Remembering Ruby
Fourteen Years Without Ruby
Fourteen years ago last Saturday, I held Ruby for the last time.
Losing your first dog is something nobody fully prepares you for.
It was 2.20 on a warm Friday afternoon on 7 February 2014. The hours leading up to it stretched and folded in ways that still feel surreal.
The vet was almost two hours late.
Neal had a major presentation in the city that afternoon. We’d hoped the timing would allow him to stay, but eventually he had to leave. He kissed Ruby goodbye and took off, carrying his own heartbreak back into the world of boardrooms and responsibility.
And then it was just us.
Well, almost.
I was sitting on the floor in the courtyard with Ruby in my arms, waiting. It felt like I was being suspended between two worlds, not wanting time to move forward and yet desperate for it to be over so the suffering could stop – anticipatory grief at its worst.
Then there was a knock at the front door.
Mum and Dad.
They were driving past, saw my car in the driveway and decided to stop in to check if I was okay.
To this day, I cannot explain it. They didn’t know the timing. They didn’t know Neal had had to leave. They just stopped.
It was a miracle.
I would not have coped alone.
When the vet finally arrived, I lay on the ground in the courtyard, cradling Ruby in my arms. Mum and Dad sat behind me, gently rubbing my back as I held her. As the vet set her free, I felt her leave. I felt the exact moment her body softened and something immeasurable shifted.
My parents were there holding me while I held her.
That comfort was everything.
That night, Dad dreamt of Ruby. He said he saw her running into the clouds. Not limping. Not slow. Not sick. Running. He told me the next day that it wasn’t just a dream, it was an apparition.
I choose to believe him.
Ruby came into my life at a time when I didn’t yet realise how much I needed her.
I had just come back from a holiday in Europe with Mum and Dad. I was living alone in the little home I’d bought the year before. I had wanted to adopt a dog the moment I moved in, but I’d promised myself I would wait until after that trip. So I did.
On my very first visit to the pound, I saw her.
She was in a dark room reserved for puppies. All I could see were the whites of her eyes looking up at me from the back of a small cage. Mum was with me and I called her over. We didn’t need to say much. We both knew we had to ask about that vulnerable little face in the dark.
When they brought her outside and placed her on a tree stump in the yard, we gasped.
She was an absolute mess.
Fur missing from her face and legs. Scabs. Skin inflamed. As skinny as a sewer rat, with a tail that was little more than a whip with a tuft on the end. Three months old and already so worn down by the world.
I fell in love.
I adopted her that day, and then had to walk away and wait out the two week holding period. Those two weeks felt endless. I was horrified she had to stay there, in that dark cage, just in case someone came looking. In my heart, I knew no one would.
When she finally came home, the real work began. Demodectic mange. Medicinal washes. Gloves. Strict instructions. Long nights. She would sit outside my bathroom biting her skin until it bled, crying with discomfort. I remember one moment of weakness when I thought, what have I done? Have I made a mistake?
And then I looked at her and knew the answer.
She was mine. She had chosen me. There was no returning her.
We persevered. Together.
Her fur grew back. Her weight came up. Her personality burst through like sunshine after a storm. That whip of a tail became the most magnificent bushy plume, black with a white tip, as if someone had dipped it in paint. She ran like the wind. She chased the ball with everything she had. She laughed with her whole body.
She was larger than life.
She was there through lonely years and changing seasons. When I met Neal. When Daisy joined us.
Then Luna. Then Harvey. Our family of six felt complete, and Ruby was the anchor of it all.
In her senior years, arthritis crept in. She became a regular at her acupuncturist, the most patient little soul on the table. Supplements hidden in her food. Slower walks. Softer beds. More time lying beside me instead of racing ahead.
And then abdominal cancer.
Fast. Unfair.
Within two weeks she was gone.
Fourteen years later, I still believe there was a strange mercy in the swiftness. Her body had already been working so hard with the arthritis. I had begun to see the frustration in her eyes when she couldn’t move the way she once could. The cancer spared her the long decline I had quietly feared.
But that doesn’t make the goodbye easier.
There is a particular kind of grief that comes with losing your first dog as an adult. They are there for your becoming. They see you through heartbreak, growth, mistakes, new love. They witness the version of you before the world has fully shaped you.
Ruby grew something in my heart that has never stopped growing.
Ruby’s ashes sit in our living room still, in a beautiful box with her photo beneath the glass lid. Some of her is scattered in places she loved. Some rests with my parents. She is threaded through our lives in ways that don’t need explaining.
Fourteen years is a long time.
And yet, not a day goes by that I don’t think of her.
Last Sunday, we scattered more of her ashes at her memorial tree. A white jacaranda planted here on our farm, alongside three others, one for each of the dogs who shaped our lives and have since left this world.
Four white jacarandas standing quietly overlooking Luna’s Circle playground.
Sometimes I look at Ruby’s tree and think about how much she would have loved this place. The space. The endless grass. The open sky. She would have patrolled the fence line like she owned it. She would have stood at Luna’s Circle surveying her kingdom.
And in a strange way, she does.
Henry’s bark is the same as hers. The same pitch. The same rhythm. He carries so many of her mannerisms that sometimes it takes my breath away. It feels like an echo across time. A reminder that love imprints itself in ways we cannot fully understand.
Ruby was my first adult dog. The one who grew me up. The one who taught me resilience. Loyalty. Fierce, unwavering love.
She is the reason I cannot photograph a senior dog without feeling the urgency of time. She is the reason I believe so deeply in printed portraits. Because I know how suddenly the day comes when you would give anything to hold them again.
Fourteen years is a long time.
And yet I can still feel my parents’ hands on my back. I can still hear Dad telling me he saw her running into the clouds.
If you are loving a dog right now, especially one who is greying or slowing, don’t wait. Not out of fear, but out of reverence for what you have.
They are shaping you.
Ruby shaped me.
And beneath four white jacarandas on a farm she never got to see, she still does.
Run free, my beautiful girl. I hope you’re still racing those clouds.
If you have a dog in your life who changed the trajectory, I’m currently taking applications for my lastest fundraising book project “Who Saved Who?”.
