Smash hit

He was called Maximilian on his pedigree.

A King of Bohemia or some far-flung shore where miracles happen. I could have changed his name to Rex or Sam, but he walked like a Max; part-swagger, part-comedy turn, and something of where the wild things are.

It was the wild thing in myself that he tamed.

It was my job to train the dog. He took it upon himself to tame me.

I have never settled. I have never said yes to someone else without reservation. I am not sure that I have said yes to life without reservation, as if by reserving something to myself, I would not be mangled, tangled, strangled by the demands of this world and the demands of others. It is not wise to give unreservedly. I am a generous person, kind and seeing, would withhold nothing except what must be withheld. There are gifts, and they are gladly given, but the self is a gift with reservation.

Absurd to love a dog so much that there was no reservation. But I did.

When he was a puppy he went everywhere in a cotton bag. We took him to the cinema one night, and he slept on my knee all the way through the film and I pretended not to notice that my legs were getting wetter and wetter as his bladder emptied while he slept.

We took him to a photographic exhibition —still in his bag — and while we walked from photo to photo he stayed quite still, warm and soft through the bag, like a living secret, but whenever we stopped to admire something in particular, his curious black head popped out, and looked sleepily at the photograph, and sleepily at us, as if to say: “You walk and I’ll dream.”

And that’s how it was when he was small, falling over his own feet, tiring and needing to be carried, us walking, walking, him dreaming, dreaming, a black curled-up ball of dreaming, a dream dog. And then later, bigger, stronger, he did all the walking, me panting to keep up, never could walk him to exhaustion, his long, strong body sleeking through the air like a thought that comes back and back, like a boomerang, flung out of sight but coming back and back. Out we went, long walks, long days, and then I was the one doing the dreaming, the rhythm of him releasing my mind.

I dream we will always be together.

I dream we will always be here.

I dream we are in a wood — a dark wood, and midway through it, midway through life. I dream I am travelling.

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