Saari's Tale

Saari is our wonderful Husky x German Shepherd who looks more like a wolf than a dog but who obviously forgot to stand in the queue marked "Brave Dogs" when they made her!!  2015 has been a sad year for her as she has lost 2 canine friends in 6 months.  We often wonder how she must feel about this.  We know when we had Poppy put down that Saari appeared to be terribly sad but obviously we had no idea what was really going through her mind.  A friend said that perhaps we should have shown her Poppy's body but we never did.  So when we had Harry put down, such a short while later, we did ... and I think we did the right thing.  

I know we cannot put human words and emotions into then minds and mouths of animals but would you grant me the indulgence, this once, to write how Saari might have felt and how she might have told her story of the last 6 months, had this been possible?     

The events in the following story are all fact but Saari's thoughts and emotions are pure fiction.

Saari's Tale - An Understanding

    "Just after the year changed and the light started to fight back against the dark, my beautiful friend left me.  We had both known for some time that the one they called Poppy had death growing inside her but that could not explain her disappearance.  The death that eats you from inside does so slowly and you gradually become thinner and weaker until one day you turn cold and your spirit flies on to the eternal place, leaving just a shell of your former being.  There was no cold body.  There was no shell.  My life had been split in two and half of it was gone.  I did not understand and the not knowing pained me greatly. 

    The arrival of the one they called Harry only served to remind me even more of my lost friend and I couldn't let him take her place.  But he was a fun spirit and over time he filled a small gap where once she had made me complete.  I warmed to his youthful energy and I took solace in the fact there was no death growing inside him.  He could never replace the one they called Poppy but I grew to like him greatly.

    Some 6 or 7 turns of the moon later loneliness was to descend on me for a second time.  The one they called Harry walked out of the door and never walked back in again.  But this time it was different.  After they had driven home and the one they called Harry did not trot through the door, I was shown to the car.  In the car was a box.  In the box was the cold body of my new friend, just an empty shell whose spirit had already departed.  Even before I looked in the box I knew what was there and in that moment I knew what I had to do.  I sat. I raised my head.  I howled.  One howl for his spirit, one howl for the spirit of the one they called Poppy and one howl from my deepest being -  3 howls of anguish but also 3 howls to ensure our spirits will once again be together when my body, too, becomes cold. 

    Now I understand.  They had killed the death inside the one they called Poppy but in doing so her spirit had left her for the freedom of that place eternal.   They had spared her the anguish of  a long painful end, waiting to become cold.   The one they called Harry was my friend for too few turns of the moon but he has given me the understanding I so desperately craved.  Now my life continues and whilst my friends are not here to share my day, this is how it has to be.  I now know that on the day when I become cold, my spirit will follow my howl and we will be reunited.  I understand."