Isla

It’s been three and a half weeks, and I’m still not sure I have the words in me to write this post.

On the 21^st of December 2021, my retired guide dog was put to sleep after being diagnosed with cancer. She was only ill for a very short time, but the tumour was very aggressive, and her quality of life had begun to deteriorate. She lived with friends of mine in her retirement who gave her the absolute best life possible. They took care of her and loved her and made sure the years she spent with them were filled with lots of walks and plenty of fun. I couldn’t have asked for better.

I loved her. She was my guide. How can any words I write here explain what that means, how can I tell you, unless you have experienced it? There were times when she was the only living thing near me. Times when I was living in another country and was struggling with my mental health but always, she was there.

She was loving and curious and clever and a little clumsy. She liked exploring new places and falling asleep on trains and dancing at parties and playing with children and chasing cats and watching the neighbours out the window.

She went to college and then university with me. She came with me when I studied abroad in first Spain and then Colombia. We took countless flights together and ran for trains and explored new cities all over the world. We were a team in everything we did.

She let me cry into her fur when I went through a breakup, sitting patiently as I wrapped my arms around her and buried my face in her neck. She forgave me for all the times I was a less than ideal owner. She continued to be brilliant and clever even on days when I was exhausted and burnt out.

She wasn’t perfect. She could be very sensitive and needed gentle correction and the opportunity to rework mistakes, and sometimes I wasn’t sensitive to her needs. She would disappear on a walk if you let her off the lead, coming back in her own time rather than on your schedule. But her nosy nature and ability to pick up new routes made her the perfect companion to explore the world with.

I miss her terribly. Even though we hadn’t lived together since she retired. Even though I had barely seen her, because I was in another country and then the pandemic hit. I feel a terrible space where she should be, a space that used to be filled by the knowledge that I would get to visit her soon, even if not today.

I can’t conceive of a world where she doesn’t get to be one of the oldest dogs alive. A world where her life is cut relatively short at eleven, where she doesn’t even get another year or two. And yet this is the world we are in, the story that has been written, the ending that I could not change, no matter how much I wish I could.

Isla

08/11/2010 – 21/12/2021