Early each morning I tiptoe downstairs, trying not to wake the rest of the household, but this stealth is invariably made irrelevant by a short bark from our golden retriever.
Roused from a deep sleep, Nigel scrambles to his feet and is fully awake by the time he’s upright. Then he rushes past me to the front door, where he stands too close, tail vertical and wagging.
He follows this with a half-shuffle, half-dance into reverse as, against all expectations, the door pulls a fast one and opens inwards on him, as it has done and will do every time. With that, he’s outside, head up, taking deep draughts.
Nigel reads the morning air like a saloon-bar gent scanning his daily paper. He flicks his nostrils left to right and back again, finds it all good, has a detailed inspection of the corner of the clipped yew where every dog for the past 20 years has left his mark, a ritual cock of the leg and a brisk march back inside.
Monty Don’s late beloved family dog Nigel was saved after severing his spinal cord when one of the discs in his back exploded
Supervet Noel Fitzpatrick performed a CAT scan. Noel wouldn’t operate but kept him in the correct position, coupled with hydrotherapy several times a day in the pool, ensuring Nigel could walk again
Ignoring his own bed, he strides to a wooden box next to the Aga, and gently but firmly crams himself into it. It’s far too small. He can only fit in his body and three legs in one go, but he loves it.
He then watches me eat my breakfast (yoghurt and stewed fruit, eggs, toast and a pot of tea, since you ask) with mounting interest.
In the very early days, there was outrage that I was clearly eating something delicious and not sharing it with him. But he quickly learned that sitting by my chair with strings of drool hanging from his mouth was not going to endear himself to me or anyone else.
So he lies in his too-small bed and watches from under the lid of one eye, like someone viewing a (rather dull and slightly messy) food programme that he’s seen a hundred times before but finds comforting. He knows the script by heart. Yoghurt down, bowl put on the side. Noted. Eggs to be cooked. Play it cool. Stretch, exhale deeply, show no interest whatsoever. Eggs eaten, very good. Moving nicely forward.
A second cup of tea is a blow, slowing down everything. Toast, get the butter; out of marmalade so a trip to the larder for apricot jam. Into the last lap now. He watches me meaningfully, catching my eye, and risks a wag of his tail.
All done? Ready to feed the troops now? No hurry, of course. In your own time. It’s just that I do feel a trifle peckish . . . What! A third cup of tea?! Oh come on!
Monty recalls how his four-legged TV co-star had the goofiest smile, fur like the finest cashmere and an obsession with tennis balls
At this point he gets up, nudges my elbow, makes an unmanly high-pitched bleat that drops into a growl, stretches, looks at the door to the back kitchen where his food is kept, and grasps my tea-drinking hand as if to lug me forcibly away from my overplayed breakfast towards his own.
As I finally start preparing his food, there’s a waiting-for-food range of noises that rise from a hurry-up growl to a high-pitched plea. If he thinks I’m being unreasonably slow, an irritated bark will be thrown in, followed by an apologetic shuffle of his backside. He’s fundamentally a polite dog — albeit one getting hungrier by the second.
Finally, I lift his bowl off the counter and, unlike all the other dogs I’ve fed, he ignores me and the food and prances — no, dances — into the yard without a backward glance. He knows the form and is one step ahead.
The bowl is put in front of him, whereupon he sits and looks at me with quiet desperation while a bubble of saliva gently balloons from the corner of his mouth — and on the command, he tucks in.
And so it happens every day, exactly the same every time. But every time is the best time.
After this, we walk round the two-acre garden of our home in Herefordshire, sniffing the air, releasing the chickens and working the day out. Last thing at night, we repeat the walk by torchlight — although, as this is followed by a biscuit, there is a slightly more excited tone to the proceedings.
The doting dog owner said Nigel had a rare quality of drawing attention to himself, taking the light from a room and stealing every scene he was in
It has never crossed Nigel’s mind (and, even at his most perceptive, that is a short, uncomplicated journey) that he is not always the centre of attention. This means that, when you’re talking to someone or reading the paper, a slow rhythmic growling will start to build up as he tries to attract your attention.
The sound is moderated by the size of ball in his mouth — a small one just adds a slight edge, whereas a large tennis ball means he has to blow harder to make the sound, so it is a curious bass wheeze.
This is repeated, the same sound rising to a crescendo, at which point the growl is unmanned by a treble note of indignation that can become an all-out squealed bark.
Then, when you catch his eye or ask him to be quiet, the ball is deposited on your lap and is, so to speak, now in your court. He has won.
There’s one treat in the vegetable garden that Nigel finds irresistible, and that’s peas. Between mid-June and late July, he can often be found standing, all but hidden, between two rows of peas growing up sticks, carefully biting off pods and crunching them up with evident relish.
He’s quite picky about those he eats. Too young and they don’t have enough body; too old and the pods are flabby and the peas inside floury and hard, and they’re rejected out of hand. So he selects carefully, a discriminating gourmet, knowing exactly what he’s looking for and then relishing every mouthful. I suspect Nigel watches the peas growing as carefully as I do, checking out the shift from flower to pod and watching them swell and fill until that perfect moment when the peas become a succulent green doggy snack.
September delivers another favourite harvest. When a bout of blustery wind brings down the first windfalls in the Orchard, Nigel will nose through the day’s offerings and devour them with relish, the greener and more unripe the better.
He loves, really truly loves, the windfall apples. In his first year, the windfalls came when he was three or four months old, and at first we couldn’t understand why the garden looked as though a herd of incontinent cattle had just wandered through.
