The light in Wolfy’s eyes went out and his warmth, softness and presence receded into the landscape of my memory. I would never kiss his fur again, feel his warmth, or his reassuring presence leaning firmly against my knee.
My dearest companion was gone. I bent double and let out a long and primal scream.
Someone handed me a glass. Our neighbourhood’s much-loved vet, Andrew Carmichael, was there holding a stiff whisky and also wiping away tears. Now in his 80s, Andrew has euthanised countless animals, yet…’This job gets harder, not easier,’ he said. ‘Here’s to dear Wolfy and to the others that follow. You will love many more dogs in your life.’
It wasn’t possible, I was so sure of it. I could not believe that there would be another Wolfy.
He was my ‘soul dog’.
It’s a concept that’s become increasingly popular in the past few years. And even though I find the idea that there is a single human soulmate out there to fulfil our romantic needs a load of rubbish, I can relate to the idea that there might be just one ‘soul dog’ with whom we share a spiritual connection beyond the ordinary bond.
Dear Wolfy and I were so close, it was mystical.
I’m not really the mystical type, though, so it’s always surprising when I fall back on magical thinking. But it is strong when it comes to that dog.
Nine years ago, around Halloween, Wolfy ran away from my brother’s house while I was at a wedding and disappeared for ten days. After a desperate search that captivated social media, he was found at a garage less than a mile away, grubby and emaciated.
I only repeat this story that I turned into a bestselling book because desperate, complete strangers who have lost their dogs now regularly pop up in my messages asking for advice.
This week it was Lindsay Holas, the owner of a black miniature poodle, Sammy, who has been missing – presumed stolen – for nearly two weeks.
Aside from the list of ideas I can share about finding a lost dog, there’s something I say to people, which I repeated to Lindsay: ‘Take time to sit quietly and listen to your intuition.
‘Connect to Sammy with your soul and you will know what to do to find him, or not.’
This is so unlike me I can barely believe I write it. Partly it is because lost dogs either come back, or they don’t. But when you have a soul dog, also sometimes referred to as a ‘heart dog’, it is almost as if you are one being.
One night, not long before he died in 2022, I got down on the sheepskins in front of the fire where Wolfy was lying and just calmly, quietly, looked at him and he did the same back to me. I felt so full up and dizzy with love and gratitude for this beautiful beast and wanted him to know that.
Our life together had been splendid. No other dog will ever come close. How could it?
Next spring sees the English-language publication of Ubac & Me: A Life Of Love and Adventure With A French Mountain Dog, by Cedric Sapin-Defour. The book has been reprinted 30 times in France where it has been a huge hit for its ability to nail so poetically the ‘heart connection’ between some dogs and their owners.
Sapin-Defour writes: ‘Come what may, laughter or tears, honour or censure, he will travel through his own steadfastness and the ups‑and‑downs of my life without ever yielding an ounce of his loyalty, without judging me, ready to sacrifice his own if need be. He will raise me up. This connection is no trifling matter.’
Like Sapin-Defour, I disapprove of calling myself Wolfy’s owner. He was my equal, I believe. I prefer to think of him like a daemon in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, which is the physical manifestation of a person’s soul. He embodied the cheerful yet Eeyore-ish melancholy I often feel.
If you go about asking all sorts of random people if they believe in the idea of a soul dog, the majority do.
My go-to on dogs is the canine behaviourist Janine Davenport. She understands dogs like no one else I know and has owned and loved many over the years. It’s ‘the one with a bond like no other’, she says.
Hers was Sonia, a poodle. ‘The connection never wavered, was always positive, even when she was dying. We had the most incredible feeling of togetherness in all circumstances. It felt special all the time. I’ve never felt it with any other dog, and I’ve had a few.’
Yes, that’s it. Time with Wolfy was special at all times, even bad times.
When I collected him from a dreary service station car park in 2015, I had no idea then how much I would come to feel for this third-hand, unloved, shaggy middle-aged lurcher with fur the colour of rich tea and a head that smelled of digestive biscuits.
We went everywhere together. Under one of my many Instagram pictures of Wolfy my cousin wrote: ‘Is this some kind of emotional support therapy dog?’ She was mocking me, but it wasn’t far from the truth.
In our family he will always be known as ‘Dear Wolfy’. Yes. I could give you a list of maybe 50 people who thought so, too.
He was calm, affectionate, and had lovely manners. He would approach familiar people to greet them in a genteel fashion. His sensitivity to other people’s sadness was acute, and if someone needed a snuggle, he gave it to them unprompted. ‘He’s such an old soul,’ people would say.
From a more sceptical perspective, I think there are sensible explanations for why certain dogs feel more special than others. Who I was when I got Wolfy, and who, indeed, he was, is an important consideration. Dogs have personalities (‘caninealities’) and we can be a good match.
As Sapin-Defour says: ‘Standing out from the crowd isn’t the prerogative of sensitive, philosophical humankind alone.’
