[00:00:01] Speaker A: In our previous episode, we began a touching journey with Gail Anthea Brown, a writer from Scotland's Northern Highlands who shared the story of her beloved dog, Brodie.
Brodie was a vital part of Gail's family, a friend, inspiration and a true source of joy.
In today's episode, we join Gail as she opens up about the difficult path of grief after Brodie's passing.
She shares the challenges of moving forward while holding onto cherished memories and how her journey has taken a new turn with the recent arrival of Reeva, a re home dog.
Reeva has brought comfort and a renewed sense of love into Gail's life, reminding her of the healing power of companionship. Thank you for joining us on part two of Gail's story. My name is John Littlefair and welcome to Never Just A Dog.
Gail. Thanks so much for joining me on part two of your journey.
Tell me about the days and weeks after Brodie died.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Yeah, so, absolutely. The first few days and weeks after Brodie died, I spent a lot of time actually writing about Brodie. I spent a lot of time sharing things on social media about Brodie, about the way I was feeling.
And I think some of that was a kind of bridging in a way. At that point, I wasn't able to really cope, you know, with the feeling that Brodie was no longer in the world. So I think the writing at that moment was a way of bridging that period, like a coping mechanism, so that I could almost keep Brodie in the world. I could keep being Brodie's person through words and through writing and through the things that I was sharing until I was able to get to a point where I could cope in the world again. So writing was so valuable for me. Then it started with writing on social media. And when I got a little bit further along and when I was able, I think about three weeks down the line to kind of get my head together. I wrote a piece called what Dogs Teach Us About Living and Dying, which would be the first of three pieces I wrote about Brodie. And that was more about Brodie's whole life and his death and what he meant to me and what he'd taught me. Basically, the things we've talked about today, you know, that was. That was that initial article. But, yeah, for me, this was my way of keeping Brodie alive and keeping me as his person. And actually, I was watching a film the other night and there was a lovely line in it. It was about a writer's retreat and there was a lovely line. It was something along the lines of writing allows us to hold on to the things we have lost. And I thought that was so beautiful because it is so true, you know, because through writing, you can keep people, animals, loved ones alive, you know, in memory. So a lot of that writing was coping, but also it was memorializing Brody, you know, honoring him and having some sort of legacy for him. I was also doing other things I was putting in place, you know, rituals and so on are quite important to me. And with pet death and pet grief, people don't always get the chance or feel they have the chance to do that, you know, so you kind of take that into yourself. And I remember a friend had given me a candle, a grief candle, had something nice inscribed on the top. I think it was something like, those we love don't go away, they walk beside us every day. So I was lighting this candle with the family every Sunday night. You know, we would sit and we would light the candle and we think about Brodie. And we carried that right on up until his half a birthday. I mentioned he had his half a birthday on Christmas Eve, so I did that.
I remember making a playlist for Brodie, songs that reminded me of Brodie. There was all these things that I was doing to kind of keep. To keep him in my life constantly, because my thoughts were all around him at that time. You know, as much as you have to maybe go to work and do other things and outwardly try to be sort of carrying on with life, that's where I was, you know, that's where all my thoughts were.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: Tell me about the playlist.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: So the playlist had been a sort of number of songs that I just felt, for whatever reason, connected me to Brodie, the way I was feeling at that moment. I think the main song on there that really drew me in was the first one, which is Keen Somewhere Only We Know. And for some reason, I had always had that pegged as mine and Brodie's song, because I think it spoke to the fact that we had all this time together alone, you know, these walks out in the caithness landscape, very solitary, the two of us. And that's how it often felt with us, you know, that we were somewhere that just kind of belonged to the two of us, you know, so that was one that I really resonated with. And I think when I had taken away video of the kids getting piggybacks in the forest that day, I'd set that to the song He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, you know. And again, that was very emotional for me because it spoke to the fact that Brody and our two sons as we saw it were brothers, you know, so. And then there were other songs that just felt that they resonated in terms of grief in the way I was feeling at the time. But, yeah, all those kind of things to me were a way of sort of externalizing the grief, of putting it into something.