Then we realised that Nigel was eating a dozen or so unripe apples a day, and his puppy digestive system was understandably rebelling. Not that he seemed to mind in the slightest, and the repercussions have never put him off this seasonal treat.
Rather than pick up a fruit from the ground, he always munches it in situ. But in order to bite the shiny skin, he has to use his molars, so he’s forced to turn his head sideways to get a purchase on it.
Mont Don posted this last photo of Nigel on his Twitter account, writing ‘I am very sorry to announce that Nigel has died.He slipped quietly away with no pain or suffering and is now buried in the garden with lots of tennis balls.Rest now old friend. See you in the sweet bye and bye’
As the apple gets smaller and smaller, his head twists more and more until his shoulder is practically on the ground and his body twisted at right angles. It cannot be comfy, but he never changes his method.
However, an apple is never just a delicious bite of forbidden fruit for Nigel. It has the great added bonus of looking to all intents and purposes like a slightly strange tennis ball that can be thrown, chased, carried and endlessly plonked in a wheelbarrow or trug, followed by a foot-shuffling, impatient bark for it to be thrown — again.
His devotion to an individual apple can last for days, despite it becoming progressively chewed, bashed and pulpy as a result of being hurled against trees and hedges and of Nigel taking sneaky little bites from it.
A ball you can eat surpasses all other dreams.
One September, as I was writing an article, I heard a scream that sent me rushing outside, thinking there had been an accident to one of the two gardeners. Eventually, I found one of them, Julia, crouched over the body of Nigel, who was shaking violently and crying.
Monty Don posted this picture (left) of Nigel on Instagram, captioning it ‘Mr Sunshine’. He said: ‘I don’t think the dogs have ever worked out what photography is other than an annoying delay in going for a walk’
What had happened was completely, freakishly unexpected. For the thousandth time, Nigel had carefully placed a muddy yellow ball on the clipped top of the box hedge next to Julia as she cut back spent dahlia flowers.
As she had done a thousand times before, she flicked it away for him to chase and Nigel leapt in the air to take it, twisting sideways and up with astonishing speed and dynamism. As he had done so many times before.
We got him to the vet, who kept him overnight and then announced ‘one leg had had it’ and might need amputation.
By the next day, Nigel seemed dangerously close to death, so we drove 150 miles to Godalming, in Surrey, to see Noel Fitzpatrick, TV’s Supervet, who specialises in extreme cases. After a CAT scan, Noel was immediately able to diagnose what had happened. When Nigel had leapt in the air, the acceleration had been so powerful, and he’d twisted with such suppleness, that one of the discs in his back had exploded, partially severing his spinal cord.
Noel wouldn’t operate but kept him in the correct position, coupled with hydrotherapy several times a day in the pool.
Five days later, we went back and Nigel walked out to the car, tail up, wanting to leap into the back. It seemed miraculous: despite a tremor in his afflicted leg, he was soon running freely again.
It has never crossed Nigel’s mind (and, even at his most perceptive, that is a short, uncomplicated journey) that he is not always the centre of attention. Monty said: ‘Everyone has a way of sleeping that feels most right’
Nellie arrived on a November evening. My eldest son had suggested we get another dog so that by the time Nigel got old, it would be a mature and integrated part of the household.
I don’t know what I had expected. A feminine version of Nigel, I think. But from the first minute she was Not-Nigel. Although all golden retriever puppies look identical and Nellie has exactly the same body language, everything about her character is unlike his. Where she is clever, Nigel is wise.
He’s self-contained and greets any given situation with patient acceptance, whereas Nell quickly gets bored. Nigel has never stolen a piece of food in his life (apart from peas) but Nell will jump on the table and eat whatever is there if you leave the room for a minute.
For the first week or so, he disdainfully ignored her, preferring to leave the room rather than respond to her advances. But gradually she won him over.
He didn’t respond directly, but let her clamber all over him. Soon Nigel became her plaything, like a teddy bear; he was endlessly tolerant even when she was clearly hurting him. She’d attack again and again, clinging on to any part she could reach, with Nigel gently deflecting her, usually by rolling his head or bottom away.
Monty says Nigel ‘will always be here, his gentle presence shadowing me, real and vital, part of the living essence of the garden’
But Nellie was good for him. She was youth nipping at his heels, and she sharpened him up.
Even so, Nigel is definitely slowing down. Much of his day is spent dozing in the sun if it’s there to be dozed in, and in the warmth of the kitchen if it’s not.
His ways are fixed and you can sense a slight irritability if a new regime is imposed upon him. I am completely in tune with this. I guess we are growing older together.
His muzzle has faded and is distinctly grey, his nose has lost its black sheen and is a slightly splodgy pink; his eyes are a little rheumy and hollow. In short, he is starting to look old.
He is still handsome, though, and still has a prance in his step when setting off outside. But when he comes in there is a weariness in him that never showed before. He sleeps deeply, shifting and groaning as he finds a new comfy position.
Dogs, of course, have much shorter lives than humans. In truth, when we take on a pet, the only certainty is that it will not end well: one of you — probably the pet — is going to die relatively soon.
When his time comes, Nigel will be buried in the coppice in the shade of a wild cherry that I planted in 1993. The roots will be hard to chop through by then, the ground compacted and dry.
But he will always be here, his gentle presence shadowing me, real and vital, part of the living essence of the garden.
- Adapted by Corinna Honan from Nigel: My Family And Other Dogs by Monty Don (Two Roads, £8.99). © Monty Don 2017.