Murphy’s Gift
What the death of my beloved goldendoodle taught me about empathy and the dangers of spending too much time online.
Regular readers of this Substack may be wondering why I have not posted in a while (irregular readers most likely never noticed). The reason is simple: on June 17th, on the first seriously hot day of what prove the hottest English summer on record, my beloved goldendoodle of fifteen years halted in his tracks on the way back from our local park and began hyperventilating.
As he’d grown older, Murphy had struggled to draw air into his lungs with his former ease. Like many elderly large breed dogs, he suffered from GOLPP –– short for Geriatric Onset Laryngeal Paralysis Polyneuropathy – a progressive neurological condition affecting the nerves to the laryngeal glands. Normally, the glands open to draw air into the windpipe and close to prevent the inhalation of food or water, but when, as in Murphy’s case, the nerves malfunction, the glands can get stuck in the closed position, making breathing a struggle.
Imagine trying to draw air through a narrow straw while dressed in a fur coat in a sauna and you get some idea of the strain on Murphy’s ageing body that day.
The previous times his glands had malfunctioned – once in Cornwall, the second time in London - Murphy survived thanks to the skill of vets, who intubated him until his blood-oxygen levels returned to normal. But on this occasion, Murphy had been without oxygen for too long and by the time we arrived at the veterinary surgery his tongue was purple. Once again, we were faced with a distressing and expensive medical procedure or allowing nature to take its course. Our dilemma was not dissimilar to those faced by doctors at the height of the Covid crisis. Which patients should be intubated and placed on mechanical ventilators and who were of an age or burdened by pre-existing medical conditions such that managed care might be the kinder option. In Murphy’s case, our decision was made easier by the knowledge that even if a vet succeeded in reviving him a third time, GOLPP was progressive and we would almost certainly be faced with the same dilemma in a week or month. Reader: we opted to relieve his suffering. Hugging him tight as the nurse administered the fatal shot, we buried our noses in his fur and breathed in his heady doggy scent one last time. “Elixir de Murphy” we called it. If I close my eyes, I can still smell him now.
In the days and weeks that followed, I was a basket case. Though I had known for some time that Murphy was unlikely to see his 16th birthday, which would have been this November 22nd, that did not stop me hoping and praying. Now he was gone, I was overwhelmed by grief. There were reminders of him everywhere – the empty dog bowl in the kitchen; the lead lying limp on the dining table; the depression in the sofa marking the spot from which he monitored our movements and moods.
Murphy had been a part of my life for so long I hadn’t realised how much I depended on him or how much I would miss him. He was both my emotional support and a conduit for empathy.
By periodically forcing me to step away from my desk, he brought me into contact with other people and other lives. And when I was feeling sad or down about the state the world, he would instinctively rub his head against my knees and invite me to cuddle him. Now he was gone, I had a doodle-shaped hole in my heart.
In the weeks and months that followed, I could not bear to look at my smartphone in case I accidentally clicked on picture of him, triggering a torrent of tears. I also lost interest in social media. After all, what is the point of trying to communicate with people most of whom you don’t know and will likely never meet? Instead, I kept to our routine, rising early each morning to walk in the park. It felt peculiar setting off without him. But at least there was no need to check my pace lest he become breathless. Passing the spot where he’d taken his last pee, I found myself replaying his final movements. What if I had waited until later in the day, when the atmosphere had cooled, to take him out? And why hadn’t I heeded our vets’ advice to restrict his outings to the private road beside our house rather than dragging him huffing and puffing to the park?
Then something extraordinary happened: whereas previously I had been reticent to engage with strangers, I now found I craved human contact. Looking at the world with what felt like new eyes, I began to see suffering and hardship everywhere. Was that a homeless man asleep on the park bench? And who was that elderly woman with the hunched back who I passed every morning watering her garden?
One day riding the District Line, I noticed a dishevelled middle-aged man shuffling from carriage to carriage asking for money. In the past, I would have averted my eyes. But without my smartphone, I felt compelled to meet his gaze. He was severely overweight and didn’t smell pretty. I reached into my pocket and came up with a ten pence coin. Not enough. Then, I had another root around and located a pound coin. If everyone in the carriage made a similar contribution, I calculated, he’d be able to afford meals for the week.
Over the next few days my emotions swung from one extreme to another. Waking at 7am at a hotel in Bournemouth, where I’d gone to support my son on a sponsored swim, I was struck by how the only people on the street at that hour were those working in the hospitality and service sectors. I could only speculate on their backgrounds but judging by their accents few were natives of Bournemouth. Passing a cleaning woman in the hotel corridor, I felt a sudden pang. She was probably in her 60s - around my age.
