Tracing my Father, Grieving my Dog

Reflecting on why we think dogs know us deeply, why people use dogs to traverse the human world, and why the philosopher, Jacques Derrida, was humiliated by his pet.

At first, my father felt embarrassed at the concept of being a dog owner. This was understandable: taking on the title of ‘dog owner’ was a demotion from ‘life partner’. From my dad’s perspective, the dog invoked his pity, which made him uncomfortable. In an attempt to share the relegation with my mother, my father would tell her ‘This is your dog too, you know’, even though she had left to take on the role of life partner with someone else, and the dog was her parting gift to him. And so my father saw himself and his failed relationship reflected in the gesture of the pet. Following the divorce, my dad begrudgingly agreed to receive the gift of the animal, but felt no one should associate him with the loneliness he perceived in its gaze.

‘No one will look after it but me’, my father would say. It was not uncommon of him to invert the meaning of things. I learned to interpret this as information about his internal world from a young age: what he meant to say is that he was alone; only he could look after a pet because no one else was willing to stick around (except for me, however, my unwillingness to properly care for it had been presumed due to my age.) Regardless, though, my hands were already full: I bore the weight of responsibility for my father (as women tend to), whose mental health was in decline. We never discussed this straightforwardly, but his melancholy did not surpass me. A dull undercurrent filled the space between us. He moved slower than usual, his body in no rush toward whatever the future had in store.

It sounds strange to say that my dog truly saw my dad, although, something about my father’s immediate shame leads me to wonder. Despite the additional layer of shame it would bring upon him, my dad wouldn’t be alone in feeling this way. In fact, he’d be a mirror to some of the most influential philosophers of all time, like Jacques Derrida, who introduces the essay ‘The Animal that Therefore I Am’ with an anecdote describing his humiliation at being seen naked by a cat, causing him to feel undressed twice over. Many pet owners know this feeling well. There are moments when living with a pet can almost feel invasive, especially when accompanied by a romantic partner. In these moments, we feel a pet's capacity to perceive us. There is a spiritual element to this belief, perhaps. Some say animals can detect forthcoming crises, such as a storm, an earthquake, or cancer. If an animal can reveal the discarnate – the not-yet-tangible – could they discern an unuttered heartbreak? To my father, who following the break-up believed he was underserving of closeness and affection, being known intimately and instinctively by anyone, or anything, frightened him. That’s the thing about a domesticated animal, their heightened senses mean they can know their human owner in ways even invisible to humans; they can know a person by scent or the sound of footsteps. After a couple of months with our dog, I knew my dad would be returning home when it started barking. The sound made my heart race, forcing me into a state of alertness. In those moments, I was bound to the dog. I could tell by the frantic motion of the animal that being left behind evoked distress for it too. 

And so the canine became part of the family’s emotional ecosystem. Panic filled our home whenever my father was gone, made known to me through the sound of whelping and scratches at the door. After around six months, the dog, which we called Alfie, grew a mutual bond with my father, whose embarrassment quickly subsided the more time they spent together. Spending much of his days on long walks with Alfie through the Cornish countryside, my dad’s spirit returned. But, he was still very anxious about the future. We knew we had to move house. I lived too far from my school in Plymouth, and with my mother no longer at home, there was no reason to linger at the scene of heartbreak. The city felt like the only viable option. ‘It’s going to be awful living in Plymouth’, he’d say, ‘with no greenery, or places to walk the dog’. Truthfully, Plymouth was full of parks and woodlands spacious enough to lose a dog in, not to mention the moors surrounding the town. However, my dad had become so attached to his time spent with Alfie on the Cornish fields that even the concept of the city terrified him. He would repeat this discouraging mantra daily, telling me over and over, ‘It’s going to be awful’. 

