This is Ruby’s human speaking.

Sometimes it’s a good thing we don’t know what life will throw at us next.

Two years ago, in January 2014, my arthritic knee collapsed and had to be repaired. At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything worse. Four months of inactivity, followed by a prognosis of permanently reduced mobility, in a year where my goal was for Ruby and I to qualify for and compete in the National Agility Championships in August.

In the end, we achieved that goal and more, in spite of my injury. My wonderful dog was more than equal to the challenge, taking on her own job and most of mine as well. At the end of 2014, as I photographed her with the trophies she had won at both the provincial and national events, I remember thinking: What would I do without this amazing dog in my life?

Never, for an instant, did it occur to me that I’d only have her for another few weeks.

Ruby died suddenly and unexpectedly of cancer, on March 18, 2015. She had just turned eight years old.

You’ve no idea how long it took me to be able to write that. She was such a vigorous presence, flinging herself at life and enjoying whatever it brought her. An early death for such a dog seemed then – and still seems – too unspeakably cruel to be true.

Cruel or not, death snatched her away with no warning and no time to prepare. Apparently healthy on the Friday, she was gone by the following Wednesday. She became very sick over the space of a weekend, and the diagnosis, when it came, was unforgiving: inoperable cardiac hemangiosarcoma. The tumour had ruptured, filling the sac around her heart with blood. It would rupture again, and soon. The specialist vets – all four of them, because a second and third opinion weren’t enough – told me that without treatment, her life would probably be measured in days. With chemotherapy and slews of drugs, we could expect a few weeks, perhaps two or three months if we were careful and didn’t over-exert her heart. Our choice was simple: euthanasia or palliative treatment. There was no middle road. And whatever we decided, she would die before the spring was over. I was stunned.

It wasn’t the first time life had thrown this kind of curve ball my way: I went through something similar, many years ago, with my dad. Apparently healthy, still working full-time, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a couple of months to live. The doctors pumped him full of drugs. When his kidneys failed as a result, the hospital (against everyone’s wishes) took extraordinary measures to restore life and “bring him back”. He spent much of the next few weeks – his last – in a drug-induced haze, saying things he didn’t mean, helpless because his hands and arms were paralyzed by a secondary tumour. I remember telling his doctor: I wouldn’t put my dog through this.

I thought long and hard about those words more than a decade later, when I had to make that excruciating choice for Ruby.

We sat together on the floor, Ruby and I, for several hours after her brutal diagnosis. She slept soundly, her head on my knee, grateful to be home after a night spent in the hospital, away from her family. I thought about the options I’d been given: let her die now, painlessly, surrounded by the people she loves, or give the “treatment” and let her die in a few weeks, perhaps in pain, perhaps alone, perhaps altered by secondary tumours.

My dad didn’t have these options. At the time, for humans, life at any cost was the only choice. And sometimes the cost was very high: our family will attest to that.

Living with my dad in those final weeks of his life changed the nature of our relationship. It’s hard not to see a terminally ill person as being diminished, and hard, sometimes, to know how to be and what to say. And there’s the fear: fear that the inevitable will happen when you’re asleep or at the hospital cafeteria, or sometime when you’re out taking care of life. Fear of what comes next. Fear of what things will be like when the other person has gone. Impending death becomes a wall, with them on one side and you on the other.

Sick humans are rational beings, able to grasp and accept these things. They understand and make their own choices. But sick dogs aren’t like that. They don’t realize you’re putting them through the pain and unpleasantness in order to give them another few weeks of being alive. Dogs are creatures of the present. They only know life as it is: in Ruby’s case, it would be life with a sad and fearful human who cried a lot and took her endlessly to the vet for injections and other tortures. Would she even remember the fun-loving human who used to throw tennis balls, play agility and walk for miles in the forest?

Would it be fair to do that to Ruby? Or would it be unfair to deny her the extra time? Would my dad have chosen a different end, if he’d had the chance?

In the early weeks after my dad’s diagnosis, before the treatment took its toll, we had some conversations about death and how to face it. He had an interesting perspective, having always feared old age, dependency and disability. “I would,” he said, “have turned into a very unpleasant old man.” He felt this early death – he was younger than my husband is now – was in some respects fitting. “People will be sorry to see me go, instead of sorry I’m still around. I like that better.” But did he really? He never got to meet my daughter or his great-grandkids. He never got to build his dream house, or take three months off to travel the world, or reap the benefits of his life’s work. Were the “advantages” of dying early truly worth the sacrifice? I sometimes wonder how he’d answer that question today, if he could come back and talk about it.

