He was found on a highway near Tokai. A tiny thing. Less than eight weeks old. Hopping along the tarmac on three legs, missing his front paw , left there, we believe, by someone who chose to hurt what was small and defenceless and new to the world.
Helene Strydom, a special soul, a dog rescuer found him before the road did.
And then he found us. We named him Boston Riley.
Because the day he arrived in our lives was the same day the world watched in horror as two men detonated explosives near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon — the largest terrorist attack on American soil since September 11. Three people killed. More than five hundred injured, many lost limbs, like Riley. A day soaked in grief and smoke and the particular disbelief that comes when ordinary people are simply trying to finish something they started.
A small dog, hopping along a highway. A finish line that became a wound.
Both on the same day. None of this was random.
Riley is thirteen and a half now. He is heavier than he used to be, slower on his three legs, and since we arrived on the mountain in December , he somehow hurt his back leg. After a procedure at the vet, we think something happened to him beneath anaesthetic, like a small stroke, sadly, he is now profoundly deaf. He cannot hear the wind in the karee trees. He cannot hear his name called across the veld. He cannot hear Lance’s footsteps coming down the path in the late afternoon. And yet. He knows.
He always knows. He will position himself near the door at a certain hour , as though the light itself has told him, as though the frequency of ” its almost walk time” moves through the floorboards and into his small, sturdy body. Because his afternoon walks are EVERYTHING.
Lance takes our pack out every day for walks across the Karoo veld beneath the Swartberg and Riley (13) and Lucy (19) ride in their off-road stroller, our two old souls in their chariot, dignified and completely unbothered by the indignity of it.
The long dogs trot ahead.
Daisy Moon does whatever Daisy Moon decides.
Molly Joy finds lots of things to roll in.
Saydee stays close.
Sometimes I walk with them.
Sometimes I sit on the verandah and watch them move across the veld, this small, slightly chaotic procession beneath the vast mountain light and something in my chest goes very quiet and very full at the same time.
When Riley was younger, he visited primary schools with me. Together, he and I taught children about kindness. About what it means to love animals. About what one person’s cruelty can do to a small life and what love can undo. Riley would hop into those classrooms on his three legs and simply be his Mr Charming self and the children would go still, in that special way children go still, when something true is standing in front of them. He was, without ever knowing it, one of the finest teachers I have ever worked alongside.
These days he is retired from that work.
These days his work is the stroller, the afternoon light, and dinner afterwards, which he anticipates with a volume and enthusiasm that suggests, he has never once in thirteen years been disappointed by the concept of food.
He is a talker, our Riley. Deaf now, yes – but louder than ever, as though he has simply redistributed his hearing into his voice. When he is tired and needs to be carried, he will bark at you with a very specific, very insistent sound that means I have been patient and I require assistance immediately. When he needs to go outside, he will find you, wherever you are in the house and tell you, clearly and without embarrassment, that his needs are legitimate and time-sensitive.
He makes us laugh every single day.
In my work, I deal with grief a lot, there are many souls needing support, especially nowdays, in the ways of this world we are all living.
Often when counselling, I ask the question, what is yours to carry?
And this makes me think of Riley.
He does not carry the loss of his leg. He does not carry the loss of his hearing. He does not carry the weight of what was done to him on that highway before he was eight weeks old, or what happened inside him, beneath the anaesthetic in December.
He carries none of it. He simply does Riley. Every day, with his whole heart, on the legs he has, in the life he has, with the people he has chosen, or who chose him, it no longer matters which.
I think we are the ones who carry it. The grief that he cannot run the way Saydee runs. That he cannot dig alongside his pack in the red Karoo dirt. That he cannot hear Lance call his name across the veld at dusk. We carry it for him and perhaps that, is its own kind of love. The kind that holds the weight so the beloved one does not have to. Perhaps that is what love does, when it is paying attention.
Somewhere in Cape Town is someone who hurt a tiny dog on a highway near Tokai thirteen years ago.
I do not know who that is. I do not know what he was carrying that day that made him capable of it.
But I know this…
He changed the trajectory of a small life, and that small life changed ours.
And every afternoon, beneath the Swartberg mountains, in a slightly rugged off-road stroller with Little Lucy beside him, riding shotgun like a small self-important queen. Boston Riley rides.
Deaf. Three-legged. Thirteen and a half. Full of personality, full of hunger, full of the particular joy of a soul who has never once asked the universe for a refund.
What is mine to carry?
Watch Riley.
He already knows.