In hindsight, my father's apprehension towards city life stemmed from a fear that the urban environment could threaten his emotional connection to Alfie. Cornwall, with its sprawling landscapes ideal for dog walking, beckons urban dwellers seeking solace in nature (often drawing middle-class Londoners in search of a different way of life.) Conversely, in the city, dog owners are constantly reminded of the rules and regulations that divert their focus towards designated areas for pets, thus restricting their connection with the broader landscape. As such, this spatial division indicates to certain dog owners, including my father, that a city is an unnatural place for a dog; it becomes interpreted as human-centric, with dog walking paths, parks, and exclusive zones carved through its walls. Since the separation, my father felt rejected by my mother and grew indifferent to human relations – a way of being made appealing anyway by his newfound friendship with his faithful dog. So why would he move to a place organised around human politics? My father’s changing circumstances felt to him as though he were being forced to renaturalise: in the end, he would have to give up his canine world to reintegrate within the unsettling human landscape. 

But moving to the city was better than being stuck in the past. And so Dad agreed to move. He became familiar with the town faster than anticipated, finding his favourite shops, restaurants, and parks. Most importantly, though, he developed a routine: first, he’d wake up early to walk Alfie around the local park, then drive me to school, followed by another, much longer walk, and then when I returned home, he’d make dinner, and take the dog out again in the evening. This shifted my father’s concept of the city in which we lived. Though still somewhat of an introvert, he no longer gave the impression of feeling fundamentally unwelcome in spaces designed for rich human interaction. Around half of the inhabitants of our street owned a dog, and would engage in local dog discourse whenever they crossed paths with my father: ‘Hello Alfie! … how is he today?’ Dad gained a supportive community, the members of which bonded by their mutual attachment to canine-people cohabitation. Occasionally, my father would join them on their daily strolls. Animating the scene with observations of the inter-canine encounters, their strings of narration transported them into an intimate lifeworld.

For years this continued. My father made the encountering of new places a daily exercise, allowing the dog to guide him through the landscape of Plymouth. Through his adventures with Alfie, my father found his sense of belonging amidst the sprawl of the city. But then, the dog’s health worsened. He was old now, and so was my dad. Age had a similar effect on their bodies: as my father developed arthritis of the wrists, Alfie’s back legs began to stiffen, slowing him down, and shortening his walks. They were old together. Alfie’s taste and smell became less sharp, and his world began to shrink. Alfie’s life, as it weaved and converged with my father’s, was soon to end.

As the loss of Alfie loomed, I couldn’t shake the thought that my own human experience could confine my perception of him. I had spent much of our time together believing that Alfie knew my father and me instinctively and innately. After all, I was a child when we first welcomed the dog into our lives; my imagination enabled me to believe in his ability to hold wisdom, including of the spiritual kind. When my family fell apart, Alfie was our saviour. Now, with his death imminent, I wondered if it was only in my intellect that the dog could conceive of my father’s essence or my own. Did Alfie know us? Did he know I loved him in the way a person knows love? Inevitably, Alfie regularly answered these questions for us through his obvious difference as a species, filling our home with bathos. ‘Don’t you understand come over here and eat your dinner?’, my father would joke. But that’s the thing, the animal didn’t understand. He didn’t speak the same language, eat the same food, or laugh in the way my father and I knew laughter.

As I contemplated the distance between our worlds, the name of a song I hadn’t heard for some time permeated my consciousness: 'A Crude Drawing of an Angel'. Alfie was real, though I had conjured him in my child’s mind. I wanted to access him differently now. I wanted to trace his true form, and see his life through the animal senses; I wanted to know him by canine intuition. Then one day, in a white room, I think I came close. The veterinarian said he was in pain, that we should consider letting him go. There was nothing more we could do. So, we said our goodbyes, holding his frame as the fateful elixir pressed upon him. Parts of his body lulled: first the head, then the knees until eventually all of him heavy, surrendered to a slumber. The room was silent, all of us submerged in the oily suspension. My father and I peered into his eyes, into the twin beads still damp with our faint reflections, and for the first time, I didn’t recognise them.