I flew to England after his diagnosis, to spend some time with him. In the early days, we made memories doing things he enjoyed. We went to his favourite café for ice cream, we visited a relative he hadn’t seen for years, and we drove his Land Rover at full speed over flooded fields, mud and water spraying in our wake. We also toured his farms, so he could talk about the plans he’d had for the future.

Oddly, it wasn’t always a sad time. Some days, it felt more like we were celebrating his life.

I thought about all this when I sat down with Ruby on that terrible day to decide her fate. How carefully I’d planned the rest of our lives together: another two or three years of agility, her “last run”, and a well-deserved retirement when I could give back to her all the things she’d given to me. The best-laid plans … Cancer was cheating us out of this, just as it had cheated my dad. I don’t think Ruby would have agreed with him that an early death was somehow fitting. On the contrary, I think she would have howled in despair. I think, like me, she would have raged against the lost life and the lost love she should have had.

But the vets had given us only those two, stark options: death now, or death soon. It came down to a simple question: Would Ruby want to spend her final weeks doing things she hated? I’m still convinced her answer to this would have been a resounding “no”.  She wasn’t an animal to die slowly, inch by inch, dragged from one vet to the next, injected with drugs, unable to do the things she enjoyed most in case the tumour in her heart ruptured again. She would have railed against it, this life diminished. It wouldn’t have been a fitting end for a dog who lived so intensely. She deserved better. I felt then, and still feel, that she deserved to go out in a blaze of glory, on her own terms.

So that’s the end I chose for her. Twenty-four hours doing all the things she loved most: chasing squirrels, eating unlimited quantities of steak, chicken and home-made goodies, sleeping in her own bed alongside mine. In the morning, a final walk on the forest trails, where she caught snowballs and jumped for joy at being alive. Then some quiet time together, sitting in the snow in the agility field, under the tree where we used to pitch our shelter at trials, leaning against one another as I said my final goodbye.

An hour later, she died at home on her favourite cushion, surrounded by her family, her head in my lap. The last voice she heard was mine, telling her how loved she was, and what a privilege it was to have been her human. To this day, I have no doubt it was how she would have wanted things to be, given the hand we were dealt. Cancer may have stolen Ruby’s life, but it never got a chance to steal her joy. She was Ruby until she died.

It wasn’t the way either of us wanted our story to finish. But I’m glad we made the choice to write the ending in our own words. And at least we did this one last thing together: we were a team to the end. For her, it was the right choice. I’ve never doubted that. For me, though, it was … indescribably, wrenchingly unbearable. My own fast-track to a life diminished.

The immediate aftermath, of course, was a nightmare. Watching as her body was carried out of the house, the unnatural silence when I went back inside. Waking suddenly, in the middle of that first night without her, thinking: they will burn my dog tomorrow.

This new life was a raw and joyless affair, in a world where the sun had gone out. Gathering up Ruby’s cushions and crates and putting them away.  Vacuuming hair shed by a dog who was no longer there, resisting the urge to gather it all up and keep it safe. And worst of all, going to recover her ashes, carrying the remains of my beautiful dog home in a wooden box.

Then there was that first agility trial: waking early to drive my daughter and her dog, knowing that Ruby would not be waiting anxiously by the door, bouncing up and down, tail wagging, eyes shining at the prospect of a day doing fun stuff with her human.

Watching that trial from the sidelines, fighting off the tears and trying not to be angry that other people still had their dogs when mine was dead.

And that terrible first walk on the forest trails, with images of Ruby bounding around corners, smiling joyfully. I went alone for that one, and had to stop several times on the way, to sit by a tree and wait for the wave of grief to go away.

I’ve watched other human beings come to terms with indescribable losses, much worse than mine, and still rebuild their lives. So I knew what to do. One step at a time. One day at a time. Eventually, the world would come back into focus: it always does, no matter how it seems in the beginning. I learned to talk about Ruby, look at photos, and let the memories in. But I couldn’t write about her. Not then, and not for a long time. Even now, a year later, it’s hard.