I remember. Another thing that I did was very soon after Bodie died, I ordered some of my favorite photos of him. And when his urn arrived with his ashes, you know, we placed that in the bedroom with the photos with his collar and his lead. And actually, I'll just mention now about the urn and the ashes, because after Brody died, that was something that really felt important to me. Getting him home, you know, getting him back into our family again. And I had this feeling that getting his ashes back would make me feel better somehow, you know, that there was now a physical presence of Brodie in our home. Because I'd been constantly seeking these kind of sensory experiences, like the blanket smelling of him and everything, any way of placing him sort of physically back in my life.
So when we got the call from the vet, when the call came up on my phone saying, you know, that the urn was ready, the ashes were ready, I kind of jumped on that call. I remember desperately wanting to get down there to get this urn picked up.
And I remember picking it up, and I was in the passenger seat on the way home. My husband was driving, and I had it sitting on my knee. And I remember just feeling so numb and so sad because it wasn't what I'd expected at all. It was in a beautiful piece of pottery. There was nothing, you know, visually very lovely. But I didn't feel like this was Brodie. I couldn't believe that Brodie was now. This was his manifestation in the world.
And then all of a sudden, I looked up, and out in the bay, there was this huge, big rainbow again.
And immediately that happened, I just felt this warmth. It was just an unmistakable warmth in my chest. And we followed this rainbow all the way home.
And from that point on, my feelings around this urn really changed. You know, it did feel like a comfort to me. It did feel like something that was soothing and nurturing, having this in our home. And as I say, it's in our bedroom now. So Brodie kind of very much exists in our bedroom. He's got his iron, his little coats. We have something else in our bedroom now, which I will come on to later. But we actually had some friends come to visit a few months ago, and for various reasons, we gave them our bedroom while they were staying, and I think we slept on the sofa bed in the kitchen. And I think I said to my friend, you don't mind, you know, Brodie's in there with you? And they said, well, he doesn't visit in the night, does he? And it just made us laugh, and it's nice to laugh now, you know, as things as time and, you know, it just made us laugh thinking about that. I wish he would visit in the night, but, yeah, he's there and he will always have his place there.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: It's interesting, isn't it, about what you're saying about the rainbow? They'll touch base with you. They touch base in some way.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely believe that. You know, for me, that was Brody. He knew he was going home and he just wanted to let us know that it was fine. You know, he was happy.
And whenever I see rainbows, I think of Brodie. In fact, when I was out for a walk today, I saw two rainbows, you know, and.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: And after Brodie dies, you take up walking by yourself.
Tell me more about this.
[00:09:04] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. So I had all these things going on, you know, the writing, the rituals, the rainbows. But I needed something else, something to kind of put my grief into motion, you know, not to kind of move sort of out of it or anything like that, but to be with it. You know, I was looking for something.
And the thing I decided on and the thing I ended up writing about in a piece called 500 Miles of Winter was walking. Very, very simple thing. Obviously, you know, I'm a mom. I have commitments at home.
Whatever I was going to be doing needed to be quite contained and quite local. And that was actually fine for me because I've always been very comforted by my local environment, involved, immersed in my local landscape, and I've always found it very comforting.
So what I decided was I would do a walking challenge of 10,000 steps a day, right up until the date of Brodie's, what would have been his 12th birthday. So that's June of this year, 24th of June of 2024.
