A Dog's Life

Dileas the wonder dog is no more. 

He was born at Inverarish, Raasay,  on 9th September 1996, and died in Barrhead, near Glasgow on 16th April 2012, aged 15 years 7 months. 

His mother (Juno?) lived at Raasay Outdoor Centre, and his father was the Raasay postman's collie. . Genetically, he was three-quarters collie, an eighth spaniel, and an eighth ridgeback.

1996 - Dileas arrival in Glasgow

I was on a geology field trip to Raasay in September/October 1996, when I spotted  a notice on the Outdoor Centre noticeboard indicating that a litter of pups were looking for homes. Soon afterwards, I was in a house in Inverarish, where he and his tiny brothers and sisters were bumbling around on the floor. Dileas chose me by trying to suck my shoelaces. The pups were not yet weaned,  so Lynne Rowe, the Director of the Raasay Outdoor Centre, brought him down to our house in Glasgow a few weeks later.

Soon dog-walking became one of our main activities. Here we are on one of our first days out in Linn Park in November 1996.

2004

A brainy dog

Very good with words, thanks to Cath’s expert training. In his prime he had a vocabulary of about 50 words, and could understand concepts. For example “upstairs”, “kitchen” or “what’s out the window?” would work in any house, familiar or strange. He would learn new tricks very easily. His list of understood words included:

Cath, John, Alec, Mont, Joan, Car, Dave, park, kitchen, biscuit, water, upstairs, cat, bird, window, lie down, stand, dead, roll over, jowler ( a move from the game “pass the pigs”), take it, leave it, sit, come, shake-a-paw, shake (shake off water after swimming, or bath), stay, squirrel, sheep, fox, mice, right, shut the door, and many many more.

Here he is obeying the command "dead":