I’m probably not the only one who’s felt some guilt at grieving so hard for an animal – as hard, in fact, as for the humans I’ve lost. This isn’t something I feel comfortable admitting, but on the other hand, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise either. Ruby was such an integral part of my life, my constant companion 24 hours a day, every day. In many respects, her presence defined what I did with my time. She came with me to the office, rode in the car when I had errands to do, dragged me away from the computer every afternoon for our walk, kept me company when I was sick or injured, and threw herself wholeheartedly into anything I wanted to do. And, of course, there was agility. Chosen to be an agility dog, she tackled her job with a level of exuberance and enthusiasm that took several years to harness, and she gave me so much more than I would ever have thought to ask for. I was her life, and much of my life was built around her. We were partners in and out of the agility ring. The sense of desolation that followed her death was overwhelming.

But if there’s one thing in the world that shouldn’t need justification, it’s grief. When it hits, you just have to work through it, regardless of who or what you’re grieving for. Someone once wrote that when a dog dies, it tears away a small piece of its human’s heart. Well, this particular dog, when she died, ripped out a huge, vital piece of my heart and left a gaping hole that seems impossible to fill. People tell me she’ll always be close, but I’m not sure it’s going to work that way, at least for me. That wooden box and its contents are cold comfort at best. This was a dog who gave me everything she had, and she’s gone. I still miss her.

It has helped to be part of a community that understands. It has helped enormously to be part of a community that rallied round my fundraising efforts and allowed me to make a large donation to canine cancer research, in Ruby’s honour. The overwhelming support I received is something I’ll never forget, and it became the most significant staging post on the journey back from the dark: the tipping point between sadness and hope. When I put that cheque in the mail, in honour of Ruby’s life, I knew I could stop looking back and start looking forward again.

I can, at least, take the memories with me. Young Ruby, desperately retrieving small children from our pool (much to their dismay) in case they drowned. Her tail, banging loudly against furniture. Broken lamps and plants, wagged off a shelf or table in an excess of golden enthusiasm. Smiling Ruby, emerging from the ocean with a tennis ball in her mouth.

Her paw, resting on my foot as I worked at the computer. The way she would run to join me during our walks, to trot alongside me for a few seconds and rub her head against my hand: here I am, here you are, life is perfect.

Memories, too, of our last agility trial – the one we didn’t know would be our last. Her final qualifying run, a Gambler: 126 points, and her 100^th Gamble Q. The Queen of Gambles, coming full circle. As though the universe knew …

A dog like Ruby leaves an indelible imprint on her human’s life. Not just through agility, but through everything else: her joy, her wild and untamed personality, the way she lived every instant to the full. She was the dog I always wanted and never thought I would have. As an eight-week-old pup, she trotted into our home and into our hearts as though it was meant to be, and appointed herself “my” dog from the very beginning. She became my shadow, a constant and adoring presence. As anyone who’s involved in dog sports will testify, the relationships we build with these animals are often more intense than those we have with the humans in our lives. We shape and mould our dogs’ personalities, transforming them into the partners we want them to be. It’s a process that takes years, with hard work and sacrifices on both sides. When we lose our dogs, we lose all that as well. When we lose them suddenly, we become … untethered. When Ruby died like that, with no warning, it threw the whole world out of balance. The road back has been hard.

And yet, here I am a year later: sadder, warier of what life might have in store, but moving forward. There’s another Golden Retriever under my desk now, watching intently as I work at the computer. Not a replacement: he’ll leave his own set of pawprints in my life, alongside Ruby’s. But I still look up, sometimes, and see Ruby’s photo on my office wall. I’m sorry, I whisper. It shouldn’t have ended like that. You deserved better.

I’ve kept Ruby’s collar, the one I unclipped gently from her neck after she’d taken her last breath. It’s blue and bears the slogan “Life is Good”. When I first saw that collar in the store, I knew it was made for her, and she wore it for the rest of her life.  There were days in the aftermath of her death when it seemed like a bad joke. Now, however, I see it as a reminder of the way she lived: brashly, entirely, uncompromisingly, making the most of every second. There isn’t a single moment of my eight years with her that I regret or would change, and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world. Life with Ruby was indeed good. It was such an honour and privilege to be her human. The imprint she left on me – that indelible pawprint on my heart – will always be there. That, more than anything else, is what I’ll take with me into the future.