And I'm not trying to suggest that that's some sort of, you know, huge challenge. It's quite a simple challenge, really. But when you've been used to walking with a dog, having that companionship, going back to walking alone is really quite different. And you notice how much longer it takes to do that same distance, you know, when you're. When you're alone. And also, it was just very much a mirroring of the relationship I'd had with Brodie, the walking and so on. And it was going to be my way of honoring him, because I would go on these walks and I would think about Brodie. I'd be listening to my playlist, and on these walks, I'd end up seeing so many rainbows, you know, and it would be very emotional. And I would also sort of see so many memories looming up, you know, because everywhere I went, there had been memories with Brody, all the different places. I would also sometimes stop and talk to people, talk to other dog owners about their dogs and about losing dogs. And I would sometimes bump into people who said, I've read some of the stuff you've been writing about Brodie. That really sort of spoke to me, the way I feel about my own dog, or the way I felt when I lost my own dog. And that was lovely, because sometimes when you're living in a small community and you're writing, it can feel quite exposing, you know, putting those feelings out there and then maybe going to the supermarket and seeing people, you know, who know all about the way you've been feeling about losing your dog. But actually, at that time, I felt really connected to people. And I think when we are grieving and hurting, you know, people can really rally around and you really see the best of people. And I often think that animals bring out the best in people because so many people can connect to that feeling of affection, you know, with their animals. And some people feel even more connected to animals, you know, than they do to other humans sometimes, you know, So I was having all these kind of conversations, and that was really, really helpful. But mostly it was about Brodie and me, you know, it was about our relationship.
And although he wasn't there, it felt like he was still with me in a sense, you know, doing these steps and walking through that landscape, because all of those memories were there.
And at some point on that journey, I think it was round about the February, we were coming towards the end of winter. And although I'm saying this hadn't been, like, a challenging challenge, bear in mind, this is the north of Scotland, and the weather was really bad. We were having some really high winds, we were having snow, sometimes we were having hail, we were having heavy rain.
And I remember just being determined to go out in all of it. So there was some quite comedic moments, you know, where we had really high winds one day and I was walking along the coastline. I was kind of hanging onto walls and things. There was another time that I couldn't get. I couldn't physically get up the steps at the be because it was so windy, so I had to kind of crawl up them. So I can just imagine what people must have thought if they were watching this. There was snow once, so you just.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: Had to start the beach. We couldn't get out the beach. So I'm just going to stay there for a month.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, until spring.
But, yeah, I remember being out in the snow and being kind of flailing around in thigh high drifts of snow, you know. But this was what I had promised to myself, what I promised Brodie I would do. And I was really determined I was going to finish it. So even Christmas Day and New Year's Day and Christmas was actually, we tried our best, you know, to make that as nice as possible for the kids. New Year was difficult because for me, it felt like you're saying goodbye to that year that your dog was last in. You know, I felt like I was. I didn't want to celebrate something that was taking me into a new year without Brody. And I think that's quite a common feeling for people who are experiencing grief.
But anyway, round about the February, I realized that I was about halfway between when Brodie had died and when his birthday was coming up. And I figured out very roughly, you know, I don't want to sort of like check the figures in case I've got it wrong, but I figured out very roughly that I'd walked 500 miles.
So I knew then that because I had about half of this journey left to go, that I would be by Brodie's birthday, doing a thousand miles. And that kind of appealed to me. It appealed to my sense of symmetry.
There was just something nice about that, about this thousand miles. So I wrote the first piece about the kind of winter of that journey in a piece called 500 Miles of Winter. And then the next part of that journey was a piece that I wrote called A Thousand Miles of you. And this is where a dog called Reva comes into the story.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Old walk 500 miles and I'd walk 500 more. Reminds me of a song.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: Yes. And it's funny you say that because it's actually in. I think in the piece 500 miles of winter, I mentioned the Proclaimer song. Yeah. I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more just to be the man who falls down at your door it's like a love story, isn't it? So that song appealed to me too. When I was. When I was. It's not on the playlist, but that song did appeal to me as part of this kind of Symmetry of that whole story. And it just gave me this kind of end point as well, that it seemed fitting, you know, that there would be a thousand miles up to this point of Brodie's birthday. It was a love story. Yeah, it was our love story.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Tell me about Reefer. I can't wait to hear about this.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: Round about March, I think that I got a message from Brodie's breeder and I mentioned, you know, we had a lovely reader for Brodie who'd kept in touch all through his life and loved to know how the dogs were getting on and so on. But I got this message from her to let me know that there was a dog called Riva who was living in the Lake District at that point, who was five years old and who was in need of a new home.
