Eulogy for a Faithful Shadow.

Cadi, our best Big Dog.

There are times when for me, writing is a compulsion, I don't have much choice about it. This last week has been such a time and while what follows may be an indulgence, I will not excuse it; sometimes, for some of us, an animal can have as much impact on our lives as any other person.

When I was very small I wanted a dog but my father would not allow it. My brother and I, as mere nippers, acquired various stuffed toys, including two dogs, one big and one small which we named, appropriately enough Big Dog and Little Dog. Big Dog was black with a prominent red tongue, Little Dog was black with a splash of white. I often wonder whether it was this parental denial of pets which let to a succession of dogs (and other animals) that flowed through my life as an adult.

above: Big Dog when she was very small.

Big Dog turned out to be real, called Cadi, acquired by my wife, Lyn, as a companion and means for her to get fit by regular walking following her repeated bouts of cancer. As it happened, poor Cadi developed severe hip dysplasia whilst a young pup, first diagnosed by one of our local vets, Sophie. This meant that normal, energetic, puppy activities resulted in yelps of pain, a tendency to sit down at any opportunity and obvious stiffness and discomfort.

The treatment for the hip dysplasia involved a one month course of a mild painkiller during which Lyn had to walk Cadi on a lead,twice a day, ten minutes at a time to begin with, then gradually building up. This was to develop muscles to support Cadi's legs in her very poorly formed hip sockets; so Lyn's purpose in getting a dog and Cadi's need for regular exercise on a lead seemed to dovetail nicely. Lyn also undertook all Cadi's early training, including teaching her to sit down if in doubt or if she saw a deer, the latter proving very useful later in her life.

above: Cadi swimming with Nigel, a really nice guy and excellent at hydrotherapy. He found that the tennis ball was the ideal lure to get Cadi swimming end to end of the 6m pool.

After that first month I started taking Cadi for regular visits to a very local dog hydrotherapy centre, just down the road from us, run by Nigel, a lovely guy who was excellent at his job. He gently encouraging Cadi to enter the water and built her confidence until she became a proficient swimmer and loved her visits. To reduce the stresses at her hips it was also important to keep her lean so after a year of this Cadi was the fittest dog we'd ever had, rippled with muscle and was developing remarkable agility.

Sadly, Lyn was struck down with yet another health challenge which very nearly killed her, leaving her extremely weak and requiring a long convalescence of several years. This meant, among other things, that I had to take Cadi on her daily walks to maintain her muscles.

above: Cadi patiently provides scale in this picture of stem injected rhododendron.

Although I had walked through Coed Y Brenin (the King's Trees) many times for thirty years already, the daily walks with Cadi for the next seven years in all weathers and seasons, provided me with an unparalleled opportunity to observe the condition and development of the forest, The period coincided with the change of much of the plantation from impenetrable, second generation thickets to a forestry where it was possible to pass between the trunks. This allowed us to go off piste as it were, leaving the tracks and footpaths to explore the complex landscape beneath the canopy.

Always looking for new routes to take and new areas to find, we wandered freely together, Cadi so fit she no longer needed a lead to restrict her movement. At times her eyes would seem to go completely black and she would begin running in ever increasing circles, leaping fallen trunks and bounding over boulders. I would watch with a mixture of utter delight at her natural, unbridled exuberance and a real concern that she might hurt herself. These leaps of hers were extraordinary; in snow I paced out one bound at nearly four metres.

above: Cadi observes the waste of good hardwood in an unused stack.

Once I was following Cadi down a narrow path between dense young conifers towards a stream. She crossed the stream, rounded the last of the conifers and suddenly sat down. Knowing Lyn's early training, I quietly knelt down beside her then peered round the last conifer. Sure enough, there was a young fallow deer, facing away from us and browsing the sides of the path only three or four paces away. A little beyond her was another slightly older one and beyond her the older doe that the two youngsters were following. We were downwind of them and the noise of the stream had masked the sounds of our approach.