Ruby, my best friend, companion and partner, who took me on an adventure I’ll never forget. A one-of-a-kind dog, a wild and untamed spirit, a gift I never expected to have. In eight short years, she gave me a lifetime of joy and exuberance. She changed my world and I’ll miss her forever.

It’s a well-known fact, at least among the canine population, that humans fall into one of five groups: the Sporting Group, the Working Group, the Utility Group, the Companion Group and the Toy Group. It’s the humans themselves who decide which group they will join, and unfortunately for dogs, this requires a greater level of self-awareness than the average human seems to possess.

Take my female human, for example. She seems to feel she belongs in the Sporting Group. However, if she’s anything to go by, humans in this group are probably highly deluded, in addition to their other problems: they fancy themselves as athletes, even when some of them clearly aren’t. Some days my human can hardly stagger down the stairs, but she persists in describing herself as a “sportswoman”. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

She’s fond of telling people that “we” do a sport called agility. However, there’s only one agile partner in this team, and it’s certainly not her. Why she ever wanted a canine athlete like me is a complete mystery. In training I have to bark at her all the time, and when we compete in public it can be downright embarrassing. Honestly, she’s not much use. She’s slow off the mark, never where she needs to be, and a hopeless communicator. We’d actually been competing for two years before I realized the obstacles had to be done in a certain order. Since then I’ve taught her to stay out of my way, point to the obstacles I need to do, and let me get on with it. We’re a bit more successful as a result and she’s quick to take the credit, although she doesn’t really contribute much. But imagine what I could have achieved with a human who could actually run.  If she’d only realized she’s better suited to being a Companion human, instead of a Sporting human, we’d all be happier.

Frankly, though, I’m pleased to be an agility dog and very grateful I wasn’t singled out for a job as an obedience dog. Obedience seems to demand a kind of Stepford attitude to life that I would have found hard to tolerate. My human used to take me to obedience classes, and they were, to put it mildly, a nightmare: I was forced to sit still for long periods, walk past food without attempting to steal it, and allow the human to leave the room unsupervised. These are all things I would never dream of doing at home. It was a most distressing experience, and you can’t imagine how relieved I was when we switched to agility classes instead.

However, one of the benefits of living with a Sporting Group human, even such a poor specimen, is that we do tend to get out and about quite a bit. If both my humans were Working Group or Companion Group, I’d spend my life lying in a basket, and that’s not something I’d relish.

My male human is most definitely a member of the Working Group. These humans tend to be particularly obsessive. Mine, for example, sits alone for long hours in his den, taps frantically on a little plastic clicker pad, spreads large quantities of paper all over the floor – not to pee on or chew, he hates it when that happens – and swears loudly at technological devices over which he has no control. It seems like a very boring existence, but he likes it. At least, he’s always keen to get rid of the rest of us, so he can spend his weekends alone with his papers. 

As for my small human, she’s certainly a lot more “Sporting” than the female, but might also be classified in the “Toy” group. Her designated dog, the household poodle, is often subjected to treatments I personally would find difficult to accept: he gets washed, has his hair cut and his teeth brushed, and has even, in the past, had his nails painted. He’s also asked to do tricks, and will actually sneeze on command, like some kind of battery-operated toy robot dog. And to top it all, he seems to enjoy it ... need I say more? This is clearly one of the few human-dog matches made in heaven.

But even when dogs are matched with unsuitable human specimens, as in my case, it’s our role in life to make our human happy. A happy human gives treats. It’s not rocket science. But I’m keeping my paws crossed that my human’s rickety knees don’t collapse and force us back into “obedience” activities. Even with treats, it’s still the stuff of canine nightmares.

It was St. Valentine’s Day last Saturday. Partner appreciation day, if the advertising hype is to be believed. And what did my so-called human “partner” do? She packed her camera gear into the car and drove off for the day without me! Not only that, but she came back smelling of other dogs, too tired to give me more than a cursory scratch behind the ears on her way to the beer stash.

So much for loyalty.