And this was very unexpected. But this message was also very compelling for two reasons. Because the first one was that Riva was actually Brodie's niece. The breeder explained that Riva was the puppy of Brodie's sister Mika. So that immediately felt like, oh, my goodness, you know, this is some kind of a sign, that family relationship, that closeness. The other thing that was really compelling about that message is it arrived the same day that my sister's lab, Riley, died. Now, Riley had been a huge part of our family unit and had obviously been a friend of Brodie's during his life.
And previous to the message coming in, just earlier that afternoon, I had gone to my parents house where Riley was staying to sort of say goodbye to him because the time had come.
And the message that I received from Brodie's breeder, I think came in pretty much exactly when Riley died. And I'd actually said to Riley, when I said goodbye to him, I'd said, meet Brodie at the Rainbow Bridge. So in my head this message was sent, it was meant for me.
So, goodness, my head was spinning around at this point, you know, because the message was so unexpected but also so compelling. So I spoke to my husband and we had up by this point we had decided that there would be a dog in our future again. We had got to that point initially it had been for me. I could never do this again. I couldn't go through this heartbreak again. I'll never feel again the way I did about Brody and all these other feelings that are so normal.
But we had come around to thinking that one day there would be a dog in our lives again. But it wasn't at this moment. We weren't imagining it at that point. You know, it was further down the line.
But something about the Fact, you know, that Reva was Brodie's niece and so on, we just couldn't set it aside, so we decided we had to pursue this.
So we were put in touch with Reva's owner at the time, who was down in the Lake District as a say. We spoke back and forth a little bit online, and that part of the story isn't my story to tell, but just suffice to say that through no fault of her own, through a change of circumstances, Riva was needing a new home.
She was very much loved, and she continues to be very much loved by that family.
But we felt in order to make a decision about this, we really needed to meet Reeva, see if there was a connection there.
So we very quickly arranged a visit down to the Lake District. I think it was just the following Saturday we decided to go down and meet Reva.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: So how far or how long is that journey from the Scottish Highlands to.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: To the Lake District? Yeah, it's. Yeah, it is a long journey, so we're about nine hours away by car. So we did half of the journey, I think, on the Friday, and we stopped near Glasgow, and we have some family around there, so we visited them and we stayed in a hotel that night. And it was funny because I was still, you know, completely intent on doing my walking challenge, but that was difficult. We've been traveling all day, so I spent that evening before we went visiting to see our family members, I spent that evening walking around the car park of the hotel. Like an hour and a half of just walking round and round in the rain. In a car park in Glasgow? Yeah, near Glasgow, yeah. So I must have looked very strange, you know, to anyone who was looking on again, not for the first time, but, yeah, we.
We did the first part of the journey that night. On the Saturday, we got up and we did the rest of the journey.
And the lovely thing was the whole journey, both parts were accompanied by rainbows, right up to the place where we were meeting Riva. We were meeting Riva and her owner at a cafe in the Lake District, next to a beautiful lake and a walk we call lakes lochs in Scotland or in the Highlands, that's what we say. So.
But, yeah, it's just a beautiful, beautiful part of the world. And as we arrived into the car park, there was just this huge rainbow. So it felt like from before he had died to right at this moment of meeting Reva. It felt like Brody had been with me all of that time, leading me here. That's how it felt to me at that moment.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Wow, that's incredible.
