This began some weeks ago as a sort of tribute to the saddest dog I’ve ever known. A dog with a quality of life many  less fortunate creatures could only dream of. Yet despite everything he seemed forever glum, his melancholia for all to see in black eyes the size of florins and a slow reluctant lumbering.

While other dogs yap and wag and bump into each other in afrenzy of canine greeting the saddest I’ve ever known appeared unmoved by anything or anyone. Damaged goods perhaps unable to show anything other than loneliness and despair. Carrying it all with sadness and dignity. 

During that earlier draft I came to realise that dogs, like us, are not all the same. They not only look different they act differently too. They don’t each express their affection or happiness the same way. For many it’s enough to wag a tail. Others bark and bounce. Some like to lick legs, and others, and I write as a victim, pee on trousers. 

Fortunately Asta’s moments of exaltation are less fluid, unless you factor in her predilection for licking my ears each time I bend down to tie my laces. Kim get’s the full chin, cheeks and nose lick as a sort of thanks when she stops mid-walk to serve Asta cupped hands of water. At other times her excitement is standard central casting dog stuff: tail wagging, weaving in and out of legs, up-skirting women and playing footsie with dog treats. 

Her most unabashed expression of joy appears when she is reunited with someone she loves and hasn’t seen for some time; days weeks or maybe just minutes. This is when she pulls back her upper and bottom lips to reveal a toothy cheesy smile. Such an unnatural expression must require quite some effort because each smile thus never lasts more than a couple of seconds. If Kim has been away Asta will draw upon inner reserves of facial strength and give her the big grin twice sometimes thrice. 

The sad  dog of Harlyn never got close to Asta’s display and yet in time I came to realise whilst melancholy and slow he too could express his emotions – but in his own woebegone way.

His name was Dexter and Kim and Asta got to meet him when a couple of years ago the daily uphill hike from Tregirls beach to where our car was parked at Lellizzick became too much for her. A switch was made to Harlyn a mile or so further west where the road and potholed car park spill on to the beach. The sand stretches for about half a mile south west with low cliffs and a handful of homes with steps and fences that are frequently blown away during winter storms. There is a surf school and since a change of management in the Prideaux-Brune family that has making money rights to Harlyn a couple of cafes and even a small sauna. It remains quiet out of season and very lovely. Seals winter there.

Dexter, a white and brindle Boxer belonging to a lanky Liverpudlian called John, was the slowest of a bunch of regular dogs and friends who met there each morning. Among them a frisky Irish Terrier called Mabel who’s always up for a game driven there each day by Laney in a 4×4 and a Golden Retriever named Dillon, something of a loner who keeps his owner Mary on her toes by disappearing into the distance on daily searches for – nothing in particular. For a while there’d been a fluffy mix called Nico, one of those with trouser urination issues who departed when his owner Terry moved up country. 

Dog walking is all about making friends. A place and time routine quickly established and from nothing a pack emerges. It was Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street who famously dismissed a young and innocent Charlie Sheen with “if you want a friend – get a dog.”  Something our friend Eleanor can attest to having looked after Asta for a day and happily being drawn into conversation with passers by. 

Asta and Kim slotted easily into the Harlyn mix abetted by Asta’s mission to befriend every other dog on the planet. The exception being Alsatians who can be grumpy at the best of times. A notable exception to her keep a distance from Alsatians rule being Charlie out most mornings upon Tregirls with Chris and Jim. Asta likes Charlie.

The pace of this Harlyn pack was largely dictated by Dexter and John. Dexter plodding along some feet to the rear with a pair of large blue and orange rubber balls in his mouth leaning at thirty degrees and John ahead with the ladies, dressed in a green parka and wellies topped off with a blue and white Everton FC bobble hat. Like Dexter John was no great walker, his slow and uneasy gait the result of extended, and by all accounts excruciating, spells of sciatica. Neither of them in any hurry to get anywhere and both leaning precipitously.

John had rescued Dexter from the Cornwall & South Devon Boxer Rescue from where he’d adopted others before following his retirement move to Cornwall with wife Jean who passed away some years ago.  I never got to know what it is about Boxers that endeared them to him only that it was Dexter’s companionship he confessed that helped him through the grieving process. His fondness for dogs for all to see: a sticker on the tailgate of his car proclaimed sorry I can’t – I have plans with my boxer and in warmer months he sported a t-shirt with a dog is for life, not just for Christmas.

One time Mary, having caught up with her peripatetic Retriever, observed that John appeared to put a skip into his slow painful step whenever I showed up. To be fair I think he was just as sprightly with Kim there too, the three of us sharing inevitably grim pre and post Everton and Fulham FC match analysis.  It’s funny how friendships develop. John knew very little about me and my life prior to Padstow and I knew little about him. He’d been a bit of a mod up north and we’d discuss threads and scooters, oh and pubs and Chinese takeaways; not much else. Sometimes we don’t need that past life baggage to help us make friends. Some people just get on and John was certainly one of those who take people, and dogs, as they are not who they were.

Over the coming months Dexter lost one his gob smacking balls and even got bored with the remaining one. We’d all stand and wait as John went back to retrieve it; Dexter just as lop sided and sad with one as with two.  Sometimes I’d be the one to retrieve the discarded ball and that’s when it struck me that of course Dexter had feelings like any dog,  he just showed them in different ways. As I wondered back he took to lolloping up to me and leaning his full weight against my legs. At first I thought he was tired and using me as a prop to keep him from falling over. That’s when I noticed him leaning on other members of the pack. This was his sad eyed way of saying hello. He may be melancholic and slow but he wanted his gang, and other newcomers like me to know we are his friends.

Increasingly John and Dexter failed to show up on Harlyn and often when they did John would cry wolf after just a few minutes explaining the sciatic pain was so overwhelming he’d have cut things short and head for home.  I don’t know who it was found John but it seems he’d been dead for maybe two days with Dexter by his side the entire time.  No food, no walks. Just two friends together to and beyond the end.

With John’s remaining family living at some distance Dexter was taken into care where his sadness and maybe his age and medical complications of his own led to his end also.