Of course, she wasn’t too tired to spend hours cooking a nice dinner for the household's food-obsessed human contingent. They were having roast duck with all the trimmings and gravy. Not that we dogs were allowed anywhere near it. Oh, no. Even on St. Valentine’s Day, we had to make do with our usual dish of dust nuggets. I tell you, I was feeling pretty unappreciated as I watched them prepare their meal. It was time, I thought, for some exclusive personal attention.

So I lay patiently under the table until all the plates had been served, and gave the female just enough time to sit down and take her first mouthful. Then I stood up, belched loudly a couple of times, made a few deep retching noises (humans hate that), and regurgitated all my dust nuggets from dinner onto the floor. I hadn't bothered chewing them when I ate them, so they made quite an impressive heap, steaming and fresh, in a slimy, dark brown liquid. They were also mixed with a few pineapple chunks I’d stolen from the male human’s unattended plate at lunchtime. It looked (and smelled) wonderfully appetizing to me, but humans seem to have different standards. In any case, the male's face went greenish-grey, and he lurched away from the table so quickly that he knocked his chair over and spilled his wine. The female didn't change colour, but she swore and limped off to get a roll of kitchen paper. In the meantime, I started gobbling up the vomit as fast as I could. It's something that always provokes a fun reaction from the humans, and this time was no exception. The female made a strange noise and dove under the table to drag me away, but I resisted just enough to make her lose her balance and fall sideways into the mess on the floor. And when she’d almost finished cleaning the first batch, I was able to retch a few more times to deposit my breakfast as well. It took her about ten minutes to pick it all up, wash the floor and change her clothes.

When the humans eventually sat down to their meal again, let’s just say the edge had gone from their appetites …

And there was a small added bonus. Dessert was chocolate fondue. I watched the female dip a grape into the chocolate, then stare at it, obviously comparing it to the dark brown dust nuggets she’d just cleaned off the floor. Quietly, she set the grape down on her plate without eating it. I was actually quite proud of myself. It’s the first time in living memory that she’s refused a plate of chocolate.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day, everyone.

She’s spent the last seven years trying to teach me to sit and stay at the start of our runs. Apparently this improves the way “we” perform, although I’ve never really understood the logic and refused to do it for the longest time. She can’t run the course without me, so why am I the one who has to stay put on the start line? It doesn’t make sense. However, she always seems pleased when I wait a few seconds, so I usually do it now, even though I don’t agree with it. It puts her in a good mood, and the better her mood, the more treats I get afterwards.

This weekend, when we went into the ring for our first race, she made me lie down at the start as usual, and limped off to take up her position. I normally just stay there and bark at her to get a move on, but this time I decided to switch things up a bit. So as soon as her back was turned, I jumped the first obstacle and ran over to stand beside her. You should have seen her expression of panic! It was to die for! She sort of froze, then started waving her arms around like some kind of demented windmill. She looked like she’d forgotten where we had to go, so I jumped the second obstacle to give her a clue. It prodded her into action and we got round the rest of the course without incident, but those few seconds at the start were the most fun I’d had in weeks, except for the cat in the bushes during our vacation, but that’s another story.

She’s so easy to wind up that I thought it would be a shame not to do it again, so I tried a variation of the same thing for our last race of the weekend. Again, she made me lie down at the start, but this time, as she was walking away, I jumped the first obstacle and ran towards the A-frame (obstacle number 5), as though I was going to take it. I wasn’t, of course, but she didn’t know that. Well, everyone on that field must have heard the cry of sheer desperation. Her face was a picture – eyes bulging, white as a sheet. I turned around just before I touched the frame, then made a fake lunge back towards the first obstacle before veering back onto the proper course. I’m surprised she didn’t have a heart attack. It was by far the highlight of the entire event for me. She was still trembling when we finished the run – fault-free, I might add, although no thanks to her. And she was so relieved that she gave me her sandwich at lunchtime.

I can see infinite possibilities for this game in the future. I wonder how many sandwiches I can get at our next trial …

I have been instructed to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day. I am a golden retriever and I don't know what that means, but I have been bribed with a piece of bacon.

Please believe me when I say I am not looking forward to Halloween. St.Patrick1

I was attacked in my own kitchen.