We watched for maybe fifteen minutes, side by side as the three slowly ate their way up the path. Occasionally the lead doe would stop and look about, as if sensing our presence but then continued browsing. At one point she turned her head right round and stared at us, very hard, trying to make out whether our combined forms at the edge of the conifers was a threat; she decided we weren't and continued her browsing.

It was only when I began to think that perhaps we needed to get moving again that she threw up her head, gave a deep, penetrating bark of alarm and sponked (pranced four feet off the ground) further up the path, followed by the other two. Even then she wasn't sure if there was danger and only when I stood up did they finally move off into the woods.

During those seven or so years when I walked with Cadi in and around Coed Y Brenin, over every track and footpath, following every old wall to see where it went, I estimate we covered well over 3,000 miles together.

Cadi was also willing to sit for me in many of the photographs I took, providing a sense of scale, often waiting for some time as I strove to find the right angle. She received a small reward each time for her patience and service.

She had a big heart and I have never known a kinder, softer, friendlier more loving or trusting animal; “A gentle giant” my good friend Jim would call her when he accompanied us on a walk, along with his dog, Brian.

above: Lyn with Cadi in our home during the long, happy years.

I knew that the hip dysplasia could only be held at bay for so long, that as she grew older she would begin to feel aches, stiffness and then pain but both Lyn and I had assumed this would be a gradual, noticeable decline. But it was not to be. On Sunday 22^nd June Cadi and I set out as usual for our wander. Not far from our place, Cadi stopped to drink at a favourite spot in a stream, splashed about a bit (she did love water!) then bounded to catch me up.

Then she collapsed and screamed a scream the like of which I have never heard before from a dog. I knew instantly what had happened and when I got to her, the impossible angle of her right hind leg confirmed that it had dislocated catastrophically, tearing all the muscles and tendons that had kept it in place so well for all those years.

I sat and held her, almost overwhelmed with grief, knowing that she could not possibly recover from such an injury. I told her she was the best Big Dog I'd ever had, that I was so sorry that this had happened to her. I wondered how I could get her home.

At first she wouldn't get up but then, with my encouragement, brave dog that she was, she stood up on three legs and hopped a dozen steps before sitting again. I held her again and waited then another dozen hops.

Enough to say we did mange to get home and once inside she hopped onto her bed and lay down. Before we'd left, I'd put sausages in the oven to cook for our tea and Lyn laced one with a painkiller and Cadi ate it.

I didn't want to put her through all the additional trauma and suffering of somehow getting her into the car, taking her down to the vets and putting her through an examination. So I rang and tried to get one to call out but it being Sunday, the duty vet was already out on an emergency and no one was available.

Cadi got up twice during the night to lie on the carpet, being two hot but in the morning was lying in her bed again. She refused another painkiller-laced sausage and water. I sat with her, telling her what a great dog she had been and stroking her until a vet arrived at 9:30am. Ironically or perhaps appropriately, it was Sophie who had diagnosed her condition nearly nine years before. She gave her a sedative and then an overdose of anaesthetic and within a minute or two, Cadi's heart stopped beating.

I buried her here, on what we call the fodder strip, a narrow band of trees we planted in the mid 1990's with a path running through it which was our main route out from our place and into the forestry, a route that she knew so well from our many walks together.

above: Cadi, our real Big Dog, quite capable of being comedic. 12th Aug 2016 - 23rd June 2025

I miss her, terribly at times and feel as though there is a hole in my heart where something is missing. We unconsciously project aspects of ourselves onto animals; in a sense they take on the roles of our shadows, which explains part of the sense of loss we feel when they die. I will probably write about this shadow projection at some point but for now, this is all about Cadi, the best Big Dog, whose life may have began and ended with tragedy but who, despite the odds, for at least eight years lived one of joyful exuberance and was a delight to anyone who knew her.

Thanks for reading. Writing this has been part of my way of dealing with the grief of loosing such a faithful companion.