Uffe - The Secret Agent

On Monday in the evening the visitors having gone away I went for a walk with Uffe, my dog. When we got to the other side of the street, Uffe felt tired and lied down on the pavement. Waiting for him to get up I called Samuli and asked him to come. Uffe might need help to be able to return back home. Samuli having arrived Uffe collected all his energy and walked home.

He was out of breath. As he was on medication we decided to call a veterinarian. He adviced us to come and meet him. Once more Uffe collected himself and jumped into the car. It was a low jump, but a jump it was. When we came back home with Samuli, we lifted him on the garage floor. In the morning we took him to the crematorium.

Now we live with his presence in his pillows, his dishes, his special way to greet us in the mornings and to sit at the gate watching what is going on in the street. When something is taken away, it anyway has meaning. And the meaning is presence. It is presence in the form of concrete objects, various sights, sounds, doings, ideas, plans. It covers the past, the present and the future. Of course it does not cover everything, but it covers surprisingly much.

Uffe is present when I leave my house to go somewhere. Now I do not tell him if he can come with me or not. I do not say: "Lähdetään. Autoon!" Neither do I explain why dogs cannot come - too hot in the car, dogs not allowed to participate in seminars, have to wait too long etc. Now I do not tell him who comes to take care of him if I go away for a long time. Neither do I close doors to keep him out of kitchen.

When Uffe was young he could go anywhere when alone at home. However, once we came back and realised that the cooker was red hot. There was a pot on the floor in front of it and another one in the corner beside the children´s computer. Obviously he had been cooking. Maybe he had looked for recepies in he internet. Maybe he was just chatting with his friends. - I was extremely happy not having returned half an hour later. Ever since that we always made sure that Uffe kept out of the kitchen when being alone at home.

There are very many things I need to learn to do in a different way now. When coming downstairs in the morning I do not talk to him first, I do not caress him, I do not open the doors. I leave them open before going to bed. I do not remind myself of having to give him the medicine - the regular one wrapped in a slice of cheese, the special one first mashed into powder, then baked into lever paté and after that wrapped in a cheese slice - I do not ask him to come out and get the newspaper from the letter box. Now I need to re-progamme all these small details to build them into new daily routines.

It is interesting how tiring this re-programming is. When you have lived for 13 years with someone that someone has become knit into your daily life on all its levels. He or she has a surprising number of presences everywhere in your life.

Sleeping dogs dream. At least Uffe did. He was running with only his pawns moving and simultaneously barking in a low quiet voice. I do not know how he would have reacted if I had asked him where he had been and what he had been doing while dreaming. I decided not to ask, because as far as I know dogs highly appreciate their own privacy. However, one day I found it out - just by accident.

In February I went for a seminar in Braunschweig in Germany. Luckily we had a couple of hours free time and equally luckily I found a bookshop there. I bought two books by the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. One was Ein Krokodil für Mma Ramotswe, Der erste Fall der ´No. 1 Ladies´Detective Agency´ and the other one Ein Gentleman für Mma Ramotswe, Der Zweite Fall der ´No. 1 Ladies´Detective Agency´.

You probably know Mma Ramotswe, the proprietress of the Number one Ladies´ Detective Agency in Botswana and the first female detective of the same country. Had I never gone to the Braunschweig seminar, found the bookshop and bought the two books, I would never have found out where Uffe goes and what he does while sleeping here in Tampere, Finland.

It was not until I had returned home that I had a closer look at the books. And what a surprise I had! On the cover of Ein Krokodil für Mma Ramotswe there is an authentic picture of Botswana. It must have been taken by Mma Ramotswe herself, because she is not in the picture. Or maybe she is disguised - she is carrying a big yellow plastic back on her head, another one in her hand, and she is wearing a pink dress and white tennis shoes. The short dress is covered with a white apron. As Mma Ramotswe prefers elegant dressing this must be a disguise.

Anyway, whoever this lady is, she is interviewing a gentleman sitting on a bench in a park. And when you look further back a little bit to the right of the lady, who do you see there? It is Uffe. He has his harness on and his hair has a short, sporty cut which obviously feels comfortable also in the hot Botswanian afternoon. When you look at his big brown eyes, you immediately see that he is not just lazying around. He is paying attention to Mma Ramotswe and her interviewee and listening attentively to their discussion.

All of us know that Uffe was a special case. However, no one of us had the slightest idea about his active contacts and co-operation with Mma Ramotswe and the Number One Ladies´Detective Agency in Botswana. If you want to now more about Uffe´s company in Botswana, you could read, for instance Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith. Or The Kalahari Typing School for Men, Blue Shoes of Happiness... I´m totally convinced that you, too, will feel happy for Uffe having had so interesting friends in Africa.