A Small Dog Saved My Life. Bel Mooney

writers alike have long suggested the idea of the dog as (yes) a moral teacher. This is not fanciful. Anyone who has (for example) studied the psychology of serial killers will recognize the ‘flies to wanton boys’ argument behind Kant’s words: ‘He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men … The more we come into contact with animals, and observe their behaviour, the more we love them, for we see how great is their care of their young.’

      Once I was an ignorant young woman who professed dislike of these animals. Now in my sixties, the more I read about dogs and learn what an influence they have had on their owners and the more I love my own small example of the genus, the more I understand Franz Kafka’s statement: ‘All knowledge, the totality of all questions and answers, is contained within the dog.’

      This story asks questions and offers some answers about change and how we can deal with it, in order to survive. It is also about dogs in history, art and literature, dogs as therapy, dogs as everything they can be to humans, helping us in the process of living. The narrative is aided by those diaries and notebooks which were such a catharsis and by a few extracts from my published journalism. I choose to tell this slice of a life discursively, because I have never trodden a straight path and love the side turning which leads to a hidden shrine. During a long career which began in 1970 I have worn many hats – reporter, profile writer, columnist, children’s author, commentator on women’s issues, travel writer, critic, radio and television presenter, novelist – but it is my latest incarnation which provided the final driving impetus to write this book. In 2005, rebuilding my life, I became – quite by accident, as I will explain – an advice columnist on first one, then another national newspaper. The truth is that, although I have loved all aspects of my working life, I find this the most significantly useful role I have ever played, apart from those of wife, mother, daughter and friend.

      But the work causes me much sorrow too. So many letters, so much heartbreak, all transferred and carried within me, with none of the safeguards in place for the qualified psychotherapist. This has opened my eyes, in a way impossible before, to the pain caused by the end of love and the destruction of marriage, although the two do not necessarily go together. Oh, I know about the other forms of loss as well. When widows or widowers write to me from their depths of grief and loneliness, it is very hard to know what to say. Death has to be faced, but no such glib statement of the truth of existence is any use to those in mourning. Still, I do my best. I have never been afraid of writing about bereavement. It’s easier than addressing vindictiveness, selfishness and despair.

      How do you advise people who are dealing with the end of love, or (especially) the ‘death’ of a long marriage? What resources can be drawn on to cope with the loss of all you were and all you think you might have gone on to be, with that person at your side? How do we make ourselves whole again? The entirely unexpected end of my long marriage confronted me with those questions, and I bring some of the knowledge gained to my job and to this book. Some people will think that all should remain private but I have never been able to shut myself away, and remain unconvinced that battening down the hatches is useful. For one thing, the act of remembering halts the rush of time, as well as being profoundly healing. Seamus Heaney expresses this idea in Changes: ‘Remember this. It will be good for you to retrace this path when you have grown away and stand at last at the very centre of the empty city.’

      Second, I know it is helpful to share stories. My work as an advice columnist has proved to me without doubt that there is valuable consolation for others in telling how it was for you. To hell with privacy, I say – though not with reticence. We need each other’s stories, all of us, just as I need my small dog. We have to be courageous, just as my dog is brave, no matter how small. We can learn from each other and go on learning, as I have learnt from her. The poet and naturalist David Whyte perfectly encapsulates the motivation behind this evocation of life and dogs:

      To be human

      Is to become visible

      While carrying

      What is hidden

      As a gift to others.

      One

      FINDING

      There is much to learn from these dogs.

       And we must learn these things over and over.

      Amy Hempel

      I never knew where she came from and will never know. The central mystery will always be there when I look at her, reminding me that my mirror offers a similar puzzle: who are you? It is a Zen question, the one Gauguin must have been thinking when he painted Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, every vibrant brushstroke telling us that the answer can never be known and the central mystery has to be accepted in your journey towards the end. All this I knew. But the coming of my little dog was to herald a deeper awareness: that we cannot know what will happen to us. Not ever.

      Yet I have always needed to control things. Spontaneity makes me uneasy. I like to know the history of a house, the provenance of a picture, the origin of a quotation, because such knowledge is a hedge against chaos. I plot and plan. My books are arranged alphabetically or (depending on the subject) chronologically, and my shoes and gloves have to be ordered according to the spectrum. Years ago, having children presented me with a philosophical shock to match the physical and emotional pain, because those outcomes I could not control. A stillborn son and a very sick daughter served only to increase my need for form and structure. Retreating within the four walls of the life I planned was the only security. This was Home. Everything therein could be organized, a perfect bastion created to face down the imperfections in the world outside.

      Then, quite unexpectedly, there came from nowhere the smallest dog. She pitter-pattered into my life before I could think but, had I stopped to consider, she certainly would not have been let in. These are the moments when the universe smiles and plays a trick. You get up one morning with no inkling that the day will bring a life-changing moment. The face of a future lover seen across a room, a sudden stumble which leaves you with a black eye, a phone call which will seem to leave your career in tatters, at least for a while. There can be no knowing what will pop out from under the lid of the scary jack-in-a-box – so be ready for it all (I advise people), because then you won’t be surprised. But Bonnie surprised me. She slipped in under the radar. My permanent high-alert system must have short-circuited, leaving me wide open. The small dog arrived with the unstoppable force of a Sherman tank, changing things for ever.

      You should always share things with the people you love, and make decisions together, but I decided on this tiny creature on impulse. I told no one – not even the most beloved of my heart – that a ‘toy’ dog, an animal fit only for laps and satin cushions, would come to live on our farm. What did I think when I first saw her – apart from the obvious, ‘Ahh, how can a dog be so small?’ As I said, I did not think at all. But looking back, with fanciful hindsight, surely I knew she was destined to share my life. Hers was the face of the lover seen across a room – the new person, the One. How could I have known that this dog spoke to an urgent need I had not identified, whilst her mixture of vulnerability and toughness would prove an exact match for my own? Bonnie the abandoned creature was to become my saviour during my own time of abandonment; she who was so small taught me most of what I was to learn about largeness of spirit. The lessons carried within the soul of my little dog go on and on. But that is to jump ahead …

      This is how it happened.

      On 13 June 2002 I drove to Bath’s Royal United Hospital for a meeting of the art committee. Our task was to cheer the corridors of the hospital with artworks, and to commission an original work of sculpture with funds from the National Lottery to ‘animate the aerial space’. I liked that phrase; it would be a sort of hanging, flying creation in the atrium. It might distract patients afraid of this part of their life journey, reinvigorate families who face so much waiting and generally cheer up everyone who passed that way, from the consultant to the cleaner. My own life is enriched by art every day; naturally I agree that hospitals should be too. So I said I would join the committee, and give time and enthusiasm to the ‘unnecessary’ decoration of a necessary place.

      But I dislike meetings; my claustrophobia kicks in within