Eulogy for a dog that loved to chase cows

There are dogs of distinguished pedigree, dogs with certificates and impressive ancestral lines, and then there are dogs like Gemsquash, whose origins were somewhat more romantic and considerably less certain.

She was a child of passion. A combination of breeds had conspired to produce a creature of considerable width, modest height, and an entirely disproportionate sense of duty.

She came to me when she was eight weeks old, a small, warm bundle of life that fitted comfortably against my chest. In those early days, before children and all the other things, I would lie in bed with her and listen to her little heartbeat.

In the years before we moved to a farm, we lived in a small Karoo town where cattle occasionally wandered down the road, labouring under the misapprehension that the municipal boundaries extended to whatever gardens took their fancy. My flowers were of great interest.

Gemsquash, who stood approximately three feet off the ground and appeared to measure six feet across, considered this an intolerable infringement of property rights.

At the first sight of an approaching cow, she would launch herself down the road with all the determination of a sheepdog at a national trial. That the cattle were much larger than she seemed never to occur to her. Nor did the possibility that they might turn around and object.

The courage of dogs is a curious thing. They seem entirely unconcerned with the odds. They recognise a threat, however loosely defined, and respond according to some ancient and unshakeable conviction that the things they love are worth defending.

For Gemsquash, those things included me, my flowers, and the small patch of earth we called home. Then, as happens in life, things changed. My children were born, and the little dog who had once occupied the centre of my universe found herself gently displaced by two small humans whose needs were more demanding.

She accepted this with a grace that I suspect few people could have managed. There was no resentment, no great display of wounded dignity. She simply made room.

By then, another dog had entered our lives, a rescue whose beginnings had been almost unimaginably cruel. As a puppy, she and her siblings had been tied inside a sack and thrown into a river to drown. Against the odds, she survived and was rescued, and Gemsquash took her under her wing.

What had once been a life organised around me became a life organised, in large part, around her adopted sister. The two were inseparable. They slept together, wandered together, and kept each other company through the ordinary, uneventful hours that make up most of a dog's existence.

I sometimes wondered whether Gemsquash understood what had happened to her companion before she came to us. Whether dogs possess some instinctive knowledge of suffering in others, or whether companionship is something they offer without needing a reason. Whatever the explanation, she rarely left her sister's side.

But every now and then she left her sister to sleep at my feet. I liked to think she was remembering the years before the children, before the second dog, before the great rearrangement of our household. The years when it had been just the two of us, and I had lain awake listening to the astonishingly small heartbeat of a creature who trusted me completely.

When we eventually moved to a farm, Gemsquash found herself presented with an entirely new assortment of cattle to supervise. Time had done little to diminish her convictions.

There was a deranged Jersey milk cow who once took it upon herself to storm my small son while we were out walking. Gemsquash, whose dimensions were still singularly unsuited to confronting livestock, did not hesitate. She chased the cow away.

And then there was the Jersey bull. He was a stately, generally peaceable fellow who occasionally trespassed into the garden to feast on forbidden grass.

Gemsquash regarded him as a personal affront. There was something wonderfully absurd about watching this broad little dog confront an animal of such magnificent proportions. The bull, for his part, always retreated.

Gemsquash never revised her opinion of herself. She had been appointed guardian of the garden many years before, and a change of address was no reason to abandon her post.

When a beloved animal dies, we speak of their loyalty and unconditional love. What I find myself thinking about instead are the small accommodations of a shared life.

How she moved aside when the children arrived and made herself indispensable to a dog who had known cruelty before she knew kindness. The way she returned, sometimes, to the foot of my bed, as though to remind us both that nothing which came afterwards had erased what came before.

And, of course, the cows. I will remember her chasing cows. The tender courage of a small dog who believes herself responsible for the safety of a household.

Gemsquash lived through several versions of my life. She knew me before I was a mother. She accompanied me into motherhood. She moved with us from town to farm, watched our family grow, and found new purposes for herself as the years passed.

Our dogs accept the changing shape of our lives with a generosity that we ourselves often struggle to summon. And then, one day, they are gone.

The children grow and the cows continue their trespasses. The ordinary machinery of life continues, indifferent to the absence of a small, wide dog who once considered herself its guardian.

But there is still an eight-week-old puppy sleeping against my chest, her little heart beating steadily. Had I only known then how much of my life she would accompany me through.

𝑊𝒊𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝙝𝙖𝗻𝑘𝘴 𝐟𝘰𝑟 𝑟𝙚𝐚𝒅𝒊𝑛𝙜,
𝘕𝘰🅼𝗶.