22/08/2025
Over the years, I have commissioned many works of Art for the walls of our Clinic.
This is the back story to one of them.
The Death of Homer
Homer was a Labrador I had known for years—cheerful, devoted, always carrying a toy as though life were one long game. But when friends asked me to end his life, he was no longer that dog. Age and arthritis had worn him down; his bed was wet more often than dry, and the joy in his eyes had slipped away. His family, with aching hearts, knew it was time.
I had not yet begun working with dogs—horses were my world—but they turned to me because of trust.
I agreed, realising that this act of release was as much a part of being a vet as healing.
The previous year, they had built a magnificent house in the Valley as their new family home. They had spent many hours creating and caring for an extensive garden and a large lawn. Beyond the lawn, forming the edge, was a haw-haw, followed by acres of their vineyard. In the near distance, beyond the vineyard, lay the grey hills of the Valley Ranges.
We left Homer in his bed. Why move him? He didn’t fear death. He didn’t know about death - it’s truly a human concept. We have created Death and the associated Fear.
Like most animals, Homer was living in the moment and could remember the past but had no idea of the future. His living in the moment was not a good place. If the future was to be worse and the discomfort unmanageable, it was time.
Homer was calm as I gently slipped the needle into a vein in his arm. When the family was ready, someone nodded, and I quietly pushed the plunger down, allowing the green-dyed fluid to flow into Homer. A few moments later, his body relaxed, he took one final breath, and then he was gone. He experienced a gentle death. He was gone, leaving the family with their memories of Homer.
They had decided to honour him by burying him on the edge of the great lawn that spread behind the house. The hole had been dug earlier. They gathered him up from his bed and gently carried him across the lawn towards his grave. They walked with the lead of grief in their feet. It was a family time, a private time... I stayed in the house and watched them through the French windows as they laid him to rest in his grave. They stood around his grave as the son filled it with soil.
A storm was brewing, with dark clouds filling the grey sky above and the mountains looming in the distance. It's a view I’ve never forgotten.
And then years later....
“I don’t do dogs!” was the response from artist Rimona Kedem when I asked her to undertake a new commission for me. I wanted her to paint a scene that captured the essence of Homer’s death. I sought to have her depict my memory of that day on canvas, including, if possible, some of the emotions. Rimona had had some connection with the death of a much-loved friend. She had recently made the hard decision to end her own cat’s life, and she was still grieving for her “Mitzi”.
It was a memory that caused her great distress.
She repeated, quietly, “I don’t do dogs”.
“Rimona”, I replied gently. “You may not do dogs, but you do emotions. Use your grief for “Mitzi” to paint the picture I want”
“I don’t know”, she replied. “I will see. . .”
She went away and, some months later, presented to me the finished artwork.
What she created was unexpected.
She had taken my story of what I had observed across the great lawn ie the grieving family at the side of their much-loved dog’s grave, and had rotated the focus so that the viewer is looking back from across the grave, passed a dead “Homer”, passed the grieving family, and across the great lawn to the Vet in the background. In addition, the focus of the painting was the lone child in the centre, the only subject looking at the observer. The little girl is wearing a red shoe. This artist always puts herself in her paintings and always wears a red shoe. The child, perhaps, is a representation of the artist. Rimona had created what I had asked of her, and in so doing, by painting the child looking at the dead dog, perhaps confronting death, when all the others are captured in their grief.
And her picture spoke to me in another way: Rimona had finally come to terms with her loss of Mitzi.