Wolfy was this gentle soul who’d seen bad times and bullying and quite possibly had never, really, been loved. I didn’t need to train him. He just arrived kind of perfect – apart from his love of stealing food.
At the time I was in a rather cold relationship with an emotionally detached workaholic. I was a woman craving comfort, kindness, warmth and steady companionship. Quiet, loyal, easygoing Wolfy was all of that, and much more. In those early months with him I walked around in a daze.
When that boyfriend called time on our 15-year relationship, he made a bullet-point list of all the things wrong with me, and after I’d got over the rejection, I had to agree they were fair assessments of my less appealing characteristics. I was not perfect either.
One of my ex’s problems with me was that I could be a sensation-seeker. This could mean I went out too late or made ill-judged and impulsive decisions about money or work. He disapproved of this side of my personality.
With Wolfy there, I could feel sensations by just stroking him. He was medicinal almost.
A key reason why Wolfy was such a soul dog is, I believe, because he was a lurcher.
Lurchers are an ancient crossbreed, which is not an actual breed rather a bespoke mix, that for centuries has been bred by gypsies and poachers.
The original lurchers were bred illegally with the swift greyhounds that only nobility were allowed to own. So they had to be clean and calm enough to live inside, and quiet when hunting.
Writer Jade Angeles Fitton, unusually, thinks she has had two soul dogs, both lurchers: ‘Highly intelligent; loving; loyal; obedient but with a will of their own, and then there’s something magic and ethereal about all lurchers, there’s a timelessness like they’ve come from some ancient past.’
Her book, Hermit, published this year, is about the joy of solitude. ‘Loners have spent enough time quietly observing other beings and appreciating that we are all individual, sentient beings with our own personalities.’
But she observes, that just as some dogs are good soul dogs, some humans are also more likely to fit that description. ‘People who spend a lot of time alone are more disposed to form intense bonds with individuals – be that a dog or a human, and those bonds tend to be very strong.’
Lurchers make great soul dogs because, as film and TV director Alice Troughton says, they ‘are the cleverest dogs and so if they pick you to love, it means more’.
She also thinks that when we look at a soul dog we need to look at the human. ‘It’s about what the human projects onto a dog. Dogs are sensitive to what we want and our needs. They’re all special.’
Michelle Gentle, my dog walker – Gentle by name and nature – gets up at 4am to walk the XL Bully she loves, but the rest of the world is less enamoured of. I expected her to believe in the idea of the soul dog but interestingly, she does not.
Or not exactly.
‘I think those appear when you really need them,’ she says. ‘They see the need in you and it’s their instinct to help you. If I had a soul dog it would be my old Staffie, Minty, because when my husband had cancer she was there for him, for me, she just knew.’
A friend tells me about her little Basil, a chihuahua. Initially, she didn’t get on with him. ‘But everything changed when I lost Dad to cancer. Basil would not leave my side. He knew I needed someone to be there for me. Now when I leave the house he waits for me at the door until I come home again. I have never had a dog like him.’
As much as I want to believe it, I can’t quite buy into this idea of the heart dog, or the soul dog, as a mystical thing of wonder.
For me, the soul dog comes in the weft and weave of how the human and canine personality combine – we are animals though we’d like to forget it. In that respect, it is like finding that one true love in another human. It’s chemistry, sure, but while it may feel like it, it is not magic.
The soul dog arises from a similar thing – a good match in each of our peculiar vulnerabilities and strengths. When they coincide it can feel alchemical.
Dogs are devoted and loyal to us, which feels really good, especially if we need it. My mum’s soul dog was a labrador called Chloe who saw her through all sorts of unhappy times following two divorces. She always said to me: ‘The things that dog knew. I told her everything.’
But while I look back on Wolfy now, freshly single after 15 years and in need of a bit of love, I think that Andrew Carmichael was right. We love our dogs in slightly different ways.
Maybe certain breeds might lend themselves to being soul dogs but it also has something to do with where we humans are in life.
The dog owners with the weirdest stories, of dogs revisiting them after death or manifesting to them in other living beings, are already quite ‘out there’ characters. It’s humans that make the soul dog, not the universe.
As she mellows and matures, Buf, one of my current dogs, who was once so difficult and wild, is becoming far more present and loyal. After many years of commitment from me, now when I call her she trots back to me happily with her head bobbing side to side just like Wolfy’s did. A little bit of sausage helps.
My other dog, Leica, is a complex little street dog from Spain who spent two hours glued to my side, licking away tears on one of those bad, sad, post-break-up evenings when your world and bravery seem to cave in. She, too, has the makings of a soul dog.
In time, who knows, perhaps one, or the other, or both of my current dogs will be like
Wolfy was. As I bent sobbing over his lifeless body the evening Wolfy died, Buf sat on the sofa watching me with curiosity and concern.
I hope Wolfy felt my undying faithfulness as he died. I have his ashes here, I can’t think where to scatter them so I think I will just wait and have them mixed with mine so we can be dirt together for eternity.
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