Kali – dog death and funeral

June 23rd 2025: I was reluctant to get up, nervous, I am ashamed now to say, of how I would find Kali. He was not in my room, but under a chair. He was already on his own. He had not ask to go out as he did every morning, impatiently barking. I must have done a few domestic things, for when I turned again, he was outside, laying on the concrete, his eyes unusually sad, looking up not moving. I lay beside him, inhaled his dog scent, took a photograph.

A short while later still I saw him struggle down the garden, his back leg dragging: he was trying to shit and he could not. Then I knew. Then I started preparing. In a very matter of fact way, I got out his file, took out all his documents, his pedigree, his passport, the very few vet bills, all to throw away. How little a dog has.

I saw I used to call him Maha Kali, the Great Kali. Ah yes, I remember now. I called him that name then, and now. ‘Maha Kali, come, let us go then you and I’. I lifted Maha Kali into the van, not onto the bed but just on the side, where he lay. In the wood, I slid the door open, the other two jumped over him, he hardly lifted his head, his blind eyes looking out. No more barking as if to say ‘Don’t forget me’.

‘Ok Maha Kali, you say inside, rest well, we will be back’ I said to the deaf dog, and from this moment until he died, I chanted the mantra Maha Kali, his full name. Mahi Kali. Maha Kali

We walked, Bobji Brow and I. I found a perfect place to dig a grave, beside Bobs stumpery. How fitting. A place made soon after Bob died, of hornbeam stumps excavated from the pond, to represent his upside down life. Bob who loved Kali, Kali who would lick Bob’s thumb which never healed. Bob who, the day he died found a potential dog mate for Kali, which eventually became Bobji.

We walked down the field, looking back occasionally as I would for Kali, and now know he was not there. This is how it would be, I thought. Maha Kali, Maha Kali. We walked up the track which he would once run up, but latterly I’d put him on a lead, protecting him from other dogs. Maha Kali, Maha Kali.

He was sleeping where I had left him. I called the vets, come in they said.

Does he need a muzzel? they asked, one in her pocket I saw. I don’t think that necessary now, I said, and he did not flinch as she shaved his paw, put in the canula. Maha Kali, Maha Kali, Maha Kali.

There was so little difference between the seconds of life and no longer life.

They wrapped him in a blanket. Back in the wood, I lifted his limp body to a trolly, and wheeled him to the shade beside the cabin. His face was calm. Maha Kali.

MJ came of course. She held me, we wept for Kali, Jal, Gobi our beloved dogs. She dug, I attempted a few spades, but was weak to her determined strength. Tom came and together they dug a magnificent deep hole in very tough dry earth.

I called Ph, from whom I had found Kali, ‘That’s happening to mine now’, he said. So I left the call, and made the decision to invite my human family, who all knew Kali over the years, to join with me and Maha Kali for his final laying to rest.

I wrote up these words in the wood, under the shade of the hornbeam trees, the trees under which Kali had danced with the champagne cork all those 10 years ago.

People and 8 boarder collies (well one was part collie, Freyer) came for Kali’s send off. What a joy to see they were. Bobji’s offspring: Mossip, Ruffio (with Theo and Jo), Brow plus Mossip’s pup the wonderful wriggler Yarrow, her mother and brother (with James and Beth). Kali’s friends came, Kevin, Sara, Jeremy, Judith, Geoff, Gill, Michael (on his buggy), Joe. Julia was the first come before anyone, she who had buried her dogs in Africa, came with a bundle of sticks, she knew Kali’s love of sticks. Friends called, Les, Rupert, Richard, Brian, others too.

Turning first to the east, to Kali’s beginnings I called directions: the Sahara was where the seed of a dog came from, if not now when; to the south to the fire of my emotion now and Kali’s great expansive travelling life; to the west to the water, where he loved to swim Walberswick or the Danube; to the North to the earth in which his body now lay. With such gentle care MJ and Jo laid his now stiff body into the hole in the ground. And from this Jeremy wrote his beautiful poem.

We drank champagne (as I had that night with Kali when I bought the wood) and Prosecco, the last leavers enjoyed some sloe gin and Irish whisky. I walked the land with the remaining dogs, and lay on my bed in the cabin, listening to the voices from a distant room, until all fell quiet, except the owl.

In the morning the tears arrived. Maha Kali. The root of hornbeam his tombstone, his direction east.