Goodbye Sugar, the surfer dog
When everything else is going to hell in a handcart this somehow matters
The recent death of Sugar, the famous surfing dog, is very sad. It came at a time when so many people in the Middle East and elsewhere are being killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet the death of this one animal has captured the imagination around the world in ways that the slaughter of human beings has not.
Let me explain because it may appear to be offensively callous to suggests that the victims of war should not be remembered with the same fondness that surrounds a dog bereavement. Clearly this is not right but to be blunt mass killing is anonymous and, despite best efforts, it is hard to empathise with vast numbers of people in the same way as it is possible to focus on the fate of a single person, or in this case, a dog.
Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, is famous for saying ‘the death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic’. Whether he actually said it or not is unclear but this remark is very much in character for the murderous tyrant and is as cynical as it is true.
Stalin was right, the greater the numbers of dead, the more they become statistics. Sometimes the killed are famous or infamous but for most part they are not.
Like everyone else I find it hard not to follow the Iran war, but I am spectator and do not presume to understand the terror and subsequent horror of sitting under a nearly completed bridge in Iran as it was bombed by American war planes. Nor do I even know the names of the people who were killed. Their friends and relatives know full well, but the rest of us are distant spectators, perhaps feeling unease, maybe anger or even able to shrug off these fatalities as being collateral damage.
Sugar, the 16 year old rescue mixed breed dog, will not become a statistic because she had an extraordinary ability to surf off the coast of Southern California. She also brought comfort to armed forces veteran hospital patients who she visited with Ryan Rustan, her owner. Yes, we know his name as well because he was a big part of her story and has eloquently talked about his pet, the five-time World Dog Surfing Champion.
As a serial dog owner I can say with confidence that dogs do not need to achieve championships or display other extraordinary abilities to be fiercely treasured and declared to be the best dog in the world simply by virtue of the unwavering companionship they bestow on their owners and indeed others who they befriend along the way.
While Stalin was cynically brushing aside mass murder, his counterpart in the White House, Harry Truman, is credited with saying ‘if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog’. Like the Stalin quote, its province is shaky but its truth rings loud and clear. Washington, the shorthand for describing the back biting centre of American politics and the all shenanigans that it entails, can be a place where friends are no more than allies of convenience and where friendships are broken as quickly as they are formed.
The kind of friendship you get from a dog is unwavering. Anyone who suggests otherwise clearly has never owned a dog and is unable to comprehend the calm and happiness that results.
So, the death of Sugar is immensely relatable in ways that the mass death of humans is not. It should be otherwise but should and could are two different things.
This does not mean that we should be callous about the terrible things that are happening in the world, whether they are more terrible now than at other times is debatable but they are quite bad enough.
What is does mean however is that sanity can best be preserved by taking a break from contemplating disaster and focusing on something life affirming.
It might seem daft to say that the death of a dog is life affirming but Sugar died at the ripe old doggy age of sixteen, a long life, well spent and spent in ways that gave joy to others. Remembering her shows no disrespect to the victims of war but it reflects a determination to find positives at a time when positives are hard to come by.