Sadie RIP - a hill dog

Do you go on the hills with a dog? If you do, even before I've started, you'll probably understand what lies behind this obituary in pictures. If you don't have a dog, I'd like to think that by the time you've finished scrolling you'll have some sense of how and why a dog's life on the hill is not a dog's life at all. It's really a life worth celebrating. So here it is. A life…

Sometime in the winter of 2005, my wife-to-be took a telephone call from a dog rescue friend. A litter of puppies had been dumped in a wheelie bin. A couple were dead already, but some had survived. Caroline took two. One died before she had even got them home. The other survived. Just. The vet didn't give her much of a chance: her back legs had been damaged, and her heartbeat was wildly erratic. Still, within a couple of weeks she was at least able to get up on her front legs…

Cute, yes. But you wouldn't say she was a natural hill dog to look at her then. So, to begin with, her time in Scotland was on the level. By the time that her first summer came round, Sadie was up to walking out to Sandwood Bay. Not all the way back again, though…

OK, so I would put her in the pack when she couldn't go any further, but we didn't exactly go easy on her. Sometime around her first birthday she was hurdling from bootprint to bootprint on the tops above Glen Shee…

…in what I'm tempted to say was a supercanine effort.

All was going well, but later that year we thought we'd lost her. Somewhere on the slopes of Cona' Mheall Sadie heard her first Ptarmigan. She realised, at that moment, what she had been put on this earth to do: chase ground-nesting birds. Thankfully, after about five minutes of careering all over the hillside, she realised what she was incapable of doing: actually catching one. Between those two realisations was an awful moment when, having chased her to the horizon, I looked over the edge, imagining that somewhere down there was a small ex-dog. Look closely, though, and you'll see that Sadie has doubled round, and is about to re-enter our lives stage left. Phew…

After that, apart from a brief window between the Rabbit Belt (under 1000 feet) and the Ptarmigan Belt (over 2500 feet) her lead remained firmly on. No feathers or fur ever flew.

We never really knew what type of dog Sadie was. Definitely some Pomeranian in that tail. And perhaps some Yorkshire Terrier in the face. And what about her coat?...

What do you reckon? Yetti? Alpaca? Coo? We didn't think of clipping Sadie until after this trip round the Fisherfield Six, when on day one she came down with heatstroke. That last photo was taken on day two, when thankfully conditions were a little cooler.

You may have noticed something else about that photo. It's this. Whenever we presented Sadie with A View, her instinct was always to look in the opposite direction. She was reminding us, I think, that a dog is not a purveyor of aesthetics, but a pack animal: if the photographer wandered off, it was her duty to see that he came back - particularly if he had the cheese and oaties in his rucksack. So, for every chance photograph we have of Sadie - as we would like to think of it - 'admiring the view' like this…

…or this…

…we have about five of her obstinately looking the wrong way…

Now I come to look at them, that there was something seriously subversive in Sadie's 'wrong way' looks. There's certainly something comically perversive about them…

I don't want to go down the route of saying what Sadie 'enjoyed' about the hills: that kind of anthropomorphism gets us nowhere. The best I can do is point to the things she did of her own free will. Well, eating was one thing…

And swimming on boiling hot days was another thing. In Loch Avon...

…or on the bealach below The Saddle…

Like the rest of us, she enjoyed a bit of afters, whether this was having her tummy tickled after three days around Loch Ossian…

…or just being left alone in the campervan…

Whether or not she 'enjoyed' the daily grind is harder to say. In her prime, she had no real difficulty with multi-day trips. And to see her trotting on through the Cairngorms…

… around the twelve Mullardoch Munros

…down from a summit camp on the Aonachs…

…of chasing the bikes back down from a camp on top of The Saddle…

…it was difficult to imagine that she wasn't content. Again, it's tempting to look at these achievements and - particularly bearing in mind her dicky ticker - describe them as amazing. I don't think so. She was just being herself. A dog. Living in the moment. Trotting or running on, because that's the way the rest of the pack was heading - and that's the direction of the next meal. Her owners were proud of her Munro count, but between you and me, I don't think she really cared. She just was. Even calling her a 'good dog' - which of course is how we felt - is to judge her by some misplaced human criteria. She wasn't a 'good dog' then, any more than she was a 'bad dog' when she growled at the postie, or snarled at anyone who came too close to her on the hill. She was just dog.

Sadie's 'prime' lasted nearly ten years. First she was hit by arthritis that meant she couldn't even go up and down the stairs in the house. Then she started coughing. A chronic bronchial constriction, we were told. The vet cured the arthritis, no problem: some miracle concoction involving green-lipped mussels. The cough was more of a problem. One night over two years ago, camping near the top of Bidein a'Choire Sheasgaich we thought she was dying: prolonged coughing, followed by a nasty gurgle and a panicky yelp. But the moment passed, and although after a sleepless night by the following morning C and I felt like we were on death's door, Sadie was happy to trot off down the hill…

…as if nothing had happened. In fact, as long as she was moving, Sadie seemed fine.

Next on Sadie's drug regimen were steroids. They worked. It's true that a lot of her holiday time was spent on the level, be it at Brora Loch…

…or Brora beach…

There were still occasional forays to the tops, though. Like most dogs, Sadie didn't really favour Skye: if it wasn't ripping her paws it was presenting her with insurmountable obstacles. Still, with a little time in the pack she made it to the top of Bruach na Frithe…

… in May of this year. And in August, again with a little help in the high heather, she clocked up Munro 245. Creag a Mhaim…

Does C look a little wistful there? I'm minded to say that Sadie does too. But we're not doing anthropomorphism here, are we? Anyway, I think we knew that Sadie's bag was as full as it was going to get.

Or was it? A couple of days later we were in Braemar, and Carn na Drochaide was winking at us across the Dee. It wasn't until we were actually walking that I realised that this had been Sadie's first ever Scottish hill. It was perfect for her as a puppy, and it was perfect for her in her dotage.

Happy days!