[00:20:57] Speaker B: Yeah. You couldn't write that story, you know, I couldn't have made that up, you know, and, you know, I have written fiction in the past.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: You need to write that story.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: I hope to one day. One day I do hope to write, you know, this. This full story because, yeah, there were so many things that, you know, you just can't explain away, because the other sort of strange thing about Riva was that Riva actually has a litter mate in our town. She has a sister in our town. And we had been meeting this dog with her owner when we'd been out walking in the previous months. And we been very taken with this dog. And I remember my husband and I saying, oh, maybe in the future we'll have a female, you know, so, yeah, there were just so many connections, invisible threads. You know, a family member mentioned that term to me. These invisible threads that, you know, would connect us up to Riva.
So we end up adopting Riva. We go into the cafe. We immediately. I saw her, loved her, you know, from. From the moment I saw her. She was so like Brody in so many ways. Obviously, there was that family relationship. She was a little lighter in color, a little smaller, but so many mannerisms, but also exactly herself, you know, completely unique and individual. And I remember just sort of crouching down to. To pet her, and she kind of licked my face, and there just seemed to initially be a lovely bond. And we sat down, we had coffee and cake. And I remember Reeva putting her face on my knee during that coffee. And it was so lovely to have that contact again, you know, with a dog, loving and affectionate like that. And I had it in my head, of course, that this was some kind of cosmic connection, you know, the way that she was. She was sitting there with her head on my lap.
I know Riva a lot better now. And Reva has an insatiable appetite for food. And I know now that she would have done that to. To anybody who was eating cake or drinking coffee or whatever they were doing. And she'd obviously pegged me as this kind of weakest link, the one who was most likely to give up the treats.
But, yeah, they do that.
Yeah, we had to off immediately, so to speak, and even Tutu. Now Reva sits with her head on my lap when I'm eating my dinner or whatever.
So we took a walk with Riva and her owner. We liked everything we saw.
She's just a lovely, lovely girl. And we had said to Reeva's previous owner that we Would take a bit of time after the walk to discuss as a family what we wanted to do and so on. But of course, when the time came, there was no discussion. You know, we knew instantly. My husband said to me later, he knew straight away, and I'd known straight away, and there was no decision to make. So at the end of the meeting, we offered to re home Reeva. Thankfully, Reva's owner was also very amenable to that. The only sort of slight glitch was that, and this had been discussed before, we couldn't take Reeva home just that day. Again, you know, that. That's another part of the story, the other person's story. But Reeva had some goodbyes of her own to say. So we agreed that we would meet again in three weeks. We'd decided a kind of convenient date on both sides. We would meet in three weeks in Edinburgh this time, which was a little bit sort of closer for us to. And that's when we would pick Reva up, and that's what ended up happening. But obviously, you can imagine those three weeks in between. It was like I was like a child at Christmas, you know, I was literally counting days off on my calendar, you know, until Riva would come to live with us. And immediately that Riva came into our lives and that we knew she was going to be coming into our home. Before she even stepped foot in our home, Riva had completely changed the way I was feeling.
I had been really quite low and quite empty, even though perhaps outwardly I was trying to make the best of things and trying not to let it show because some time had passed now, you know, since Brodie had died, I was really feeling very affected, you know, very sort of low and very empty.
[00:25:15] Speaker A: When Reeva came into your life, in a sense, did she bring Brody back for you?
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. As I say, something completely changed in the way I was viewing things and the way I was feeling once I knew Reeva was coming to live with us. And it's really hard to describe how dogs do it. I think they have some sort of arcane powers, you know, that they can. They can do these things. But I had been thinking of Brodie very much at the end of his life. You know, I was always thinking about Brodie, but whenever I thought about him, I thought about him with sadness and with grief and with loss. I found it very difficult to picture him in those earlier days. All of my memories had come sort of.
They'd all revolved around this time at the last couple of weeks, you know, when Brody was very poorly, and I was finding it very hard to go back in time, you know, to an earlier point. For what. However she did it, Reeva completely repackaged all my memories of Brodie so that I was able to remember Brodie when he was younger, when he was healthy, when we were taking him on holidays and we were going all these walks and all the different things that we were doing. I was able to remember him with fondness and affection and gratitude. And that's something, a gift she's given me.