The female human was dealing with the breakfast dishes, and I, as usual, had my head in the dishwasher, helping to clean last night’s dinner plates (ginger chicken and rice, one of her more edible offerings). I’ve been doing this for the last seven years and nothing untoward has ever happened. Today, however, with no warning whatsoever, the bottom dishwasher shelf suddenly reared up and attached itself to my collar.

It was a completely unprovoked attack. Of course, when I realized it had grabbed my neck, I tried to shake it off, but it wouldn’t let go. I panicked and tried to pull away, but it followed me, out of the dishwasher, all the way across the kitchen floor and into the dining room. I tell you, it was terrifying. The thing was aggressive and entirely out of control. Dishes and silverware flying everywhere, humans yelling and swearing, glassware breaking: it was like a scene out of Platoon. Honestly, I thought I was going to die.

Fortunately the female human came to the rescue. She was able to grab the thing, overpower it and unclip my collar before it managed to kill me. I often think opposable thumbs are overrated, but today I was glad at least one member of the household has them.

Naturally, I was completely traumatized by the whole incident, and had taken refuge under the dining room table. In any normal household I’d have been treated with sympathy: some coaxing, perhaps some treats, and certainly some affection to help me through the worst of it. But as I’ve said before, ours is not a normal household. The female human, who likes to think of herself as my “partner”, surveyed the carnage in the kitchen, stared at me cowering under the table in abject terror, and inexplicably ... started to laugh. I kid you not. She thought it was funny! She even had the gall to describe it as “the most entertaining 30 seconds I’ve had in weeks”. To say I felt totally humiliated and betrayed is a gross understatement.

Let me amend that to “humiliated, betrayed and unsupported”. The household poodle, who witnessed the whole thing, simply shook his head, gave me his “dude, it’s only a domestic appliance” look, and then sauntered off to clean the dishes that hadn’t been broken. And you know what? The shelf just lay there and took it. There was never a hint of aggression towards him. I don’t understand it.

Anyway, I’ll be giving that particular appliance a wide berth for a while, but only for as long as it takes to plan my revenge. Nobody does that to me and gets away with it. The thing may not know it, but its days are numbered.

As for the female human, she’s tried to tell me it was only my name tag that got caught on the shelf, but after the hysterical laughter earlier, I don’t trust her judgment and have decided to keep her under close surveillance for the rest of the day. She’s been taking pills for her injured leg, and I think she may not be firing on all cylinders, if you get my drift. It’s the only rational explanation.

I, however, am on the alert, and am not letting her out of my sight, so I can monitor the situation. There’s a very good reason for this. I used to think hypochondria syndrome was confined to humans, but a couple of years ago we experienced a strange manifestation of it, when the humans projected the symptoms onto the household poodle. It hasn’t happened since, but I’m worried in case they do it again one day, with me as their victim.

It all began when the male human suddenly started treating the household poodle with exaggerated care for no apparent reason. “Poor Ziggy, what a terrible thing,” he would say. “I’m really sorry, mate, I wish I could do something.” All accompanied by extra cookies and special treats at mealtimes. We dogs couldn’t figure it out. The poodle seemed fine. He wasn’t sick, or limping, or infested with fleas. He hadn’t managed to get to the chocolate stash, which we know from bitter experience will send humans over the edge. But now, every time the male human looked at the poodle, it was with a wince and a shake of the head. One time, I’d swear there were tears in his eyes.

And then there were the strange dinner table conversations.

"Do we really have to do this?” the male would say, looking at the poodle. The female would get that stubborn look on her face and start banging crockery around in the kitchen.

“You know we do. We don’t have a choice.”

“But it’s so unnecessary! Poor little dog.”

“Look, just stop it, will you? It’s hard enough as it is. It has to be done. It’s one of those things.”

We dogs were worried. They were clearly planning some kind of attack, but we didn’t have enough information to prepare for it.

Then, one morning, the dreaded words: “Time to go. The vet’s waiting.”

The poodle panicked, ran off and hid in his crate, but the female human hauled him out and carried him to the car. The male stayed behind, staring at the door. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, “what a horrible thing to do to a dog”. And off he went to his den to sulk.

Sure enough, the female came back without the poodle. Nobody spoke for the rest of the day. I wondered if I’d get extra treats, being the only remaining dog, but none of my usual cues worked on either human. They were nervous and bad-tempered. I thought it was probably a manifestation of human grief, so I decided to leave them alone for the rest of the afternoon and reinforce their training the following day.

