Jenni Murray - My Boy Butch: The Heart-Warming True Story of a Little Dog Who Made Life Worth Living Again

Guardian, 8 January 2010.

My Boy Butch

The heart-warming true story of a little dog who made life worth living again

Jenni Murray

For David, thanks for finally saying, Yes. J.

Contents

As I sit here writing, he is curled up amidst a pile of cushions behind me on the bed. He appears to be asleep but he isnt. He is alive to my every sound and movement. If I make as if to get up, one eye will open, peer out from inside his cocoon and hell leap into instant wakefulness and energy. He will follow me everywhere. He is, the family jokes, my shadow.

This book is about the dog who changed my life. Its about a Chihuahua, the smallest of dogs with the biggest of hearts, who came into my life at its lowest ebb.

A diagnosis of breast cancer had been confirmed on 20 December 2006. It was the day my mother died after a long battle with the cruelly debilitating effects of Parkinsons Disease. Quite how we struggled through Christmas I shall never know. My father suffered the immeasurable grief of a man who had adored the same woman for almost 60 years and had no desire to go on without her. He needed every ounce of energy I could muster. I had to face a mastectomy between Christmas and New Year, organise my mothers funeral and then begin a course of chemotherapy which would last for half the year.

In the midst of the exhausting effects of the treatment as I tried to keep the rest of the family, my two sons, Edward and Charlie, and my partner, David, in some semblance of normality and sanity my father succumbed to lung cancer in June. Thus, within a few short months, I, an only child, lost the parents who had always been a reliable rock throughout my life, faced the possibility of my own demise, had to accept that my children were now grown up and becoming increasingly independent, and that my partner was in as great a state of shock as I was.

He and I would rattle around the family home, which now seemed over-large and silent. I grieved for my parents and my health. He too was full of sadness. We had been together for almost thirty years, so my parents were family to him as they were to me and my children. But the greatest pressure, in the aftermath of all this sorrow, was a doom-laden sense that we were now the older generation; that we would be next to face the draining deterioration that ageing brings, and we were uncertain that doctors who predicted a good prognosis for me were telling us the truth.

It seemed that any plans for a fulfilling and energetic middle to old age might be scuppered by my illness; and David, who had never known me to be anything but a cheery livewire, constantly occupied by home, children, work and friends, suffered an unspoken terror that he, like my father, might be consigned early in the middle years of his life to caring for a sick woman or, even worse, might lose her altogether. The days passed heavily.

And then came Butch. His name is not altogether incongruous. He may be a mere Chihuahua, but he has the heart and stomach of the fiercest Rottweiler, and when we stay in the Wuthering Depths of my London basement flat on the days Im in the capital for work I no longer fear the night-time intruder, knowing he will warn me of any impending danger.

Butch began to replace tales of my children in the weekly newsletter that I write online for the BBC. He has become the star of the show, receiving presents he always wears his gift of a black leather collar with the diamante inscription bad boy, confirming that hes joined his mistress as a gay icon and regular enquiries as to his health and his latest antics.

At the literary festivals I have attended over the past months to publicise my last book, Memoirs of a Not So Dutiful Daughter, the first question is frequently, Hows Butch? Why didnt you bring him with you?

I am, I fear, upstaged, even in his absence!

His youth, verve and uncritical, unconditional devotion have made me look forward to getting up in the morning food, a walk, a game in the garden and to coming home no longer to an empty house, but to a smiling and enthusiastic welcome.

He is an affectionate, devoted and sometimes hilarious companion. He has made life worth living.