Part 2: The white paw

THE WHITE PAW
Written by Bert Plomp

Maeve, our dear Border Collie, recently passed away. After living for a month suspended between hope and fear, it ended badly for her after all.
We do not know exactly how old she became. It was ten years ago that she came into our lives and enriched them. We had adopted her from the Irish animal welfare organisation, at a time when she had already been pregnant for some while.
In mid-December everything still seemed perfectly fine. We took her and her two boys to the vet for their annual vaccinations. The general examination that followed gave a reassuring result: all three border collies were healthy.
At the beginning of January, however, we noticed that Maeve’s breathing had become somewhat laboured and uneven. Her appetite suddenly began to fail as well. But then, she had always had something of a love–hate relationship with her meals. She would approach her bowl in the kitchen so cautiously that one might think she suspected it contained not tasty food but a live hand grenade. Now, however, she was so wary that even crossing the kitchen threshold seemed to her a hazardous obstacle.
Because we were worried about her breathing, we decided to visit the vet again. To our shock, we had to leave her there, as the vet believed her heart was not functioning properly and had also detected a build-up of fluid in her abdomen. Further examinations would take several days. X-rays and an echocardiogram of her heart were required. First of all, the fluid had to be drained.
When we returned home, we were enthusiastically greeted by Maeve’s two boys, Chubby and Spotty. Despite their cheerful welcome, we felt a sombre absence. Our house suddenly seemed very empty, as Maeve was normally a very pronounced presence. In everything our collies did, she took the lead. When the trio wanted to go outside, Maeve would stand beside me and, fixing me with a steady gaze, bark persistently until I opened the door.
With their mother in front, the dogs would race across the large field in front of the house towards the fence by the coast. Strikingly, they always followed exactly the same routes. In the grass they had created four barely visible winding paths, faithfully traced day after day. Upon reaching the fence, they would watch for passers-by and, with Maeve in the lead, chase them from one end of the boundary to the other.
If one of Maeve’s boys had been naughty and received a reprimand from me, she would immediately stand before me to defend her offspring. She always did so in a most disarming manner by offering me her left white paw as a gesture of understanding.
At first, the vet struggled to obtain usable X-rays, so Maeve had to remain under observation for longer. She stayed in a pleasantly heated room in a separate kennel with a soft bed and had a few fellow patients for company. We visited her daily to walk and cuddle her.
It was on Tuesday, 20 January, that the vet definitively established what was wrong: Maeve had a tumour on her heart. We could scarcely comprehend that our dog, who had seemed so healthy and full of energy, was suddenly balancing on the edge of death.
Armed with heart medication, we brought her home.
Back in her familiar surroundings, she appeared as if nothing were wrong. She barked at me to signal that she wished to go outside with her boys. After a short run outdoors, it was time for supper. Maeve ate heartily and emptied her bowl in no time. It gave us hope, perhaps she might remain with us for longer still.
The following day, that hope was abruptly shattered. Maeve was lethargic, refused food, and her breathing deteriorated again. When bedtime came, we decided to sleep beside her, fearing she might not survive the night.
What we had already suspected unfolded before our eyes. Our dear girl struggled more and more to breathe. We stroked and held her throughout the night. We wanted her to know we were with her and would remain so. She had always trusted us completely; that could not change in these dark final hours.
The image of the motorcyclist who had died the previous summer flashed through my mind. I immediately took Maeve’s white paw and held it in both hands. As I gently warmed the pads of her paw, she looked at me with a calm expression in her eyes, calm because we were together, and because she knew her two boys were in safe hands.
It was early morning when her struggle ended. As a new day dawned outside and Maeve stretched her paws one final time, she took two laboured breaths and then she was gone.
Softly, we closed her eyes. The inevitable stiffness of her once supple body had begun.
It feels so unreal that the body of your beloved four-legged companion remains warm long after life has departed, that the warm blood is still present in the veins, yet no longer circulates. As the hours pass, your dear one grows colder, the body stiffening.
By mid-morning, while the sun shone brightly outside, all warmth had left our girl. Her dear white paw could no longer be moved. The pads that had always been warm were now icy cold.
At the beginning of the afternoon, we buried Maeve. Behind our house, in the dunes, sheltered by a large hebe shrub, we had long ago created a small burial ground for our departed companions. All the graves are covered with different varieties of heather. Maeve now rests there alongside our border collies who went before her: Swilly, Maggie and Lizzy.
Maeve may now be buried, but the farewell has only just begun. Now comes the confrontation with all the places and little things so closely associated with her, the countless silent witnesses of her existence. One must learn to make peace with them.
The spot in the house where she died, her food bowl, the bed where she slept, her favourite place beneath the low table in the conservatory, from where she would watch the moving images on the television with great interest.
I even found it difficult to return the remaining heart tablets to the vet, thinking they might help another dog whose owner was less fortunate. It was hard because those tablets had represented something of a final lifeline for Maeve. Visiting her grave will, for the time being, remain the greatest emotional hurdle. When digging her grave, from the moment I first placed the spade in the earth, I was accompanied by a robin perched on a branch of the hebe shrub, singing exuberantly and without pause. For several days the little bird remained at its post. Even indoors I could hear its cheerful song.
Suddenly I realised that a robin is often regarded as a messenger, a messenger of a new beginning. I wondered: could Maeve, through this robin, be trying to comfort us and let us know that she is happy?