resources from humans.” (LaCapra, Understanding Others)

But LaCapra is pursuing more than the insertion of animals into our historical accounts:

“I would also like to maintain that the turn to other animals as an integral concern of history and the humanities is not simply the inclusion of another research topic in the agenda of scholars and students. It is a move that implies a reconceptualization of historical studies and the humanities in general… A post-humanistic approach is both after and beyond humanism… it is embedded in a wide-ranging relational or multidimensional perspective not centered on the human being. It is typical in many indigenous cultures for which the human is part of a broader web including all others in the world.” (Understanding Others)

~nine~

Although some Animal Studies scholars have grounded their work in accounts of personal relations with dogs, there is surprisingly little engagement between post-humanist theory, canine cognition and psychology, and recent contributions by dog behaviourists. Yet the latter are practicing and extending the ideas found in all these fields. Take a brief look at recent changes in ‘dog training’ terminology.  Dog ‘ownership’ is morphing into a ‘companion animal’ relationship. We humans are not dog owners, but companions and caregivers.

More importantly, we are now encouraged to practice ‘consent’ and ‘force-free’ methods and to foster a dog’s trust, confidence, and feelings of safety. We pay greater attention to physical and emotional pain in dogs that may be causing particular behaviours, and in more general terms, seek ways to understand behaviours before trying to change them. What is the dog telling us when she barks, reacts, growls, hides under tables, pulls on the lead, refuses to walk, and the full range of possible bodily communications?

Do animals not deserve the same rights to understanding and therapeutic responses that we humans expect for ourselves? Increasingly, dog behaviourists are drawing on psychoanalytic work, attachment theory, trauma theory, progressive learning and parenting models, intersectionality, and ideas concerning empathy, compassion, and fairness between species.

After Agnes died, I fell in love with the work of these behaviourists. It was as if they came to confirm things she had been teaching me during our years together, things I only began to grasp over time. I began to follow the work of Andrew Hale, a Devon-based ‘trainer’ who exemplifies the best of these developments. If you have a dog – even if you do not have a dog, I recommend Andrew’s Facebook page - Dog centered care: the emotional experience of dogs and their caregivers. The site includes posts by Andrew and guests covering all aspects of dog care and our relations with dogs.

Here are excerpts from a recent post by Andrew:

“I have three dogs. They are all different, and all came with a range of challenges and support needs. Over the time they have been with me, I have learned what I can about them: their characters, their safety needs, and most importantly their communication styles and preferences. I try not to put task ahead of care and try to consider their emotional experience in all we do together.

“…I wouldn’t want to inflict any discomfort on them because I kept putting them in positions it was clear they couldn’t cope with, and then attempt to ‘correct’ them for the behaviour that comes next. I wouldn’t want to enforce my version of normal on them by making them behave in a way that only suited a human narrative, but didn’t support their own safety and need for relief. I don’t expect obedience from my husband. My friends. Or my family. And that includes my dogs…This is why I talk about moving from task to care.

“…The real challenge is that these other, more dog-centric and better options, often need the human to let go of some of their human-centric outlooks and expectations… Especially… when the general public has been so heavily conditioned into dogs being ‘obedient’ and being fed the whole dominance thing.

“…We need to stop arguing over how best to do ‘task’ and focus our language and education more on care – the learning from, and supporting of, that beautiful, emotionally rich, sentient being at our feet. Care first, task can follow. That is what this group is all about.” (Andrew Hale)

And Andrew’s working method, taken from his website Dog Centred Care | Train Positive:

“A Dog Centred Care approach invites carers and dog professionals to explore the emotional experience that drives dog behaviour and move beyond the usual judgements, expectations and labels that can often hold us back.

“Dogs share many of the emotional and physiological responses we do. Like us, their behaviour will be driven by how they are ‘feeling,’ and the only way they can communicate that emotional need is through their behaviour. Often the dog is seeking some form of ‘relief’ to feel differently- this might be relief from either physical pain or emotional pain. There will also be a drive to feel safe, and often many dogs who exhibit challenging behaviours are feeling very unsafe indeed.