SharynAnn
He was found on a highway near Tokai. A tiny thing. Less than eight weeks old. Hopping along the tarmac on three legs, missing his front paw , left there, we believe, by someone who chose to hurt what was small and defenceless and new to the world.
Helene Strydom, a special soul, a dog rescuer found him before the road did.
And then he found us. We named him Boston Riley.
Because the day he arrived in our lives was the same day the world watched in horror as two men detonated explosives near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon — the largest terrorist attack on American soil since September 11. Three people killed. More than five hundred injured, many lost limbs, like Riley. A day soaked in grief and smoke and the particular disbelief that comes when ordinary people are simply trying to finish something they started.
A small dog, hopping along a highway. A finish line that became a wound.
Both on the same day. None of this was random.
Riley is thirteen and a half now. He is heavier than he used to be, slower on his three legs, and since we arrived on the mountain in December, he somehow hurt his back leg. After a procedure at the vet, we think something happened to him beneath anaesthetic, like a small stroke, sadly, he is now profoundly deaf. He cannot hear the wind in the karee trees. He cannot hear his name called across the veld. He cannot hear Lance’s footsteps coming down the path in the late afternoon. And yet. He knows.
He always knows. He will position himself near the door at a certain hour , as though the light itself has told him, as though the frequency of ” its almost walk time” moves through the floorboards and into his small, sturdy body. Because his afternoon walks are EVERYTHING.
Lance takes our pack out every day for walks across the Karoo veld beneath the Swartberg and Riley (13) and Lucy (19) ride in their off-road stroller, our two old souls in their chariot, dignified and completely unbothered by the indignity of it.
The long dogs trot ahead.
Daisy Moon does whatever Daisy Moon decides.
Molly Joy finds lots of things to roll in.
Saydee stays close.
Sometimes I walk with them.
Sometimes I sit on the verandah and watch them move across the veld, this small, slightly chaotic procession beneath the vast mountain light and something in my chest goes very quiet and very full at the same time.
When Riley was younger, he visited primary schools with me. Together, he and I taught children about kindness. About what it means to love animals. About what one person’s cruelty can do to a small life and what love can undo. Riley would hop into those classrooms on his three legs and simply be his Mr Charming self and the children would go still, in that special way children go still, when something true is standing in front of them. He was, without ever knowing it, one of the finest teachers I have ever worked alongside.
These days he is retired from that work.
These days his work is the stroller, the afternoon light, and dinner afterwards, which he anticipates with a volume and enthusiasm that suggests, he has never once in thirteen years been disappointed by the concept of food.
He is a talker, our Riley. Deaf now, yes – but louder than ever, as though he has simply redistributed his hearing into his voice. When he is tired and needs to be carried, he will bark at you with a very specific, very insistent sound that means I have been patient and I require assistance immediately. When he needs to go outside, he will find you, wherever you are in the house and tell you, clearly and without embarrassment, that his needs are legitimate and time-sensitive.
He makes us laugh every single day.
In my work, I deal with grief a lot, there are many souls needing support, especially nowdays, in the ways of this world we are all living.
Often when counselling, I ask the question, what is yours to carry?
And this makes me think of Riley.
He does not carry the loss of his leg. He does not carry the loss of his hearing. He does not carry the weight of what was done to him on that highway before he was eight weeks old, or what happened inside him, beneath the anaesthetic in December.
He carries none of it. He simply does Riley. Every day, with his whole heart, on the legs he has, in the life he has, with the people he has chosen, or who chose him, it no longer matters which.
I think we are the ones who carry it. The grief that he cannot run the way Saydee runs. That he cannot dig alongside his pack in the red Karoo dirt. That he cannot hear Lance call his name across the veld at dusk. We carry it for him and perhaps that, is its own kind of love. The kind that holds the weight so the beloved one does not have to. Perhaps that is what love does, when it is paying attention.
Somewhere in Cape Town is someone who hurt a tiny dog on a highway near Tokai thirteen years ago.
I do not know who that is. I do not know what he was carrying that day that made him capable of it.
But I know this…
He changed the trajectory of a small life, and that small life changed ours.
And every afternoon, beneath the Swartberg mountains, in a slightly rugged off-road stroller with Little Lucy beside him, riding shotgun like a small self-important queen. Boston Riley rides.
Deaf. Three-legged. Thirteen and a half. Full of personality, full of hunger, full of the particular joy of a soul who has never once asked the universe for a refund.
What is mine to carry?
Watch Riley.
He already knows.
SharynAnn
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