An entanglement of suffering. Blake’s ennui.

The clock is ticking

I don’t have long

to write

The lake is at 9.

A 30-minute drive then the donning of gear in the carpark, registration then a mile in warming late spring water, spawning fish and early growth of the vegetation.

The sun is smiling.

I slept late.

My dog Blake was barking at midnight then around two.

Trapped in his crate

As he must remain for the next four ‘to six’ weeks.

Part of his surgical recovery

He is growing restive

Restless

When he sees Stella running in and out of the house

He smells the freshly cut grass,

Cherry and apple blossom.

He hears the blackbirds and buzzards

Sparrows and wrens.

Now is not a time to be cloistered.

His hemi-laminectomy was we believe a success, now the recovery and rehabilitation.

I have learned more about diseases of the spinal cord in the past fortnight than in 25 years as a doctor.

Just now he is chewing a bone; loaded with Gabapentin and Co-Codamol his tissues are knitting together.

This week I read an update on the Doncaster House of Horrors.

That was how the tabloids have described it.

National news. Over 80 dogs were found beaten, battered and abused, caked in feces, riddled with ticks and fleas in a house not far from where I live.

When I heard the news and ‘remote house,’ I wondered about the place I used to pass when running; it is exactly 2.5-kilometres from my house.

I would hear dogs barking but never see any in the garden.

It is next to the farmhouse road I once ran through with the owner shaking his fist, swearing and threatening.

I guess that remote road attracts a certain type of person.

Although that is perhaps not the most accurate word to describe the people in the dog-house.

A short distance separating those dogs – some of whom look exactly like Blake; a world apart in terms of their life experience.

I understand that most of the dogs are now recovering, some faster than others.

I find it incredible that there is no licensing process for dog ownership or regulation of the sale of dogs in the UK.

This backyard system allows profiteering, cruel manipulation of female dogs; farms and abuse, money from puppies, sold online.

Perhaps the regulation required would cost the government too much, likely it would prove unpopular, not a vote-winner and thus off the table, despite England being a nation of dog lovers.

I close that back door. There is still a chill in the air.

The woodpigeons are cooing.

Our new domestic arrangements (we must carry Blake into the garden and upstairs to our bedroom, he is restricted to the crate except when peeing or pooing and for short periods of hind-leg massage) are having a negative effect on our other dog, Stella.

She has grown fearful of cars, she stops frequently in the street and refuses to walk; the two dogs were never close, always competitors for affection and attention – I guess when the relationships in your household alter, no matter how subtly, the outcome can be disruptive.

How is Blake managing?

He has become a caged animal.

His liberty gone.

I am sure the drugs help although their effect appears to be waning.

Will this experience harm him psychologically? Will he emerge from his confinement altered?

Do you know where I am going with this?

I can’t help it.

I am taken back to Gaza.

I think of the men who are locked in cages underground, hidden in pits deep beneath the earth, arms and legs tied, fed to starvation.

The Hamas are treating them like animals just as they shot the dogs on the Kibbutzim, it is an inversion.

And the bombs continue to fall on the Gazans, and they continue to die.

Netanyahu remains in charge, buoyed by Trump.

The world is upside down and I wonder how long this will last.

I wonder when, if ever we will return to normality, although, I guess this is normality, this is life, with its unpredictability, randomness and cruelty. Environmental mismanagement, decay of our health system; pollution of our rivers, global inequity. Who ever said that life was fair?

This week I listened to a podcast with Rabbi Ari Koretzky. He was discussing the position of the Haredim, the Ultra-Orthodox in the Diaspora and in Israel.

I won’t go into the details of the conversation although something he explained has left me thinking.

Why?

Yes, the word why.

In Hebrew this is ‘lama.’

Which, it transpires, is a contraction of the words ‘li’ and ‘ma’ – ‘to’ and ‘what’ – thus when asking ‘why’ in Hebrew, we are really enquiring ‘to what’ as in, ‘to what purpose?’ ‘To what outcome?’ This adds flavor to enquiry, both depth and dimension.

There are all sorts of codas and mysteries contained in Hebrew; thousands of scholars, rather than risking assimilation by participating in secular society quibble over misplaced vowels or consonants.

I think of my childhood book ‘Tell Me Why?’ which is the eternal child’s enquiry.

Why?

Why the suffering of the dogs?

Why all the pain?

Why the disregard for our environment? Why the disrespect, the inequality? The cruelty?

Why? Because we are human.

We exist to suffer.

This is my interpolation of Eastern and Western philosophies.

Born to suffer, we should celebrate any moments of peace we are lucky enough to experience.