Our dogs never learnt how to fetch a ball or anything sporty, for that matter. That said, Laddie is a runner and Queenie one of life’s great sports spectators. She could spectate for her country in her prime, making the world come to her as it should be. She is the Queen.
When Super Rugby was still a thing, the Queen would sit with me on our monster couch in a loft in Braamfontein and watch the games. As Keri-Ann left for work on those early Friday mornings, she would ask what we were doing. Queenie, who was usually sitting on the cushion just above my shoulder like a parrot would give her the look and I would point at the TV: “Working”.
Said work was hard work. It was 2013 or so. Maybe 2014. I had stopped going to the office to work some years before, just after I got back from the Beijing Olympics. Chief sports writers don’t need no stinking office. Plus, the Wi-Fi was really bad at the office and people would talk to you ... like, face-to-face and in person. Small talk is the greatest of evils, worse than the Yoda-mangle of the modern live broadcaster.
“127 for 6, the score is.” Hell’s bells. Words to fill space, to crowd the empty air to make sense of their salaries. The Queen would sigh with me in unison every time.
It was that or a lick on the ear to remind me 8am is not only breakfast time, but, bitch, you are an hour late.
Cricket. Rugby. Footie. Liverpool. Greg Minnaar. Tours de France. The Queen and I, and Laddie, when he found out we had droewors, would sit for hours in front of that television just working. It became the way of things.
Laddie was a bit of a barker. Queenie was not before she was one. I wrote this in 2016: “Two-and-a-half years ago, on Christmas Eve, my wife and I went to the Kitty and Puppy Haven, a rescue centre for dogs and cats. Keri-Ann wanted a doggy. We came home with two of them. They chose us.
“Laddie climbed halfway up the wire fence in his pen to say hello to us, hanging there until the gate was opened. He’s a terrier of sorts, we suspect some Yorkie and bits of other cuteness. He had been found scavenging in a taxi rank. Queenie was spinning around slowly, a little uncertain of me. She had spent the last few years of her life in a puppy mill, locked up in a cage producing litter after litter. She was a dachshund with the face of a Labrador, an act of congress that still seems incomprehensible.
“Queenie is the blackest of black dogs. She absorbs light. We could not find her the other night. I walked from the lounge to the bedrooms and then back again. She had been in the lounge the entire time, curled up on a black fleece blanket, black-on-black invisible.
“We did not know Queenie could bark before we moved into our new house. When we lived in the loft she was a quiet thing. With her own garden to play in, she found her voice. She barks challenges and greetings to dogs being walked past the house. She barks at the pigeons that come down to nick her food. It’s a deep bark, out of sync with her size. It’s a good bark.”
I last heard that bark on Tuesday afternoon. Someone had deigned to enter the domain of the Queen through the front gate. No-one does that without knowing who is in charge. I will never hear that bark again. She breathed her last in my arms on Wednesday. It was not my shoulder and it was not Super Rugby, nor cricket, but I will not watch sport with her again.
The Queen rests.
Farewell my girl.
Our sobs fill the air.
Our grief will never rest.
Your dying breaths have rewritten what I think I was.
Your barks marked moments.
Your sighs aligned the stars.
Your smile was ever full of bluster.
Your farts enriched with muster.
Your tail waggles stilled and twisted the air with fluster.
Your hoppy happiness at a walk remains a wonderful joy.
Your licks the caresses of the goddesses.
Your snuggles the sleepy wills of the Sandman.
Your tail the reluctant wiggle for those who were not worthy.
Your licks for those who were.
Your sniffs of shoes.
Your whiffs of ankles.
Your love and care of Laddie.
Your love of us.
Your love.
My Queen.
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