Bruno

My dog, Bruno, died six years ago. Yet there’s isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t dream about him.

For some reason, these dreams are rarely the happy reunions I hope for. Last week, I had a dream where he’d somehow broken one of his legs. I spent the rest of the dream desperately trying to calm him down, comfort his pain and rush him to the nearest vets. As you can imagine, it wasn’t a pleasant dream.

In other dreams, I find myself waking up late into the afternoon and descending into a guilt-ridden panic when I realise I should’ve walked and fed him hours ago. Fuck, he’s probably gnawed his own tail off by now wondering where his dinner is and why his lazy-ass owner has left him alone all day to quite literally shit where he eats, I think to myself. As is usually the case, the dream’s over before I can put things right.

I don’t know what these recurring dreams mean. Google, the most reliable source for interpreting dreams about your dead dog, tells me there’s probably a larger hole in my life that needs filling (I’ll save that for another way-too-personal Medium post). All I know is that I still miss him.

I know everyone says this about their dog, but Bruno really was the best dog. He was a sweet, gentle and sensitive dog with these striking brown eyes that melted your heart with one glance. He was a crossbreed, although we never actually knew which breeds he was crossed with exactly. (Granted, that isn’t a statement that’ll win you Dog Owner of the Year award at Crufts.) Whatever the case, he shed hair like a motherfucker.

The day we met Bruno, we had no plans to get a dog. One Sunday in the summer of 2000, my parents, my sister and I climbed into the car for a family day out somewhere. I don’t remember where exactly, but I’m sure it was somewhere nice. Five minutes into the car journey, we passed a sign that read “Jerry Green Dog Sanctuary, 2 miles.”

My sister and I — calling a brief truce to our endless backseat war — begged my parents to take a detour to go see the dogs. My parents weren’t the sort who willingly indulged their kids’ impulsive whims, certainly not if it would lead to a furry, four-legged creature shitting all over the lounge carpet. But that day, they gave in. Probably just to shut us up.

I still remember that day vividly. It feels like something out of a clichéd American movie. As we walked into the indoor kennels where Jerry Green housed their rescue dogs, it was like stepping into a prison cell. Every single dog in that place was barking its head off, baring its teeth, leaping up at us from behind the ceiling-high fence as we walked down the corridor.

Every dog except one.

There he was — a skinny, labrador-looking thing who was laid at the foot of his fence. Timid, terrified and trembling. Barely having the strength or confidence to make his anguish be heard. I would be, too, if I was living in a place like that. My sister and I went over and knelt down in front of him, reaching a finger through the fence to try to stroke him. When he looked up at us with those big, innocent puppy dog eyes of his, it was as if he was silently crying out for someone to come and save him from this scary place.

My parents signed the paperwork that afternoon. I guess the ol’ puppy dog eyes worked a charm.

A few weeks later, we welcomed Bruno to his new home. A home where he had a big comfy bed to himself, a nice-sized garden to run around in, and a family who would feed him and walk him and love him every day for the next 14 years.

Sadly, Bruno’s life didn’t start out quite the same way. When he was rescued by the good people at Jerry Green, he was found on the streets of a nearby town, bruised and underweight, barely six months old.

As a result, Bruno was an anxious dog. He tried to run away numerous times in those first few weeks. He was terrified of going inside the kennel that we had bought for him. He was wary of my Grandad at first, presumably because his previous owner — the heartless prick who abused and abandoned him — was an older man. And when he was left alone for more than a few hours, he would chew threw furniture (much to my parents’ delight).

I’m sure this was natural behaviour for any rescue dog acclimatizing to an unfamiliar environment. Much like a person who experiences trauma or tragedy in their formative years, I know whatever pain he was subjected to before joining our family left scars that never fully healed.

However, Bruno was also an incredibly gentle dog. He loved affection. If you stroked him, he would lick your entire hand clean (by dog standards, anyway) as a way of saying thank you. He was great with children, no matter how hard they patted him. He was peaceful towards other dogs. Hell, he even seemed to like being around cats.

Violence or aggression just wasn’t in his nature. In fact, he was hopelessly incapable of fighting. One time, my auntie’s much-smaller West Highland Terrier attacked him and gave him a bleeding lip. Naturally, Bruno didn’t retaliate. At times, I felt like a parent worried about how their child would survive in the school playground.

Sadly, Bruno succumbed to poor health at the old age of 15. Towards the end of his life, he was practically blind in both eyes, he had arthritis, and he suffered from a series of increasingly debilitating strokes.

I remember Bruno’s first stroke as clearly as the day we first met him. I was upstairs in my room listening to music when I heard a strange noise coming from outside. I rushed downstairs and opened the door to find him laid on one side, his body shaking uncontrollably, foaming at the mouth and whimpering like I’d never seen before. I could see the panic in his eyes. I was panicking, too. My dad and I rushed him to the vets. They gave him a sedative and sent him home to rest. That’s all they could do.

This horrible process repeated itself at least half a dozen times over the next few months… until it was just too much for him. On the morning of November 6, 2014, I found him laid out in his favourite spot, under the big oak tree in the garden. He was lifeless. As I went over to sit next to him, he could barely lift his head to greet me. His series of strokes had robbed his body and brain of their basic functions. But in that moment, it felt like we both knew what this meant. The trip we made to the vets that day was his last.

We buried his ashes in that very same spot in the garden and held a little service to say our final goodbyes. If it’s true that all dogs go to Heaven, I like to think we got him there first class.

What Bruno loved the most was company. Simply being in the same room as his family was enough to calm his anxieties and quell those memories of abuse and abandonment. And if he wasn’t in the same room as us, he’d often be curled up on the other side of the door, waiting for us to walk through it and greet him with love and attention and strokes.

One of the things I miss the most is ditching whatever film or TV show my parents and sister would be watching to go sit with Bruno, knowing he’d be silently wishing for one of us to spend time with him. As soon as I’d start stroking him, he’d turn over onto his side so I could stroke the underside of his belly (his favourite spot). I’d do this until he fell asleep — sometimes for 2 minutes, other times for 20.

When his body stilled, his breathing slowed and his legs began to twitch, I’d know he was dreaming.