And she's also shown me that it's okay to love again, and I'm very grateful for that, and I'm very grateful for her.
John, I'm just going to say at the moment, can you hear a bit of skittering around in the background here?
No, it's Riva. She's in the kitchen and she's been very, very good up until now, but she's starting to get a little bit busy. So I'm going to pop Reva out of the room. Is that okay? Bring her in a.
Reva, are you going to come and say hi? Come and say hi. Rea, can you come up? Can you come up? Can you come up?
Are you going to come up?
Look, who's that? Who's that there?
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness, she is.
Here's my girl, Rea. She can't hear me.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Oh.
But now that she said hello, I will pop her out. If you don't mind, John. I'll ask my son to keep an eye on her because she's going to start getting a bit busy now.
Well, on Friday, Reva was actually out with my husband and sons, I think. But today we had been a walk and she was pretty settled there on the couch. But I heard. I just heard the stretching and the sort of, I'm coming back to life now, you know?
So your listeners wouldn't have seen her, but, yeah, she was popping up there. She likes to jump onto my knee when I'm on my desk. So I had to.
I had to kind of ask my husband to keep an eye on her for the. For the next part of this, because otherwise you'd just be seeing Reva's face there in your screen for the next little while.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: I love this. And when Reva is not barging into podcast episodes, there's something else that she loves to do. Gail, tell me about piggybacks.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: So, yeah, Reva has a lot of very funny little habits and quirks and ways, and one of those is that Riva is very fond of getting piggy So I don't think piggybacks are a common, you know, fondness for dogs. But when we met Riva on that very first walk in the Lake District with her previous owner, we were told that Reeva loved piggybacks. And we sort of thought, okay, how does that work? Let's see what happens with this.
So we were shown Reeva getting a piggyback, and, yes, she puts the front paws on the shoulders and she gets carried around like a satchel, and she loves this. And ever since Reva has lived with us, you know, she's continued this fondness for piggybacks. And if anyone is sitting down, tying their shoelaces or bending over, Reva takes this as an open invitation to kind of climb aboard. And she gets piggybacked around the house. She gets a little piggyback before the kids go to school each day.
She has so many funny little habits. When we go out for walks, she likes to jump up on little benches or walls, and when she's up there, she expects a treat before she jumps off again. I believe Riv, in her previous life, had been on some sort of doggy parkour course. So she loves this or jumping up on things and getting treats.
And I mentioned that she has an insatiable appetite for food for a little lady.
She has a big appetite, and she can be quite cheeky with regards to that. It's not unusual now, six months on now, that Reva feels very safe and comfortable and content in her new home. It's not unusual to find her paws up on the countertops in the kitchen, you know, seeing if she can sneak a potato peeling or a carrot or whatever.
But, yeah, she just makes us laugh and smile every day. And she's returned us to that joy, you know, that sense of joy that having a dog brings, and that's just such a. Such a beautiful thing.
Dogs, they make you laugh, they make you smile, they connect you to that more childlike side of yourself, I think, with their. With their different antics, don't they?
[00:30:37] Speaker A: Thank you for joining us for this heartfelt episode of Never Just a Dog. Today we followed Gail Anthea Brown's journey through love, loss, and healing. Her story of Brody's lasting impact and Reva's comforting presence reminds us of the deep bonds we share with our dogs and the way they shape our lives even beyond their time with us.
We hope Gail's reflections resonate with anyone who's experienced the profound joy and sorrow that comes with loving a dog.
These connections remind us that we're never truly alone, and that healing often comes from opening our hearts once more. I'll provide links to Gal's work in the show notes of your podcast app. Simply scroll down to view. You can also contact me directly via email. My address is
[email protected] thank you for listening to this very special episode of Never Just a Dog.
