Farewell to Tomaine

Karyn writes:

Some years ago when we lost our beloved Labrador Karaka (former guide dog) to cancer, another trainer laughed and said “why would you even put that on your website, what a joke, he's not a horse”.

Well if he is reading this today, let me explain why there is no shame in wearing your heart on your sleeve, something you should never apologise for … and it serves to remind us about the small but special and simple things that matter so much in life.  It also reminds us to “adopt don't shop“ when so many dogs need rescuing …

Te Akau is about family - human, equine AND canine.  My mother always said “you can tell the cut of a human being by their attitude to dogs” - and mothers of course are always right!

Yesterday we said farewell to my beautiful rescue dog Tom.  Many of our friends and owners have met this veteran who, for a dog with a short name, there were so many nicknames for …  Tom-Tom, Tee-Tee, Tomaine, Mainey … so to those who knew him, and care, and to those who didn't know him, but still have a heart … he deserves his story to be told.

Throughout our lives we are constantly saying hellos and goodbyes. Good mornings and good evenings. We arrive in the world and we spend our life “departing” - to pre-school, to school, to university, to the workforce.  We leave home, we travel and leave our families behind.

However, we also ‘arrive' and we also welcome and meet individuals who will have a marked impact on our lives.  Many that we know will remain in our lives and our hearts for always.

We also face loss every day of our lives - we lose coins down the back of the couch, we lose sport's games, we can lose at the TAB and we can lose our temper.

But the loss of a loved one - is an entirely different affair.

So life is about welcome and farewell.  And yesterday I had to kiss goodbye to someone that I always knew I would outlive of course (all things being equal), someone who had more than had his share of life and love and years but it makes it no easier.

Tom was a field setter - a rescue dog who was saved from a terrible life - the vet wasn't sure, he wasn't a puppy but he was “somewhere between two and four”.  That was 12 years and eight months ago - making him “somewhere between 14 and 16 and a half”.

I am not sure why I chose to take him, out of so many rescues available.  In fact at first I said no - working full time already with one wheaten terrier, I had also just adopted another three- legged wheaten to save him from being put down - three dogs in suburban Wellington?  Yet Tom had been overlooked and maybe, just maybe, I knew what it was like to be the last person picked on a team.

From day one he turned out to be something of a character and a naughty one at that.  You could have called him a “problem child” in his early days - days filled with the adventures and antics of this quirky black and white rebel who knew his own mind and where he wanted to go, where he wanted to be and what he wanted to be chasing (or swimming in pursuit of)!!

There was not a dog bowl with left-over veggies and gravy left unlicked, no farm bike left un-barked at (particularly with working dogs involved) nor any visiting car tyre left un-piddled on for the duration of his life. He was beside me from the time I still lived in Wellington before my marriage to David - until yesterday when he passed away in my arms, after all those years by my side.

I didn't have the privilege of knowing Tom as a puppy but can only imagine what a gorgeous bundle of fur and mischief he would have been.  However I was honoured to know him as a teenager and was privileged to make his aged life one of care, comfort and love.

Tom was not a calm dog in his heyday - he was the hunter from hell - always in hot pursuit of cats, rats, possums, rabbits, fantails (or any other bird), mice - in the mornings when he was let out he would immediately focus every ounce of his energy (and he had that in bundles too) on criss-crossing every inch of the lawns, nose firmly adhered to the grass sniffing out every invading animal mass-manoeuvre that might have occurred when we were asleep - oh and did I mention hedgehogs, another of the invading enemy brigade!

There were years of going under the house and barking through the floorboards every time the vaccum cleaner was used, nights of scratching at the door in response to a real or imagined predator outside.  Visits to the groomers made under sufferance as the unruly tail was quite simply “out of bounds”!

His later intense deafness I know caused him consternation but also brought him peace as he couldn't undertake his other favoured pursuit of ‘raining on the parade” of Karaka and later Kane and Molly when they played.

