Hamish.

Yesterday I was picked up from work with the news that my dog had died. I didn't quite believe it. I got in the car and realised I hadn't cried over it at all since finding out or whilst walking down to the car park. My dog was old. He was very old. I sensed the other day, the last time I saw him, that I wouldn't have much longer with him and so I made a point to take a crazy amount of photos of him in his favourite place: curled up by the fire on his bed with his blanket. I gave him his doggy treats, or "treatses" as we called them. 

Going back through old photos of him now I realised that he let us dress him up a lot in some really silly get ups and never minded. That's real love right there...

I remember when we first got him. Mum had brought him back from Scotland all the way down on the train. He was this tiny West Highland Terrier puppy and he had had severe diarrhoea on the way down. Being stinky is a recurring theme throughout his life. I recall Mum coming home and how she tried to surprise me with him but I could hear him yapping and crying away in his little carry cage. I took him out and he was so tiny and so precious. We got him not long after my sister was born and just before we moved to another part of the country. His presence seemed an effort to counteract all the changes I was having to deal with at the time. I remember really loving just having a puppy in the house. He was my first dog and I think, for a while, he'll be my only dog. I'm not sure I could get another dog in my life for a long time. 

Another favourite memory involving Hamish was when I was in my first year of university. My parents and sister were planning to come up and visit me and asked if I needed them to bring up anything from home. I jokingly asked if they could bring Hamish. To my surprise, they did. I remember standing in the kitchen of my apartment, looking down and seeing a little white lump leaping out of the car and feeling so happy that my parents drove with him all that way. We walked him around the town and later found a pub where we could have lunch and sit with him in the sun. Well... the amount of sun that Yorkshire afforded us. 

Yesterday I lost the best dog I've ever known, the only dog I've ever had. Hamish was a sweet dog. Hamish was a stupid dog. My Mum brought him down on a train from Scotland at a time where my life was changing: I was moving to another part of the country and my sister had just been born. He was the friend I had when everything around me was changing. I miss him so painfully right now.