“The safest way to heaven is to be eaten by beautiful dogs.”

— Kamchatka proverb

My family had a pair of little dogs like on the Black and White scotch whiskey label: a black Scottish Terrier and a West Highland White Terrier. My folks got the Scottish Terrier first, when I was in fourth grade. Being English teachers, they thought it was hilarious to name her Macduff, after the character who kills Macbeth in “the Scottish Play.” Four years later we gave Dad the white Westie for Christmas. He named the dog Budger. Dad died that summer.

Three years passed. It was the summer after eleventh grade. My brother and I ate some LSD after Mom and our sister left the house for the day. This was my first acid trip. We walked to the ice cream shop until we started feeling weird. Returning home we flopped down on the living room carpet and let the dogs come to us. We lay there laughing while Macduff and Budger licked our faces and wagged their tails and sniffed in our ears. I had what felt like a genetic memory of people playing with their dogs back down through the stone age and into deep time. The black and the white dog symbolized more than themselves, and I did too.

That year I dreamed Dad was alive again. I introduced him to my girlfriend and got to say a proper goodbye when he had to leave. When I woke up I had an odd feeling that it had really been him. I thought long and hard for many years about that feeling. I concluded it was not him. I concluded also that our memories of a person can function in dreams as an avatar of that person, a simulacrum made of memories, a large language model of my father. To the extent the dream satisfied my frustrated urge to say goodbye, it may as well have been him. Close enough.

Macduff died four years later. I was a senior at college. Mom gave me the not-unexpected news over the phone, saying that everyone had gathered to pet and dote one last time before she had her put down. I wanted to be there but it was impractical. So much of Macduff’s life reminded me of Dad that it felt like the end of an era.

Macduff

That night I dreamed of Macduff. I petted her and scratched her behind the ears and had my chance to say goodbye. When I awoke it was the same feeling I had after my dream of Dad. It felt uncannily like Macduff had come to see me on her way to the afterlife. The dream discharged the energy of my need to say goodbye, like it was really her.

Budger died years later, he who had been 100% Dad’s dog. Dad solely had named him. Budger’s death felt like the end of the era for real this time. The family dogs who had each outlived my father were gone.

Decades passed. A few weeks ago, late one night, I watched a 3-part video series by mythologist Jon F. White, about ancient Proto-Indo-European beliefs of ghost dogs guiding people to the underworld. Any fan of dogs or mythology needs to watch these:

Part 1: Dogs of Death (Indo-European Mythology of Death Cults, Werewolves, and the Wild Hunt)

Part 2: The Hounds of Hell and Their Mythological Significance

Part 3: Can Dogs Guide Us to the Underworld?

Some variants of these myths feature a black dog and a white dog who appear to the recently deceased. One will take you to the good place and one will take you to the bad place. As the thinking goes, prehistoric cultures may have developed such beliefs after observing dogs eating the dead. Some of these cultures set dead bodies out for dogs to clean the bones before interment. In this way, dogs carried souls to the afterlife. The old saying from Kamchatka betrays its origin from these prehistorical eras: “The safest way to heaven is to be eaten by beautiful dogs.”

These forgotten guide dogs to the afterlife left traces in subsequent myths still widely known. For instance Cerberus who guards the afterlife of the ancient Greeks. His multiple heads hint at earlier myths of the dead meeting multiple dogs. Consider Anubis, the god of the ancient Egyptian afterlife, whose head is that of a black canine. One of Anubis’ titles is “the dog who swallows millions.” He had power over the jackals who ate bodies in the graveyards.

Watching these videos that night, I could not help but think of my family’s black dog and white dog and their death connection. Budger had practically heralded Dad’s passing, and came to symbolize Dad afterward, a living reminder for far longer than Dad had actually owned him. And Macduff had seemingly literally visited me in the dream after she died, like Dad himself had done. The ancient complex of ideas was alive and well.

I remembered that William S. Burroughs had a thing for the myth of the black death dog, so he worked elements of the folklore into his writing. Black dogs for Burroughs mean death is near.

Stirred after watching the death dog videos, I dreamed of Macduff. I had not dreamed of her since the night she died more than 30 years ago. There was confusion in the dream about whether I was a boy or a man. And there was confusion about whether Dad was alive or not. I was in my house but it was also my parents’ old house. It was all true at once when Macduff appeared at the side of my bed, and hopped up to sleep by my legs. Delighted, I spoke to her: “Hey Duffers! Are you tired of sleeping in Mom and Dad’s room? Come on up! There you are, what a good girl.”

When I woke up I basked in the memory. Macduff had visited me again. And for the span of the dream, Dad was sort of alive too. Macduff dissolved the distinctions between the living and the dead, like dogs before her had done since the beginning of time.

I told my daughter this story, saying I was gratified to have seen my old black dog again in my dreams.

She replied, “Unless the dog was a premonition of your death.”

I had to get this out there in case I get hit by a bus. But if so, think of me with my beautiful dogs.

An index of Jim Richardson’s essays may be found here.