Have I told you about my dog - 13 year-old Gingi Baru? We’ve been together for two years and it’s love. Also known as Lady Snorington, she spends most of her days snoozing on the highest pillow she can find and being that being beside me at all times.
Each day we go for walks around the neighbourhood or down on one of the local dog beaches. She loves the beach the best. It brings out the young pup in her. Chasing sand flies is her favourite thing to do. She’ll be trotting along when all of a sudden she’ll dart off after one and then zig zag back after another.
Her tail is like a propeller when she runs. Sometimes she just zooms off at speed until she’s almost out of sight then gallops back to me, ears flapping in the wind. She also likes getting wet, if only up to her belly. She’ll trot out with a receding wave only to be hit by an incoming surge of water that her little legs can’t beat. Rolling in the sand after such a rude incident is the perfect antidote and she does it with gay abandon.
In preparation for her older age, I bought a buggy which I attach to my folding bicycle to take her on rides around the district which she seems to enjoy enormously. I know I do.
Gingi is my first dog and I don’t know why I waited so long. Maybe it was so I could have her in particular, my old lady fur baby? She's a woman's best friend.
I am her third human. Her first died four years ago and she went to live with the runt of her last litter and her second human, my friend Susan. Two years later Susan broke her back in a car accident and couldn’t cope with both dogs pulling her hither and thither. So when I told her I loved Gingi, she said; “Do you want her?”. I didn't hesitate. YES!
We go camping together - she’s a great camp dog, even though her pedigree is pure Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I understand that, ever since the change of monarchs in the Commonwealth, the breed has muscled in on Corgi territory. And so it should.
My black and tan hound is just the best. She may be deaf and a bit silly but I love her just the same. She had 10 teeth removed when I first got her and I know that the future holds another fortune in vet bills. Nevertheless, she brings me joy.
They say that all the affection you pour into a dog is experienced by them too. They get the benefit from all those juicy pheromones just like we do when we cuddle them. It’s a win win.
There are of course a few downsides. I’ve become a champion progressive pooh-picker-uperer and regularly descend into ridiculous baby-speak. But it’s a small price to pay for the divine gift that is this dog. Even watching her when she's asleep gives me pleasure. As she twitches in R.E.M mode I imagine her in a parallel universe chasing ducks through the Newrybar Swamp where she grew up.
I know that, like us all, she too will one day die. I recently read that Cavelier's lifespan is usually between eight and twelve years so she's doing well for her advanced age, which in dog years is around 70.
I do hope she sticks around a little bit longer as we still have so much fun to share.