Bog Myrtle & Peat

As a farmer of beef cattle and a noisy advocate for the best of British, I am not so proud and principled to conceal the fact that I have sometimes enjoyed food from the faster end of the spectrum. You may occasionally find me in the drive-thru queue of MacDonald’s in Dumfries, bawling my order into an electronic box while the fumes of stationary vehicles prowl and stalk around my open window. 

On a recent visit, I had received my order through the customary slot and was preparing to eat from a heap of crumpled baggage and paper in my lap. Having been provided with a cardboard drinking straw with which to suck my Fanta, I turned in my seat and offered to blow it over my shoulder. Because this was a game I always played with my dog Scoop, who both loved and hated the sensation of being blowed upon through a straw. In fact, the experience thrilled her so deeply that as soon as I turned off the main road and into the carpark of MacDonald’s, she would be ready for it. Grinning and rolling her eyes in anticipation, she’d huff and jump from foot to foot, snapping her teeth in readiness and wagging her tail like a bumblebee’s wing. It was a ritual we both looked forward to, and she would receive a fingerful of chips for her troubles in the aftermath. But on this occasion, I had turned to blow upon her face before I remembered that she died in April – I was in the car on my own, and she has a crab apple tree growing on her grave. 

As a young dog, Scoop was an enormous part of my life. She went everywhere with me, and when I worked in the warehouse above Dundrennan, she would even follow me back and forth to the printer. In our own time, we solved crimes together and investigated the hill which formed the basis of this blog for almost ten years. She flushed blackgame and chased foxes, weaving through the rushes like a delirious banshee. She couldn’t be held back on shooting days, and when she worked through the heather in pursuit of grouse, I had to run behind her with my gun. And through that endless proximity, we became firm friends. 

In recent years, I’ve sometimes found dogs to be irritating and stressful; a clattering excess of information that I haven’t been able to process. But dogs are a reflection of what you put into them, and if you don’t have the patience or bandwidth to invest your attention, the relationship is doomed to be a loop of the dog’s insecurity and the owner’s impatience. I’m not so available to the world as I was nowadays, but having made a full investment in Scoop, I can vouch for the pleasure of a true and productive dynamic, particularly in the context of shooting and game. Because if a bird has fallen in bad cover, you understand how your dog could solve the problem – not just in generic terms of what a dog can and will not do, but in a more specific understanding of how your dog thinks. That’s the reward, and through pulling on strings which are only exposed through deep familiarity, the bond is continually strengthened and improved.

In her fading years, Scoop became more distant. She wasn’t able to come with me at a moment’s notice – particularly on cold, wet days which might have chilled her. She preferred to sleep beside the stove, and I would go without her. I noticed her absence at first, but the change became normal and she was happy to lounge in her basket until I came back. Sometimes she would sleep on my bed, but more often it was fine to hear her snoring in the night when some freak of panic or fretfulness had kept me up. And so we faded out of touch with one another, and we were no longer tied by the same old immediacy and excitement of detective work and collaboration.

Scoop was diagnosed with some kind of cancer in the autumn of last year. The illness gnawed her down to an ever-simpling span of activity, and then she was lost. While I remember her life in a broad narrative of companionship, the real sharpness comes in a web of ridiculous and unconnected associations; moments when I reach for her through habit and find that she’s gone, even in the puff of a drinking straw in a drive-thru carpark. That’s not only pain, but also a sudden associated shame that I could have forgotten what happened.

Explaining Scoop’s death to my three year old son, he seemed to take the information in good heart. I said “She’s gone to heaven” and he nodded carefully. But later he asked when she would be coming back from heaven, and I had to start my explanation again. Once the finality of her departure had dawned upon him, he took a brighter, more pragmatic tone. Instead of insisting upon her return, he suggested that we should “get another Scoop”. And yes, I wish we could.