In praise of Superdog

And a thought about reincarnation

Our friend Max waited in a ditch for Popeye to leap over. Superdog! Pic: Max Ellis

My oldest granddaughter asked me today when Popeye will die. She is six and he is now twelve. He saunters rather than soars when we take him out round the country lanes these days.

The summer holidays are here and he is on alert for the slamming of a car door and one of my daughters walking in with a small member of the pack. He knows that however tiny they may be, the grandchildren displace him in the hierarchy. He gives me the side eye whenever one of them appears.

“Going to see Popeye” is far more important to the grandchildren than seeing Nana Wendy and Moopapa. (Moopapa is a hybrid of Moominpapa from the Tove Jannson books and Manny’s dad, Moo-Pa, in the genius TV comedy Black Books.)

I first met him as an eight week old pup flanked by his old blue-eyed working collie dad, his young, sleek, greyhound/whippet/saluki cross mum and his siblings. Of the litter of seven, he was the one scrabbling to get out of the enclosure to greet us, so he chose us as much as we chose him. My son, then aged ten, christened him Popeye because he had an endearing slightly cock-eyed gaze.

Milo came to puppy training classes with me so we could all learn together. A more devoted boy and his dog you have never met.

Homecoming, 2012

Sharing the dog blanket on a sick day off school

My triplet daughters had long since flown the nest and set up homes of their own and, in time, granddaughter #1 arrived and was brought to greet Popeye when she was eight weeks old. He gave her a sniff, then stationed himself close to her crib.

As a toddler, she loved to walk with him, play with him, but most of all to decorate him. She awarded him medals, shared her tiger hairband, kept him “cosy” with cushions.

AT-AT pose, waiting for the stick to be thrown.

Nowadays she gives more consideration to him being a dog, not a mannequin, but the three smaller grandchildren have taken on the mantle of chief dog decorators. He is infinitely patient.

By the time they can walk, they’ve all learned to throw a ball in his general direction and to ask him to “give” it back, rather than try to wrestle it from him. It took my children many years to hone the ball skills that the dog has taught my grandchildren within months.

I trust Popeye with small children, but I don’t currently trust my grandson with Popeye. He is at the age where if you ask him not to poke the dog with a pencil, he will poke the dog with a pencil. It’s not oppositional defiant disorder, it’s just being three. I turn everything into a positive statement, and sound like a police officer. “DROP THE PENCIL NOW! STEP AWAY FROM THE DOG!” Still, he (the boy, that is) needs watching.

We lost Popeye once, as the puppy trainer said we probably would, when he went through his dog “teen” months. He had a wild moment, followed a delicious scent and eventually rocked up at a farm eight miles away. Thankfully he was identified by his chip and returned to us by the dog warden after a night frantic with worry.

He’s terrified of fireworks, since a neighbour brought in the New Year with rockets at midnight, without warning, while he was in the garden. He bolted and it took us an hour to track him down. But apart from that and quivering during thunderstorms, he is zen.

I reassured my granddaughter that Popeye has good, healthy cross-breed genes, but her question this morning gave me pause. Our dog before him, a silky grey Weimaraner, died aged 13 and it was devastating.

None of us takes this most adored, most decorated Superdog for granted.

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Am I the reincarnation of Céline Céleste?

Once again, memoirist Abigail Thomas, asked an interesting question in her Substack What Comes Next?, when she pondered what would happen if the earth shrugs off humanity and – God forbid – she gets reincarnated, but has to go backwards instead of forwards.

It isn’t death that scares me. My problem with dying is the possibility of an afterlife. What if we have to come back?

HOPE, HA HA HA

Abigail reckons she might return as cro magnon woman.

I know exactly who I’d like to time hop back to. Twenty-two years ago, I dreamed I was looking in a mirror and an older woman was looking back at me. The ‘me’ in the mirror told me she was Céline Céleste; that she was me and I was her.

I memorised her name and searched it on the internet as soon as I woke up.

She was a real woman! A dancer/melodramatic actress, born in Paris c. 1815. She had an eventful life, touring America and being feted by then US president Andrew Jackson. Later she became a theatre manager in London.

Céline Céleste

I was puzzled as to why someone as dramatic as her would be matched with me. Did she need to take a turn as an introvert living the rural life? True, I wanted to be a dancer when I was a child (I wanted to join Pan’s People on Top of the Pops or be a ballerina). I embarked on a drama degree, only to bail out six months later. But I also wanted to be a journalist and that’s the path I took.

She appeared in my dream shortly after my son Milo was born. Before him I’d had another son, Otto, who was stillborn at full-term. I was celebrating one life while still mourning another. I suppose you could say I was spiritually very raw.

Thinking more about it, I have had a dramatic life. All lives are dramatic. You don’t need to perform on the stage for that.

Books: I’m on to the fourth of Abigail Thomas’s memoirs. I followed Safekeeping with A Three Dog Life, and What Comes Next and How to Like It and have just started Still Life At Eighty. I also have her book of writing prompts, Two Pages. (She has decades of experience as a writing tutor.)

She is so good for my soul. I’ve read about her marriages, her family, her friends and yes, her dogs. Her humanity leaps off the page. Every short chapter is a gem.

And I can get my regular fix of her wit and wisdom here on Substack.

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Other things I’ve enjoyed on Substack recently…

I love a warts and all confessional memoir and there have been some corking essays on Substack which I’ve read in recent days on the theme of families, these among them. (The strong language in some of them goes with the territory.)

“Dad moves out, Colin moves in, and both he and Mum are, quite often, naked.”

Ros Barber surely wins Substack title of the month for The Penis in the Pate.

…

“I still don’t know what the point of me is without my father, still plot to bring him back through sheer force of will.”

Hannah Betts on missing her wonderful dad. She pays tribute to him here.

…

‘Do you know? How hard it is to walk away from a father? It’s harder than you think. Our survival brains tell us to make a U-turn—double back.’

Rebecca Goodall on not attending her father’s funeral: Dear Dead Dad.

…

Cherry Coombe faces down the pain of her second husband’s suicide:

SHAME

I have turned the water to blood; it feels magical, biblical even.

Kate Sibcy deserves recognition for this powerful piece about menstruation and the mother and daughter connection.

…

I’ve also been enjoying the grungy, witty, oft lurid, tales of Obsidian Blackbird’s New Zealand youth. I worry for him and just about everyone he meets on his travels. I’m glad he survived to tell his story.

After a while something inside me died and I couldn’t cry anymore as I had gone totally numb and I would fall asleep to the sounds of other little abandoned ten year olds crying silently, alone in the darkness.

This is the intro to the part about his life at boarding school.

(I do wonder why anyone pays to send their kids to boarding school.)

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© Wendy Varley 2024