big skies over Fidra

Yellowcraig, 11 August

This has been a strange week. I started this week with a plan of things I hoped to do: have a few longer walks now that it’s slightly cooler; write a few chapters in the *book; go through photos and choose a few details that might work as prints, and look into where to have those printed.

But then we had rain, which was no bad thing. The land desperately needs rain. And rain wouldn’t have kept us from a walk. But Raf’s sudden appearance of pain late on Tuesday afternoon did, and we’ve since had a few vet trips including blood tests, pain meds, and rest, and one very short walk at Belhaven last night when I had to carry Raf as he was zonked out from the sedatives I’d given him to ease his anxiety for those blood tests. The sedatives had very little effect while at the vet, but knocked him out for the rest of the night.

Thankfully the blood tests all came back as normal, which is very good news, but we’re still not sure why he’s been in pain. Given that Raf’s a dachshund, spinal worries lie front and centre in my mind, but I’m also conscious that he could have one narky trigger point that maybe needs (more) rest and physio, or some soft tissue damage. Our brains have the habit of finding the worst case scenarios, when there are other things that could be happening. If this was someone else I’d be saying: Look, take one day at a time. One step at a time. Don’t immediately expect the worst. So I need to take my own advice.

But two other things have been on my mind this week. My stress levels are in a different place from worry (naturally enough) and from the lack of time spent outdoors. And that’s after only four days without proper walks. Four days without standing by the sea, or walking below pine trees. Four days will sound like nothing to most people, I know, but it’s been a sharp reminder of how my mind needs to be outdoors, walking, breathing, unravelling, to function. I need exercise and getting on the cross trainer doesn’t cut it. Yoga helps, but that’s still at home, indoors. My mind reset is always primarily outside – and not where we live. I’m not talking about being ‘outside anywhere’ – I mean places without pavements and cars and people.

Places like this, from a low tide beach walk at Yellowcraig last week.

The other thing that’s been on my mind over the last few days is less easy to answer or find a ‘fix’ for.

How do you handle health-related issues with your canine family members when you’ve been through loss? And not only loss but the trauma that leads to it; the disease that deepens and spreads and eventually leads to that loss. How do you manage anything health-related and not find yourself triggered? (‘Triggered’ has become over-used as a word, and I wish I had a better term, but, in the absence of one…) Because this week I’ve felt triggered. Those very specific fears of what could be discovered. The vet consultation rooms. New conversations that hold shadows of old conversations. Lying awake at night, remembering those other times when I lay awake at night. Or half-sleeping, waiting for Raf to stir, and that sense of my body remembering this. Like muscle memory, but in my mind.

How do you build a more resilient headspace for this? Maybe you can’t. Maybe that’s part of welcoming another canine companion into your life: the understanding that your mind will be tested and triggered, time and time and time again, over years, and that this is part of life now.

I haven’t done any of those things I’d planned to do this week. In this headspace, my mind feels a little fractured, where I can’t really focus. The days have drifted from worry to worry, and now it’s Friday and those book chapters haven’t written themselves.

So yes, the *book – have I mentioned this before? I’m writing a book about love and loss, and about family, when some of those family members have fur. It’s a love story with Harris and Bracken at the core of it. A love letter to our boys. And it’s a place to talk about trauma and grief, and about how to try and find a path through both. It’s about the things you lose along the way – the parts of yourself that you lose. The grief you also carry for who you were.

We have a quiet weekend ahead, a weekend without the big walks I’d hoped for, so maybe this will be a good time to write.

Yellowcraig, East Lothian, Tuesday 11th August 2026