On 16 January this year, my dog Bordeaux died. At sixteen years old, she was half-blind and hard of hearing. Where before, she had the energy of a nuclear bomb, Bordeaux now walked slowly and spent most hours lying in the sun occasionally gazing about her with those eyes that had developed a white film around them. Because of the pain in her gums, she could only eat soft foods. A week before her demise, she refused to eat. In consultation with the vet, we had to put Bordeaux down. It was a painful decision and so was watching her wasting away. When the vet gave my dog the injection to terminate her life, I did not realise how emotional that moment would be for me.
I was not prepared mentally because I did not grow up with an attachment to pets.
Once upon a time
Being a dog in the 1970s and 80s in Zimbabwe cannot have been a happy time. Most dogs we knew were usually scrawny and their diet was standard: sadza and milk. If there was a wedding or a funeral, the dogs hovered close by waiting for bones to be chucked their way. The dogs had pretty standard names – Danger, Shumba and Tiger. There was always the odd one called Muromondishe, named after a neighbours’ quarrel.
The only cats we knew were street ones that roamed at night looking for something to eat. Elusive and cunning, we did not like to see their flashing eyes in the dark. If the cat was black, superstition kicked in. It was similar to our fear of owls where if you encountered this bird at night you believed someone was out to get you.
Bordeaux comes into our life
Muffin – the dog that went AWOL
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In 2009, a good friend asked if I wanted a puppy. His dog, a German Shepherd, had given birth to a litter of crossbreeds. I did not hesitate with a response because, by coincidence, our family dog called Muffin (yep, that’s right) had decided to just walk out of the gate and disappear. We searched high and low for Muffin, but we never found her. I had gotten Muffin from the SPCA when she was already an adult, and she had proved difficult to socialise differently. We were, therefore, all excited as a family to get a puppy that the kids could grow up with.
Another friend warned me that it was not a good idea because he lived next door, and the mother of this puppy was a savage – she barked incessantly and disturbed the peace at night. The advice was too late. My children had fallen in love with the pup that I soon named Bordeaux. Why that name? I do not know but, as with Muffin, I had a penchant for odd names.
When a dog becomes a family member
Contrary to the doomsayer, Bordeaux turned out to be the near-perfect dog. She could have been perfect except that one time I tried to stop her from picking a chicken bone in the street and she bit my foot. She also bit the vet one time when she was being treated. But she was a good guard and any person visiting us for the first time had to be introduced to Bordeaux otherwise she would go on barking by the door as if alerting us that there was an intruder.
Although Bordeaux was closest to my youngest child, we all vied to take care of her. I would run in the morning with Bordeaux and in the afternoon my youngest would walk her. The dog knew the routines so well that she would be by the door at the hour, waiting patiently but all hell would break loose at the sight of the leash. She would literally pull you to the exit.
Bordeaux became much closer to the whole family during the COVID lockdown. As we anxiously navigated the unknown, our dog seemed to reassure us that we would be fine. She did not talk. She just came close by each member asking for a rub. Whilst we ventured gingerly outside wearing our masks in order to obtain groceries, Bordeaux was a calm presence in the storm.
At the height of the pandemic my late buddy, Austin Bene, would call and if I told him I was walking up some hill in the bush with my dog he burst with laughter. We had had some raucous years together in the early 2000s and the Marxist in him could not reconcile my dog walking with the liberation of the proletariat.
Like any other dog, Bordeaux was fiercely territorial. Ted, the next-door Yorkshire Terrier, knew this and would come up the driveway daily just to tease the growling Bordeaux. Ted would also run towards me demanding a pat, further aggravating the situation.
But this is now all past. What remains are photos and memories of a dog that became an integral part of our family.
