She was mostly silent except for the stressed laboured breathing emanating from a strained heart. Her tawny coat shone with numerous massages of John son Baby oil. Her beady black eyes glistened in a typical Labrador face framed by two tawny overhanging ears looking steadfastly ahead as she lay in her favorite posture, her paws stretched out with her face tucked in between.As time wore on, she would breathe more peacefully, turn over on her side with a sigh and go to sleep.
She loved to wander around in the garden and come back now and then to the shelter of the garage for a comfortable snooze.When she was a pup, the trainer had asked if we wanted her inside or outside the house and I had said that we wanted her outside without understanding what it was all about. I was to know soon enough because she would be at her post at the gate after dinner keeping fierce guard although a gentler dog was difficult to come by.
Betsy had a keen sense of time to the minute. You could tell the time of the day going by her routine. At six in the morning, she would be with the cook at the door waiting to be let in. As soon as I opened the door, she would dash past the cook like a streak of lightning to take her position in the kitchen. There would be a Wait and Watch time frame during which I would be required to prepare and serve her breakfast. She would start fretting and pestering for her food only when I exceeded the Grace time. After that it was Walking time, no matter what pressing job you had at hand. Having finished her morning routine, she would go her way, only to pop in for the occasional pat and a quick snooze under the stairs or on her favourite perch- again the staircase step. This was a good vantage point from where she could survey all goings- on in the house without getting in anybody's way.Similarly was she punctual for her other meals-- enacting a routine with clockwork precision day after day,year after year.
She would pad in whenever she wanted a little bit of petting. But if you didn't have the time for that, she was fine with a quick, warm pat, content to lie at your feet or close by, the very picture of serene tranquility.
There were occasions when she would feel hungry out of turn ( labs anyway feel hungry all the time- a bowl full of rice would disappear in no time and the next moment , they would be ready for the next feed). This particularly happened when she was due for a course of de-worming. She would merely want just that extra slice of bread or that chappathi piece and she had her own way of ensuring that she got it. She would purposefully come into the kitchen, sit on her haunches and look at you unblinkingly and unwaveringly as if to say, " So, when are you going to give that small thing to me. Be done with it and I'll be on my way". She knew exactly where the loaf of bread was placed in the pantry and her head would shoot up, the moment she heard the ever so faintest rustle of the bread wrapper. She would get up and edge closer to the kitchen but one firm, " Betsy, go to your place", would send her to her corner under the stair. She would settle there and give me a look, " Done. Now what about finally getting that bit of bread". Even in moments of great temptation, she was the most obedient dog ever.
She went away too soon, too suddenly, foul victim of a harsh health condition that wouldn't let her live. She passed on peacefully, one last wag of that gentle tail as if to say ,"Bye! Thank you for all that you did for me". My feelings got the better of me-- all along I had been in a state of apprehensive preparedness, given her health condition yet here she was so content, so comfortable with whatever we had provided her.
Betsy may have gone but she lives on in our midst. Whenever I open a door, I can't help putting my head around as if looking for that familiar friendly figure ready to pad in with that gentle yet diffident look in her unblinking eyes.She has left a void difficult to fill....
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