“When we understand this emotional drive, we can move away from the traditional emphasis of arbitrarily creating/changing behaviours. Instead, we can find ways to offer the dog the relief and safety they seek, support behaviours that are innately useful to them.

“Canine behavioural science has had huge advances in recent years, in both our understanding of, and support of, dogs and their behaviour. It is important that we understand the neurological, biological, psychological and physiological components that make up dogs’ lived experience, and we owe it to them to treat that experience with knowledge, compassion and empathy.”

~ten~

Agnes died in December 2019. A month later, the UK had its first documented case of Covid 19. I paid it no mind. With Agnes gone, I had decided I would travel and was planning trips to France and the States. I would visit friends and family not seen for a long while, after which I would visit new places. I was considering courses in canine communication, although – still raw with grief about Agnes and with my long-delayed travel hopes now a possibility - I was not ready for another dog in my life. Then, in March, the country went into lockdown.

Was it the lockdown that brought my ex-husband back into contact? Like me, he was now single, perhaps longing for the old ties of family. Our son was living in America at the time. Agnes had died. Here in England, our family was down to two battle-weary factions. We came together again.

Not like before. Not as husband and wife, although in retrospect I see that we may not have held the same ideas when it came to the single/relationship question. Certainly, there was some initial confusion and uncertainty between us, and we blurred some boundaries. But in a matter of months, we began to grow something that was both new and old. Dare I speak it in the present context? It was new loyalty derived from old history, our long and complicated story as lovers, married people, and parents. It was perhaps a deceptive loyalty heightened by the lockdown. Did romance run through it? Yes, at times. But so did a sense of this being something other than ‘coupledom.’ There were few promises made or needed as we created a loving friendship and a reconstituted sense of family. Henceforth, we would ‘be there’ for one another and for our son. That was the gist of it.

For me, a desire for family, this time without the trap(pings) of marriage proved powerful. It was that old yellow brick road. And like Dorothy, I set off only to discover - belatedly - that it would not get me home. Along the way, I passed plenty of lions and tigers and bears – plenty of evidence that my ex and I were the same two people we always had been. The differences that wore down our relationship in its previous iterations were all still there. But again like Dorothy, I sang Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my! And kept going.

~eleven~

Then, I made a terrible mistake. Every family must have a dog. This has been true all my life. With no end in sight for lockdown, I began to long for a dog. I longed and longed and longed. And finally, I gave in to my longing. I can blame no other for this decision. It was mine alone. Yes, it was perhaps made in the cozy domesticity of lockdown and the glow of renewed family, but no other person made the decision. It was down to me. Yet Gladys arrived and it is fair to say that we both fell in love with her. This tiny, loving, frisky, complicated, brown Spaniel seemed to bind us together. Again. For three years, she lit up both our lives. She was my decision and responsibility, but she spent time with both of us, and I fooled myself into believing that I had a lasting and reliable backup in her care.

Then, as before, my ex left us. History, it seemed, would repeat and repeat itself as both tragedy and farce. I tried to believe I could do it all again, as I had with Agnes. I reminded myself that I had brought Gladys into my life. Gladys and I kept going.

Despite my new thinking and learning about dogs, I knew I was battling the same frustration as before, the same sense of being trapped and immobilized as her sole carer. And perhaps because of my new thinking and learning about dogs, I saw that Gladys was struggling too. She witnessed our bitter parting arguments, and these unsettled her. But more than that, she had lost a loved person. She lost her favorite walk along the river near his home. She lost riding in his car, her nose twitching excitedly as we approached the beach. She lost watching the sheep from his bedroom window, his arm steadying her as she stood on her back legs for a better look. She lost burrowing between us in bed. She lost the safety of two people in harmony with one another and with her. Her world had shrunk and it was not good for her.