At breakfast I was unusually voluble, complimenting the staff on their efficiency and asking how they liked Bournemouth. They came from all over the world and their enthusiasm surprised me. I expected them to say that the demonstrations outside asylum hotels and attacks on immigrants had made them fearful. Instead, they told me their experiences in England had been mostly positive. They all had plans to move on, however, preferably to a city such as Birmingham or Leeds. Not London, though. London was “too crowded”.
As the breakfast bar began to fill with other guests and the first day trippers arrived with children and dogs in tow, I decided to take a walk on Bournemouth beach. The wind had picked up overnight and my son’s sponsored swim had been cancelled due to the poor weather. However, though it was grey and overcast, there were already several people in the water.
I hadn’t been to Bournemouth in years. There was still the Oceanarium and the kiosks selling candy floss and other sugary treats. And Harry Ramsden’s “world famous” fish and chips still dominated the beachfront. But the pier now had its own zipline and a sports events company had cordoned off a section beach beside the boardwalk so that people could play volleyball and practice kayaking.
The most noticeable change of all was the large groups of families from Asia and the Middle East. I knew that in recent years there had been talk of creating a man-made floating island alongside Bournemouth pier modelled on Dubai and that nearby Charminster boasted an Arab supermarket serving halal food but nothing had prepared me for the colours and smells that morning. All along the shoreline, young women in bright blue and green burkinis waded in the water as their children took their first tentative steps in the surf. Meanwhile, nearby, other women dressed in black-and-white abayas and hijabs were removing neatly wrapped curries and skewers of lamb and chicken from tinfoil and spreading them on picnic blankets. By mid-morning, as other relatives and friends arrived, some of these groups were twenty strong. Each formed its own tight circle and by midday the air was full of the pungent smell of spices and roasting meat.
While I stood on the pier taking photographs, my son slipped on his wetsuit and tried his luck at surfing. The waves were messy but every now and then he caught one that carried him under the pier. It was hard to believe that on the opposite side of the English Channel families from places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were hiding out in the woods near Boulogne waiting for an opportunity to board small boats to these same shores. Or at beaches like Gravelines and Ecault gendarmes were waiting to slash the dinghies with serrated knives.
I had been reading about the small boat crossings for years. And from journalist colleagues I knew all about the cat-and-mouse games between the people smugglers and the French police. But knowing something is not the same thing as feeling it. And Murphy’s death had made me aware, in a way I hadn’t been before, of other peoples’ suffering and how their life experiences contrasted with my own. That was the gift that Murphy’s death had given me.
Then came the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I admit I had never heard of him. My children quickly brought me up to speed, showing me videos of Kirk debating students at the Cambridge Union and his celebrated slap-downs of pro-trans progressives. I did not agree with his politics or his confrontational style. Nonetheless, I was saddened that another young man’s life had been ended prematurely on a college campus. My sadness deepened when I learnt he had a young wife and two children and had been killed at the very moment he had been fielding a question about whether the US needed tighter gun control laws – a policy to which, tragically for him and his family, Kirk had been opposed.
Since then I have learnt far more about this so-called culture warrior than I ever expected or wished to know. He strikes me as a smart, albeit misguided young man, who had read widely and was not afraid to test his views in public. If for nothing else, he should be recognised for his willingness to debate his political opponents and defend academic freedoms. But I also cannot help but see Kirk as a victim of the right’s obsession with free speech at the expense of other “Western” democratic values – values that, drawing on the Bible and Judeo-Christian traditions, Kirk claimed to espouse. These values include respect for other people’s moral outlooks and sensibilities and not giving offence where offence can be avoided. That might include, for example, not comparing abortion to the Holocaust, as Kirk did, or wondering whether a Black pilot was as qualified to fly a plane as a white pilot. And it would preclude telling women over thirty that they “aren't attractive in the dating pool.”
Without such civility, the libertarian vision of a free marketplace in ideas, where “good speech” drives out “bad speech” and all views have a chance to be heard, collapses. Instead, the town square – or in this case, Utah Valley University – becomes a very dangerous place indeed, a place where ideological differences are more likely to be settled by a gun than with words.
If Murphy’s death has taught me anything, it is that hatred only breeds more hatred and that true empathy comes from making a sustained effort to understand other people’s experiences and perspectives, not dismissing their views with a smart phrase or glib jibe.
As Utah’s governor Spencer Cox put it at the press conference announcing the apprehension of Kirk’s suspected assassin: “Social media is a cancer on our society. Go outside and touch grass’.