Uncle uncool by Stuart Kelly

Published on Friday 10 July 2009 12:37

WHAT is the point of a pet? Being a recovering Calvinist, I'd always believed that pets were, like the MMR jab, a form of inoculation. Just like the jab, where a tiny amount of a virus is allowed to infect so that the body can build up its own immunity, pets are a kind of psychological antibody for the idea of grief. A pet will, in all likelihood, be a child's first experience of death. Maybe that's why there's a sliding scale of longevity. Most children will begin with the sh

Pets had rather been on my mind since nephew Danny's dog, Kira, "went to sleep" recently. Kira actually predates Danny's existence, so it wasn't exactly his dog (it was his mum's) but the two did seem to have a bond. She was an exceptionally well-trained dog, and was not only terribly protective of him but very tolerant of his younger days of ear-grabbing, tail-pulling and attempts to ride her like a horse.

Danny wasn't told at first that she was dead, just that she was at the animal hospital. My Mum thought at first that he should be told straight away, but changed her tune after he coped very well with the news: as if the period of Kira not being there allowed a transition to her never coming back. Of course, there were a few sniffles, and Danny asked his Papa a few weeks later, a propos of nothing, whether he still played with Kira "in his heart?"

I'd taken Danny for an afternoon, and dogs were obviously still uppermost in his mind. On Infirmary Street, after a trip to the toy shop where Danny didn't choose what Uncle Stuart would have gone for, we passed a couple of Edinburgh's more colourful characters, enjoying some al fresco cider with a pitbull more tightly muzzled than Hannibal Lecter. "Can I ask those men if I can pat their doggy?" Danny piped up. "Err... I don't think so. It's got fleas," was my white lie.

Then, at the park, we had to play "Puppy Olympics". I love this game, as it involves me sitting on a bench and announcing the games: fetching, running, jumping, pigeon-chasing, while Danny, on his hunkers, goes slightly daft. And every dog-walker who passed us, whether with an alsatian, a poodle or a spaniel, elicited the same question. Edinburgh dogs have a lot of fleas.

One way to stop the questions would be a replacement. But what would happen when the irreplaceable disappears as well?