Shall we sing?

A terrier not singing but reading 

I'm at a funeral, a local funeral, of a friend who passed away recently.  We are in church; the opening music is Bach. Then there’s the welcome, the opening prayer. Then we strike off singing The Lord's my shepherd, I’ll not want.  As we sing there is the unmistakeable sound of a dog barking. It makes me chuckle.

As we sing along, the dog barks along too.

The barking is coming from the front of the church, the front two pews, where the family is sitting. We pray, a bible reading, a eulogy, more prayers.

And then the closing hymn.

Morning has broken, like the first morning,

Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.

The dog pipes up again, barking along. It makes me smile on what could be a miserable day.

The funeral is over, we linger outside the church reminiscing.

We go to the pub for the wake.

At the pub I see the dog, a small, rather shy, Border Terrier.

I lean over and talk to the person who the Border Terrier belongs to.  I say, ‘I rather enjoyed your dog's singing.’ He smiles at me, ‘Yes’ he says, ‘She sings along  when we sing Happy Birthday.  This was possibly the only time she's been in communal singing. Perhaps she recognised it to be a strange version of Happy Birthday, so she barked along.’

The dog, Daisy, was not so much throwing her head back and full on singing, as some dogs do, more just barking along in a more casual and unstructured way.

I think it would have amused Dave.

This just walking the dog is dedicated to the memory of Dave Dean (1948-2026).  Dave was the youngest of four, and so for me, he will always be ‘Young Dave’.   He was a talented antiques dealer, a gentle soul and a precious member of our community.  He also had a great sense of mischief.

AJK