I heard someone say, surprised, many years ago,
“Did you hear that, he calls his dog Sunshine”
He was sent from the sun in a garment of gold,
With a spirit too bright for a world to withhold.
A gift to a home that was happy and loud,
Yet held a small shadow like mist on a shroud.
For a splinter of grief niggled deep in my heart,
‘Til he came with his light to make sorrow depart.I came from my work, feeling weary and worn,
To a house where the joy of the evening was born.
While eating my supper in silence alone,
My Lynn brought a question in such a sweet tone;
“Now wouldn’t our Leo be glad of a friend?”
I nodded my head, never seeing the end.A “yes” seemed the answer, both simple and kind,
With never a thought for what Lynn had in mind.“Then I’ll take the boys!” she replied with a flare,
And left me alone with my meal and the air.
Two hours had passed when a puppy of gold
Was tugging at sausages, fearless and bold.
With Leo he tussled and pulled at the line,
A spaniel-shaped sunbeam, a treasure of mine.
In the years of the boys, he was fire and play,
Through the haughs and the heather of Galloway’s day.
He would race through the bracken and leap through the grass,
And he’d mourn every moment we’d let the time pass.
If we rested a second, he’d sit and he’d bark,
For the trails were for treading, and leaving our mark.
He was never for “fetch” or the returning of balls,
But for chewing on bones in the warmth of the walls.
And as seasons rolled on, and the sixteen years drew,
The pace of the gallop was settled and few.
The muscles grew weary, the fire grew deep,
As he traded the mountain for stillness and sleep.He would rest his tired head on the shelf of a knee,
And his eyes were a mirror of all he could see.
Then the time came to leave and to travel once more,
To the Lady who sent him to wait at our door.
Across the bright threshold, his journey was run,
To the lap of the Goddess, the child of the sun.He is home in the glens where the stillness is sweet,
With the white heather soft ‘neath his golden-brown feet.
And Brid strokes his ears as the evening grows dim,
And she whispers the words that she saved just for him:
“You have tended the hearth and you’ve guarded the fold;
Now rest here in peace, my brave runner of gold.”
Go safely.
Slàn leat, Sunshine.
Footnotes
On my fiftieth birthday we had a few folk at the house, and I overheard them talking as I went to get some drinks. “He calls his dog ‘Sunshine’.”
This was the first of my poems about dogs. Or more honestly, the first to come close to completion. It has a strange title, I know, but I decided to keep it. This poem began life as a single line in another brief piece. I went in search of that original poem recently but could only find a collection of unfinished lines. I had thought it finished but think now that it was never finished. That poem was based on the goddesses of the hearth that my ancestors from the far west (the banks of the River Shannon) and the furthest east (Bengal). Somehow the stream of consciousness took me to Rachael and Eleanor, and Sweep as the goddess Brid’s dog sent to heal our hearth —and to fit the rhythm that was rendered as Cù Brìde.
This poem relates the tale of the day Sweep joined our family. As it says, I came home from work, late and tired. Lynn asked if I thought it would be nice for Leo to have a little friend to play with. As I do, I answered the question as literally posed, the subtext unheeded. Any answer other than “Yes” would have been churlish. A couple of hours later, Leo was playing with his new friend, each tugging at plastic sausages.
Leo was a friendly, playful dog but not one for hugs and cuddles. He preferred his own space. Sweep would sit by you, head in your lap, or your foot, or your hand. Lynn tells me it was Leo who taught Sweep to bring cushions.
I think his pedigree name was something like Black Kettle Sweep. I will see if we have it written down anywhere. It was something with “Sweepl in it anyway, hence his name. We couldn’t have names starting with B, D or P since I would not be able to call them.
He was a powerful dog. Looked as though he pumped iron. He pulled at his lead making walks on the lead a chore. The two dogs were not allowed upstairs at St Cuthbert’s but I got the impression that Leo sent Sweep up to explore, like an older brother sending a naive younger sibling to break the rules.
He woke one morning, apparent paralysed but slowly recovered; a reactive arthritis rather than disc prolapse. He was left with a slight limp that worsened as he aged. A friendly dog, he liked to bring a cushion but chewed slippers, and shredded his bedding if anxious. I only saw him angry one time. A large dog had a go at Leo, when Leo was old; Sweep lunged at a dog twice his size, hit it mid-flank and knocked it over. Leo had done the same for Sweep a few years before when Elaine’s dog had a go at Sweep.
When still well enough to walk the hills he roamed beside me on the moors of Shiel Hiil above Cornish Loch. We came to a lochan Sweep went along its left bank, I went along the right bank. Half way along he realised we were on opposite sides and instead of running back round, he jumped in and swam across. I thought I might have to wade in to fish him out but he made it across. He jumped into Loch Dee some years earlier and could not get out. Again I thought I would have to jump in to get him but managed to grab his collar during one of his attempts to get out. He did like water. I avoided walking along the Nith with him when the river was running high.u
I only remember him fetching a ball when he was very old. He died a few days before his sixteenth birthday. His photograph, running through bluebells, was on my wall at work.
