Reflections in Anticipation of Loss

There is a shadow that quietly, but progressively creeps upon us with advancing age, a sense of being unheard and increasingly cloaked with invisibility. Solitude and loneliness, which is so often a consequence for the elderly, has a deteriorating effect on health, which often goes unrepresented, unacknowledged, and not discussed. A domestic companion offers appeasement, and a dog gains significance where there is no other human present.

The lightning talk focuses on the reflective and poignant stories of the anticipated loss of a pet dog told by participants in my artistic research project, Dogs and the Elderly. The project, made with participants from the Alzheimer’s Society’s ‘Memory Cafes’ in Nottingham and Lincolnshire, connects with those held in a companionable embrace with dogs. It offers personal and pertinent stories of the significance of end of live interspecies relationships to be told; it provides the opportunity for others to listen and hear those intimacies and understand the positive value such inter-species relationships bring.

The conference presentation addresses and discuss the importance of domestic end of life human-dog relationships, and the anticipation and fear of loss to come. A video, containing the words spoken by participants, will play throughout to illustrate their sentiments.

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