National Grief Awareness Week 2020

Here at DogFest we know how supportive our pets can be, particularly during times of hardship. The theme of National Grief Awareness week 2020 is ‘Share Your Story’. To contribute to the continuing conversation around bereavement, we reached out to author Richard Littledale to share how he and Ginny the lurcher met. And, ultimately, how they rescued each other.

 

A Friend in Need - Richard and Ginny’s Story

‘Lost, far from home and uncertain what the future would hold’ would be a good description of Ginny, the brindled lurcher pushing her nose up to the glass of the Dogs Trust kennel. Truth to tell, it would also be a good description of Richard, the man pushing his nose up to the other side of that same glass. 

 

After thirty years married to Fiona, I was coming to terms with life on my own after cancer took her at the age of 53. On moving to Newbury, a market town on the edge of the Berkshire countryside, it had always been part of the dream to add a dog to our lives. Fiona got too ill, the dream was shelved, and now here I was two months after losing her looking at my new companion.

 

Ginny and I both had a lot to learn. When she first arrived at the house, she was timid and fearful – her eyes far more hunted than hunter. She had no idea how to climb the stairs, flinched at every loud noise, and was terrified of being shut in when left. I had a lot to learn too. For thirty-five years or more, I had always had my best friend by my side – and now she was gone. Along with her had gone my confidence and my compass for navigating even the simplest social encounters.

 

Ginny was a terrific help with both of these. With her by my side when out walking, I was not Richard the widower, but Richard the man with the lovely dog. Casual conversations focused on her, rather than me, and I was fine with that. On my first day back at work, she accompanied me and stood loyally by my side as I greeted people whom I had not seen for three months or more. The braver ones asked me how I was, and others made a fuss of the dog. I soon found that her default position when uncertain is to lean against my leg – I suspect that it cuts both ways. She was my guide dog through this social maze.

 

 

In the year or so before Fiona’s untimely death, I had taken on the role of carer more and more. The rhythm of my life had become set around it. With her gone the rhythm was gone too, and my days felt shapeless and empty. Many will testify to that same feeling during the early weeks of bereavement. In this, having a dog was a terrific help. Regardless of my emotional or mental state, Ginny needed walking and feeding twice each day. This was a new rhythm for a new life, and it helped us both. I very quickly learnt that Ginny was capable of reading my emotional weather pattern, and on those days when the clouds rolled in, she would do her very best to drive them away. About eight months after adopting Ginny, I wrote a children’s story all about her: ‘Ginny the Rescue Dog’. In it I talk about occasions such as these:

 

Sometimes the sadness Ginny had seen in the man’s eyes filled him up so much that it fell out as tears. Ginny would let him cry, as tears can be good. After a while, though, she would come and ask him to play. She would bow down with her tail wagging high in the air to make him smile. She would tickle him with her shiny, bendy nose to make him laugh. If that didn’t work, she would pat him with her long paw until he got up out of his chair and took her outside. As they walked along, side by side, she would look up at him as if to say ‘that’s just what you needed, isn’t it’? And do you know, it was!

 

I have walked with Ginny to some beautiful places, but I have walked with her to some hard ones too. She was there by my side on the day when we buried Fiona’s ashes on a hillside green cemetery. It snowed on that day, and Ginny’s palpable delight in this novel experience made a hard day easier. We have been back many times to that place and sat at the foot of Fiona’s cherry tree. I shed a tear or two and look off into the unseeable distance; Ginny sniffs for rabbits and looks to the treeline where the pheasants live. It is a companionable arrangement.

 

During the first year of my bereavement I wrote a book, ‘Postcards from the Land of Grief’, charting my way through this unwelcome and unfamiliar landscape. I close with an excerpt from Ginny’s chapter, ‘Alone Together’:

 

Looking for another breed entirely, I found myself drawn so powerfully to her. Maybe there was a sadness or a wisdom reflected in those amber eyes, or maybe I just fell for the tasselled ears. Either way, I was smitten. After careful checks by Dogs Trust, and some trial walks, she has now come to live here with me. These two characters, thrust out of context by circumstances they did not choose, are pooling their resources to forge a new context. She is a little nervous, and I have a lot to learn – but the partnership has so much to offer.

 

It has, indeed, had so much to offer.

 

Author: Richard Littledale (November 2020)

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