Bruno
A dog’s life.

We didn’t choose him.
He chose us. More accurately, he chose Pearl. When the breeder opened the gate to the backyard, he bolted out and sat on Pearl’s foot, looking up at her and wagging his tail. The only thing left to do was hand over the purchase price.

When we eventually got him home, he claimed a blue and white checked cushion as his own. It was enormous for him but we let him keep it. It wasn’t enormous for very long anyway, but he kept it for a long time. His very first effort to empty his bladder was interrupted when Pearl scooped him up and ran to the garden with him, where he completed the job. That was the only time he even considered toileting in the house.

Bruno had a great sense of humour. He would steal pegs from the basket and run away to be chased when Pearl was hanging out the washing. He never pulled clothes off the line, or did anything ‘bad’, just stole the pegs. Except for the time he upped the ante on the peg trick. Pearl and I were away somewhere and Russell, our son, was helping Judith, our daughter, to tidy up the house (they were house sitting for us). Russell was hanging out the washing for Judith, and Bruno this time, just for a change, went to the peg basket, put his head in it, and shook his head, scattering pegs all over the back garden! I won’t repeat here what Russell called him!

There was the wonderful Christmas 1999. Bruno is still a small puppy 3 months old. Our son and daughter, Russell and Judith, have bought Pearl and me tickets to Ireland as our wonderful Christmas present from them.
They wanted to surprise us and keep us guessing up until the last second as to the nature of the gift, so they had obtained a very large television box from a local household appliance dealer and dressed it up on the inside with a diorama including a map of Ireland, photos of other European sights we would see, clouds of cotton wool, model airplane cruising the imaginary sky! Of course, they wanted us to believe it was a new big TV, so dramatized pushing of the ‘weighty’ carton into the lounge room on Christmas morning. They did a great job of miming moving a heavy carton in to the center of the floor. It was all going very believably until little Bruno bounded past the ’heavy’ carton, barely brushing against it, but moving it across the floor and shattering the illusion!

He was a true comic with the Chaplinesque talent equally capable of drawing laughter or a tear.
Russell didn’t allow Bruno into his room, but Bruno gradually worked his way in at nights by pretending to want to watch whatever Russell was watching on TV. Russell didn’t have the heart to throw him out, so they would watch TV until lights out. Bruno was about four years old when Russell married and moved out of home. The room was strangely empty for months, somehow made even emptier by the fact that Bruno would continue to go into that empty darkened room and sit in that proud, classic German Shepherd pose, watching a cold black television screen. It was so sad.

Bruno was also a very gentle and intuitive dog. He took Pearl’s breath away one day when Karl, an old friend who was very frail, was visiting. Our old friend insisted on seeing Bruno, so Pearl reluctantly and carefully brought Bruno from the back garden to meet Karl. Bruno gently approached the old man and did something he had not ever done before: he climbed onto the lounge chair beside Karl and put his head on Karls’ lap, and quietly stayed there while Karl petted him!

He loved also to make me look foolish at training. He knew exactly what he had to do in obedience, and did it all well, except when he decided to go for a gallop around the training ground, just for the sheer joy of making me look silly!
He was my best friend, and nursed me back to fitness from serious operations by being my ever-ready exercise buddy at any time of the early morning or late evening. His last days broke our hearts, and the decision to end the struggle before he was in pain was paradoxically very easy and very difficult at one and the same time.
The question became; “What is the best thing for Bruno?”

1 July 2009 11:46 am: My hand was inches from that needle when the vet was administering the final dose. I wished that the needle was going into my own hand rather than Bruno’s paw.
I cupped his beautiful head in my hands until that special light of life in his eyes quietly extinguished, and peace settled on him.

His cremated remains have a special place in the garden where he scattered the pegs. His garden was lovingly built by the woman at whose feet he chose to sit in the beginning. He is still at her feet and in our hearts.
Vale Bruno

Leo Ginley
Bruno
A dog’s life.