But then, the strangest thing happened. The poodle came back. They’d installed a very inconvenient white plastic cone on his neck, but otherwise he seemed exactly as he was before. And he still felt fine. We racked our brains to figure out what they’d done and why, but we couldn’t. It was a complete mystery.

The new cone was a nuisance, one of those weird human things that have no rational basis for existence, like soap and hair ribbons. And like those things, its only purpose was apparently to make life more difficult for the dog. We were easily able to dispose of it, of course, but the first time we did so, it triggered a bout of human rage. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, it’s for your own good, don’t you dare take it off again” and the like. Human rage can be dangerous to dogs, so we decided to leave the cone in place for a while, so as not to risk an escalation. The poodle was annoyed, but resigned. He actually found the cone helpful when manipulating the humans – they seemed to feel sorry for him, even though they’d installed it – so he was willing to put up with it.

The humans continued to behave strangely for over a week, yelling at us if we tried to play with one another, and carrying the poodle up and down the stairs. He wasn’t allowed to jump onto the furniture – he had to be lifted. And he could only go outside on a leash. Neither of us could figure out what had happened. This was such a peculiar manifestation of human hypochondria. We just hoped it wouldn’t last.

And in the end, it didn’t. One day, they picked up the poodle, poked around his penis for a while, and then took off the plastic cone. We were allowed to play again, and the special treats stopped. The male human seemed relieved. “It hasn’t changed him at all,” he kept saying. “He’s still the same as he always was.”

That’s what’s so odd about it. A perfectly healthy poodle went off to the vet, came back with a plastic cone attached to his neck, was subjected to reactive human hypochondria for over a week, and then was suddenly allowed to become a normal dog again – well, as normal as a dog can be in this household.

Sometimes it’s not worth trying to understand what goes on in the human mind. This, we think, was probably one of those occasions. We’re just keeping our paws crossed that it doesn’t happen again.

However, incidents like that are unsettling. I don’t think I’ll be able to relax until our female is back on both feet again.

My humans were obviously not well-trained when they were young, because they’re pathologically unable to share their food. If I even think of approaching their bowls, they become extremely aggressive, and if I manage to snatch something, it’s like Armageddon. Still, I’ve always felt stealing is worth the risk because their food is so much better than the dehydrated dust nuggets they serve for us. But there was an unpleasant incident this week that nearly changed my mind.

The humans must have been especially distracted that evening, because not only was I left alone in the kitchen – something that’s never happened before – but there was also a nice bowl of grapes on the table. Needless to say, the humans had barely left the room when I was up there, gulping down fruit like a canine disposal unit. I just had time to empty the bowl before they came back. I thought I’d better cower in the corner for a while, in case they started exhibiting signs of human rage syndrome, but to my surprise they didn’t. They simply made their dinner, sat down and started chatting as though things were normal. I actually began to relax.

Then the female human spotted the empty fruit dish and went very still. “Who ate the grapes?” she said, in the hushed, serious voice that never bodes well for dogs. The male human shrugged and kept shovelling down his dinner. Suddenly, the female leaped out of her chair and began wailing. “It must have been Ruby! We have to do something!”

Next thing I know, I’m flat on my back and she’s prying open my mouth, pouring liquid down my throat. I fought her off and spat it out. She glared at me. “You have to drink it,” she said. To be honest, it didn’t taste all that bad, and since my choice seemed to be either a full-blown bout of human rage or drinking the liquid, it seemed like a no-brainer to me. I lapped the liquid obediently off the floor, and we all sat staring at one another.

“What is it?” said the male human.

“It’s peroxide. It will make her throw up,” said the female.

This was news to me. I didn’t feel sick at all, but pretended to gag for a while, just to calm her down. It obviously wasn’t enough. She grabbed the phone and called the vet.

This, I thought, is not going to be pleasant. And what an understatement that turned out to be. The human hung up the phone, snatched the salt shaker, and backed me into a corner. Once again, my mouth was pried open, and this time a large handful of salt was thrown down my throat. I didn’t even have to pretend to gag. The stuff was disgusting – dog only knows why humans put it on their food, it tastes worse than the soap they keep in the bathroom. I gagged and gagged, and eventually threw up a few grapes. A small scuffle ensued, as the human tried to grab them and I tried to eat them again. The human won. She always does.