I saw changes in Gladys. She became more sensitive to noises outside the house, and more nervous generally both in the house and out on walks. I watched her, tried to understand, and made adjustments. She was grieving a lost person and a lost sense of family, as was I. She was down to me, down to one person. I believe this left her feeling frustrated and unsafe. I tried hard to take pressure off her so that she could find the time and space to feel safe and happy again, but I was not feeling terribly safe or happy myself.

I kept going but increasingly, I knew I could not do it again. I could not be everything to her. I could not sacrifice my remaining years to her total care. I could not bring sufficient safety to either of us. There would be decisions to make about the house and where to live, and I knew from experience that the presence of a dog makes that harder. She needed more than one person in her life and a household that felt secure.

Finally, I took the painful decision to rehome her. I chose a rehoming charity that gave the assurance no kennel would be involved. Gladys would go from my home to her new home via foster care. Despite the overwhelming kindness and patience of the charity workers, it was a grave and distressing process: many hard discussions, forms to fill in, vet records, relinquishing legal ‘ownership’ (I hated thinking of her that way), the writing of a long, detailed letter to the foster carers about Gladys herself, her specific needs, the final days spent with her, and finally, the day of giving her up.

Her departure was, I believe, the most difficult thing I have ever done. She was brave and sweet throughout and I remained composed for her, even as I felt all the worst things - heart-wrenching pain and sadness, self-blame, terribly worried about her, terribly sorry, and many other emotions. At the very last moment, I struggled to let go of her and I don't think I can ever erase from my mind the image of her face turned to me with confusion, trust, and love. Our two lives changed for good.

~twelve~

There is no single view, feeling, or certainty about the future that can ever follow from this sad history. Through no fault of her own, Gladys found herself at the heart of an old, bigger story of two people and another dog.

I receive regular news and photographs of Gladys. She is settling, somewhat nervously, in her new home. She is with good people who also follow the recent work and thinking of dog behaviorists. But it is no longer within my power to assure her future. No amount of worrying or thinking about her can alter that.

Yet I think of her every day and her face is ever before me. I tell myself that however terrible the decision was, it was one I had to take – for myself and for her. I will never fully believe this, but yes, there is truth in it. I tell myself that I must now make my own happiness and Gladys must make hers – that the best act of love and faith between us will be to find happiness apart.

But I have lost belief in myself as a ‘good person.’ I am a person who gave up a dog, an innocent life that depended on me for love and care. That is never going to be easy to live with. I hope to find a measure of peace about it, but it is there forever, a part of who I am. 

Perhaps, dear Dad, I have finally learned the meaning of loyalty: that it is not about what others do to us, but what we do to others. I don’t know. But that is how it seems today.

Afterword: for Gladys

Gladys, never think it was because I loved you less than Agnes or any other being, human or otherwise. If anything, I loved, and still love you more.

You were more like a child than any dog I have ever known. In this, you were not like Agnes who always seemed happier in her skin as a dog. You were less comfortable in yourself, more bewildered by the world, more worried by it. Your puppy illnesses (and there were some difficult ones), your shyness, and your sensitivity to the world and all its noise and confusion – all these made me a protective mother again. When you pushed your way under the duvet to burrow against me in the night, your body curled into mine, a soft radiator of trust, I knew the joy of keeping another being safe in the dark. And I felt safe too. I am told you do this with your new people and I can only think how lucky they are.

Sometimes, I think about Joni Mitchell and the lyrics of Little Green: You sign all the papers in the family name / You’re sad and you’re sorry, but you’re not ashamed / Little Green, have a happy ending.

Gladys, little brown. Why am I in so much pain over your name? Your name is the touchpoint between me and you, human and dog. I chose it, yet you have always inhabited it fully. You carry your name sweetly and with quirks that are your own. You are a dog, but just as each person is a unique human, you are a unique dog. You are Gladys.

When we have hurt someone in life, is that someone our last thought when we die? Will Gladys be the last word in my old mind?

