A Man’s best friend

“Chilli!!!! Will you come here NOW!”

“FFS Dog!, that’s it, you stay here, I’m going home, suit yourself”

“Pant, pant pant, will you stop??!!! Come here now……”

These were the common screams and actions circa 1996-2000 whilst I was living in Surrey just by Epsom Downs Race course.

Chilli was a young enthusiastic Irish Setter who would run and run (and run). I swear I saw every blade of grass on the Downs between these years. I literally spent hours and hours trying to chase and catch that crazy dog at the weekends. A quick 30 minute ‘walk’ would regularly turn into a 3 hour marathon whilst trying to catch him.

Amazingly, he never grew tired of it and it wasn’t until we finally took him to obedience training and *some* of it actually sunk in that he started to listen to what we were saying (at least sometimes).

So you may all be noticing the past tense in this post. Chilli made his final visit to the vets yesterday as he had simply become too old and frail. At over 13 years old, he was a seriously old Setter as on average, 8-9 yrs is great, with 12 being rare. I can only be thankful that for almost the entirety of his life, he still thought he was a puppy (and acted as such). It’s only in the last eight months or so that he truly started to show his age.

I would regularly ‘fight’ with him on the floor as well as accept his constant attempts to sit on my lap whilst we were watching TV. Chilli was a *large* setter and seeing him and his 40Kg bulk try and sit onto my lap was both hilarious and painful.

To be honest, there are too numerous times to describe when Chilli had us sighing with desperation or laughing out loud because of something he had done.

Some classic very fond memories though include: -

1. His attempts right up to the end of trying to ‘sneak’ up to the dinner table to steal your dinner avoiding eye contact at all times, obviously thinking “I can’t see him, he can’t see me…”
2. The time in Connemara after a long drive from the UK when we let him out for a toilet break. Three hours later after he had chased practically every sheep on the mountain we managed to catch him, but only because a lone sheep who he’d managed to corner actually turned round and faced him off. He came running back to us with his tail between his legs…we laughed…a lot
3. His normal sleeping position surely couldn’t have been *that* comfortable could it?
4. His ability to discreetly, if he was sitting on the sofa with you, to try and kick you off. He’d put all four of his legs against an arm of the chair and push…REALLY hard until you were crushed. And believe me, he was strong.
5. The way he’d make you feel guilty if you were sitting in the play room on the sofa (in our present house). This also acted as his bed and he would make it well known he was seriously put out to whoever was sitting on it. I would commonly come into the room to find the children sitting on the hard wood floor because Chilli had ‘bullied’ them off of the sofa…
6. The time when we did actually leave him at the Common just up near our old house in Surrey because he refused to come back. My wife came back 10 mins later to find someone putting him into a car to take him to the vets as a lost pet…
7. Or when he decided to go for a walk himself and ended up a real lost pet after finding himself almost at Rosscarbery (8 miles away). A frantic call out to the Gardai and local vets the following morning found him living the life of riley, at what would eventually become our local vets, after everyone utterly feel in love with him.

I could go on and on as the amount of memories we have of this crazy dog are limitless. Throughout the last 13 years of our family’s life, he’s been a very firm fundamental part of it and somehow I’m not sure how long it’s going to take us to get over the quite large hole he’s just left.

Rest in peace my old friend