From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 9 February

I am convinced: there is a PhD in the connection between humans and animals. It is the most mystical of relationships, and impossible to define with any clarity.

FOR the first time in twenty-five years I do not have a dog and it is the strangest feeling. When I moved to Ballarat I had four dogs: Luci, Oscar, Mitzi and Rocky. Then came Penny, a Rhone spaniel who needed a home. Somehow, she was getting a bad name and I feared for her safety. She was the most gentle of dogs. Buddy, who was Rocky’s brother, was brought back to me after about eight years. His owner was no longer capable of caring for him and I had insisted that he be returned to me if her circumstances altered. At one point I had six dogs and I spent much of my time at the Ballarat Veterinary Practice seeing either Dr Aaron Luttrell, or Dr Stewart Greedy, both of whom took fantastic care of my litter.

As a child I always had a dog. Patch is the first one I remember. He had to be put-down after he escaped from the front yard and chased and bit the backside of a teasing neighbour as he fled the scene of his crime. Patch caught-up with him as he tried to open the gate to his camp and gave him a decent nip, and then trotted home looking pleased with himself. The neighbour went to the police, and while Beria argued it was his own fault for teasing Patchy, regularly, he had to be shot. I was devastated. Until we moved from the house Beria never missed an opportunity. If he walked-by when she was watering the vegetable garden she would turn the hose on him and hurl a tirade of abuse. Rotten mongrel-bastard was her favourite descriptive!

Woolly was the most beautiful dog. He was poisoned by my mother Beria’s hideous third husband. The neighbour’s cat regularly wandered into the yard and he set a bait laced with arsenic, stolen from the Sons of Gwalia goldmine. Woolly ate the bait. Next morning I found him frozen stiff and covered in frost ice. Beria put him in a sugar bag and together we threw him into the raging fires of the mine’s producers.

Tippy, a black cocker spaniel, was a 1957 Christmas present from my father. In 1960 I went to boarding school and he fretted. Tippy lived with my married sister and moved-in with the next-door neighbours. They had a pre-schooler son and they became the best of friends. They asked if they could have him. Curiously, when I returned for school holidays I cannot recall any recognition, or interest. Now Tippy had a new home and family. He was happy.

Penny was the final survivor of my South Yarra/Ballarat litter. She came to me after a somewhat shaky start. She was surrendered to a family with children when her owners moved to Canberra. They claimed Penny bit one of the kids, which I doubt. She had a habit of grabbing your hand and holding it in her mouth; but bite – never! After spending sometime locked in a shed, she went to a younger woman who complained Penny jumped-up on her when she came home from work. Finally, she came to me and her life was changed. She led a gentle existence and became a much-loved member of the household. She was a loner. If the smaller dogs got in her way she stood on them.

I knew it was her time. She was struggling to breath (she had a collapsed trachea); diabetes had resulted in almost totally blindness; she was deaf; and her thyroid and arthritis problems exacerbated the situation. For the two final days she was unable to stomach any food. On the Wednesday of her death she struggled out of her bed and went into the back garden. She sat under a tree near the bird’s water. In hindsight, I suspect she had gone there to die. I carried her back into the house; she had a long drink and I laid her down on her thick, quilted blanket. I phone Dr Stewart Greedy about her condition. We agreed to put her to sleep at 3.15 that afternoon. She was just feet away from me while I talked. At that moment – 11.45 – she died.

The vibration in the house has altered, radically. I shall miss Penny, terribly; especially her checking of the weekly shopping to make sure I didn’t forget anything!

Roland can be heard Monday morning – 10.30 – on radio 3BA and contacted via [email protected].