When Tom arrived at Te Akau (after Sam Boyd travelled him north from Wellington with our wedding gifts) he couldn't make up his mind whether he wanted to be farm dog or family dog (meaning sleeping inside - you know what David thought of course!!).  Finally he settled on the latter - in the past over 12.5 years at Te Akau Stud “he and me” fell into a routine. The sound of his morning yelps to go outside, the bum in my face wanting to be scratched, asleep on my feet at night in the lounge. The panic at thunderstorms - I was there for him, and he for me.

He would play hide and seek and stalk and chase you from room to room - as he became more deaf and aged - he needed to have you physically in his sight as he couldn't hear you, and so touch and visual connection became so much more important.  I distinctly remember when I first knew - he was always the first of my trio to greet me at the gate and one day he wasn't there, he was curled up asleep on the back door step - my arrival a complete surprise.

I watched him take cues from Molly and Kane - if they barked, he needed to.  If they thought the fridge had opened, obviously it had, if they ran out to greet someone, he knew someone must be arriving. But he adapted and so did we.  He never ran out of nerve, of heart and courage and of fight.

Emily Bronte said “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” That really makes me think of Tom.  We always both were crazily busy, loyal and had plenty of fight in our veins.  He always sensed when there was a problem, and not because of obvious things. He would follow me if I was upset and lick my tears away.  He would sit with me, listen to me and wait until I felt better.  He understood what I couldn't and somehow took on the role of parent, sibling, wild animal and best friend; all under one roof and within one huge beating, failing heart.

And it was his heart that finally got him - the disease that had attacked it so ferociously for the past three years requiring twice daily medication - finally got the upper hand.  He fought it with bravery and courage - we used to call him “robo-dog” as you felt he would go on and live forever and ever - even though you know that not to be possible.

When I lay with him all day yesterday that heart was erratic and booming away as well as it could but Tom you were failing in front of me - sick, weary, ill and nothing more to give - except your love and that was there in buckets - right until I felt your last breath disappear.

The loss of a sick and aged pet is a strange feeling - there is an overall desire for his peace and yet the weight of grief is beyond belief. Tissues wipe the tears away but not the hurt.  However it is the good memories that make you cry just as one day they will make you smile.  The smiles will eventually, I know from experience, replace the huge sense of loss and emptiness.  It's a recipe of good news and bad, of being overwhelmingly grateful for knowing Tom and extremely, intensely bereaved at losing him.

In the past year he has slept by my bed, so I could keep a watchful eye on him as his health deteriorated.  His breath had become quite bad and I always knew that one day, one day I would wake and miss that terrible odour.  Today is that day, and what I would pay to have it back. There was no loud “good morning” to wake him as he couldn't hear me, no wagging tail as I gave him his medication concealed in steak mince, no tussle to see who could get out of the gate first as he bee-lined for his spot in the office.  Robyn and Melissa were amazing to Tom - as in one minute, out one minute was punctuated by a tap-tap on the office door demanding frequent entry and exit!

His selfless, eccentric spirit is captured in the hands of every human who ever patted him, and I am beyond lucky to have been a part of his fan base, in fact his cheerleader.   He taught me the essence of freedom from the very moment he came into my life. He taught me how to feel the wind in my hair with the car window down and how to live like every car trip to the vet like was a swim in the river.

It seems a cruel injustice that our dogs go before us, that we sometimes have to decide to let them go - Doug Black you could not have been more kind or more compassionate - thank you for your care.

I didn't want to let you go Tom. I wish I could've given a different answer but life rarely follows the script we pretend we are able to write. So I accepted the inevitable and let you have your peace.

As I have said before - if love could have saved you, you never would have died - rest in peace Mainey.

Just a little piece I read years ago ... dog lovers will I am sure appreciate this ..

George Vest (1830-1904) Gentlemen of the jury wrote:

The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter that he has reared with loving care may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has, he may lose. It flies away from him, perhaps when he needs it the most. A man's reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill-considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees to do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog.

Gentleman of the jury: A man's dog stands by him in prosperity and in poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, where the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master's side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounters with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince. When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces, he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens.

If fortune drives the master forth an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him to guard against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes, and death takes the master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.