Gladys, I hope you are not waiting for me. I know that dogs wait. I know that as a lockdown puppy, you struggled with separation when lockdown measures eased. We were working on it. Each night, after dinner, I took a short walk without you so that you might grow accustomed to my leaving you more. Each time, I gave you a deliciously filled ‘kong’ right before stepping out. At first, you refused to touch it until I had returned. When I returned, there you were, waiting patiently but nervously. Then you tackled your kong. But progress was made: eventually, you took the kong eagerly, carried it into the sitting room to enjoy, and appeared not to notice my departure. When I returned, there you were again, waiting by the door, emptied kong on the floor.

People like to say that dogs live in the present. Friends have tried to comfort me with that thought. But I know that dogs wait in expectation of a return by their loved one. Dogs have memory too, we see it all the time: remembered faces, walks, locations, games. All of these require a capacity to live temporally, to possess ‘tenses’ in some form: a grasp of past, present, future. I wish I could take comfort in thinking that you will forget our past, forget me in every present moment, and never wait for me to return. But I cannot. I can only hope that your new loved ones have taken my place in your mind as fully as possible. I hope you love them more, and in all the tenses.

About waiting, again. I still wait for you, Gladys. I wait for news and photos they send of you. When they come, I feel some relief. But mostly, they cause me grief. I only cry more, worry more, feel sorrier. Someday, the news will stop coming. Life goes on. Perhaps that will be for the best. I don’t know.

Gladys, please don’t be frightened. For a dog, change must be frightening in ways that no human can understand. This is the thought I cannot bear. I can only call out to you in my dreams, please don’t be frightened, Gladys.

When I wake in the morning and you are not there, I experience a shuddering, visceral longing for you. To hold you, kiss your soft coat, and reassure you. To enjoy our coffee and kibble morning, a legacy of Agnes that you embraced wholeheartedly!

For better or worse, you and I will never reach the end of the end, Gladys. “We go on having relationships with [lives] whether they are present or absent. Indeed, they are often at their most intense and intimate when they are absent.” (Adam Phillips)

Gladys, the charity cannot divulge your new address. But I know that you live about an hour away from me. This is strangely comforting. It is as though your spirit still reaches me. I wonder if you can still feel me, smell me. I hope so and I hope not.

I imagine bumping into you on a local beach with your new people. I know you would remember me, run to me, greet me with love and excitement. But who would you follow home?

And how awful, how confusing it would be for you to see me again. We cannot visit old dogs like we visit old friends. That would be cruelty to the dog.

Gladys, I will not erase you from my life and memory. I will not take down your photos. I have so many beautiful photos of you. At present, I cannot bear to look them. I fall apart each time, not because I don’t want to see you, but because I want too much to see you. I will return to the photos when I can, and treasure them.

"What she was, I can never know: how can one penetrate the soul of a dog?" wrote Colette Audry after the death of her dog, Douchka. It is this ‘not knowing’ that causes us to love our dogs more.

The experience of love as ‘not knowing’ the other, to accept and embrace this, is perhaps dogs’ greatest gift to us. It humbles us and quiets us. It makes us try harder. To spend our lives trying to know the mysterious other, finding joy and respect in the mutual trying between animal and human, in the flashes and moments of understanding – there is nothing like it.

I remember a recent day we came in from a muddy walk. I bathed you and we sat in the garden while your coat dried. You were sleepy but tracking birds and breezes. I made a video and watched you, and said, Gladys, what are you thinking? And admired the way you ignored my words in favor of sounds and scents.

Gladys, you are gone, but I won’t stop wondering about you. Who you are, where you are, what you are doing and thinking, what you are feeling. I will always be sorry and I will always love you.

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[1] Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living. Penguin Books, 2019. (p. 8).

[2] I am grateful to former colleague Lynn Turner, a key writer in this field, for sharing materials with me at various points, and I heartily recommend The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies edited by Lynn and others.