Then she started counting and weighing the grapes.

“There were a lot more than this,” she said.

“Look,” said the male, “there are no teeth marks on them, and they’re still on the stalks. Shall I wash them and put them back in the bowl?” I think he was joking – although he might not have been, you never know with him. In any case, the female didn’t seem to think it was funny.

“I have to take Ruby to the vet,” she announced.

The vet! And I thought fruit was supposed to be good for you.

So off we went to the vet, where there was a lot of earnest conversation about intravenous drips and other tortures invented by humans for dogs. In the end, they settled on eye drops. I put up a decent struggle, but they managed to squirt some liquid into my eyes, enough, anyway, for them to let me go. We all sat staring at one another again.

“What will it do?” said my human.

“It will make her feel dizzy and throw up,” said the vet. “It always works.”

Well, it didn’t. Nothing happened – literally nothing. The human took me outside to walk around the car park for a while, and on the way back into the office I managed to grab a nice piece of rawhide from the store shelf and swallow it before the human could get at it. That’ll teach her to make such a fuss about a few grapes.

In the end they got fed up of waiting. The human handed over a bunch of money (she does that a lot) and took me home. I slept really well; it had been an exhausting evening. And in the morning, the rest of the grapes came out naturally – whole, of course, because there hadn’t been time to chew them. The humans seemed pleased to get their fruit back, and moved the bowl onto the top of the fridge.

Still, it was a worrying incident, by far their worst bout of food bowl aggression. Vomit-inducing liquid, handfuls of salt, and stuff squirted into my eyes – all for a kilo of grapes. I could understand them making a fuss about steak – but fruit? I think I’d better stay away from their bowls for a while, so as not to escalate matters, but eventually I’m going to have to tackle this issue again. They have to learn to share. I won’t tolerate aggression.

So let me start by telling you one of my most shameful secrets. My female human has developed a very peculiar problem, and I have no idea what to do about it.

She’s developed an obsession with ... how can I put this ... my excrement. Poop. Doggy doo. Or, as my male human so delicately calls it, dog shit.

She’s taken to hoarding it. There. I’ve said it. Mortifying, isn’t it? Humans are odd, but this seems to go way beyond all her other quirks. I know canine love is supposed to be unconditional, but really, it’s hard to get enthusiastic about someone who does stuff like this.

Every day, she’s out there in the garden, hunting for poop. And when she finds some, she puts it in a bag and stores it in a big plastic bin that she keeps for precisely that purpose. Dog only knows what she thinks she’s going to do with it when the bin is full. I’m seriously worried about her. This just does not seem normal.

She’s become so obsessed that it’s embarrassing to go for walks around the neighbourhood. As soon as I squat down on someone’s lawn, she’s there, hovering, with her little plastic bag. Sometimes I’ve barely finished when she dives in and starts scooping it up, making sure she’s got every little bit off every blade of grass. Then she carries it home like a trophy and puts it in her special bin. I’ve tried to encourage other humans to talk to her about this. For example, when we’re out and about, I look around for humans working in gardens, and when I spot one, I squat as fast as I can and poop right there, in front of them. I always hope this will stop her from collecting it, but it doesn’t. If anything, it makes her worse. She has no shame; she actually starts waving and talking loudly, so they’re sure to see her pick it up – as if collecting dog shit was something to be proud of. I tell you, I just don’t know what to do any more.

I’ve tried everything I can think of. When we go for walks off leash, for example, I find the most inaccessible places to leave it: under low-hanging branches, in patches of poison ivy, under fallen tree trunks, in swamps. You’d think this would put her off, but it doesn’t. She’s absolutely unstoppable – a mad woman. I’ve seen her literally crawl through brambles and tear her clothes to get to her prize. She even has the gall to shout at me for hiding my poop, when all I’m trying to do is help her get over her problem.

But nothing seems to work, and I’m at my wits’ end. If anyone has suggestions, I’d be most grateful. I prefer to train my humans using positive reinforcement, but in this particular case things are so out of hand that I might consider a punishment-based method. She needs help urgently.