My Friends' Old Dogs

Maybe it’s because my eldest son is 13 now. Or maybe it’s because we recently adopted a rescue dog who is snoring at my feet as I write this. Either way, I love the sweet sense of loss in this story. It was published in Mnemotope, a radically open literary magazine that seeks out writing by people who wouldn’t normally appear in literary magazines, and it’s a lovely, simple piece of writing about the strange sadness of being a teenager and growing up.

When you’re seven or eight, everyone wants a dog, and sometimes your parents are actually willing to get you one. So by the time you get to seventeen or eighteen, you have all these childhood dogs laying around, looking all docile and wise at the end of their lives just as you’re reaching peak teenage stupid. I love these animals. They’re a real calming presence: they give the houseparty a certain je ne sais quoi. This one goes out to my friends’ old dogs.

1 Jake’s little wiry terrier
This is a clever dog. She is not fooled by Jake dousing us all in Lynx as we enter his house – she knows we’ve been up to no good. When I was 17 sometimes I’d go over to Jake’s and there’d be six of us piled on his bed in silence, watching South Park for hours and hours at a time. The dog was always in the corner of the room making a little judgemental face, which I can’t really argue with.

2 Archie’s fat labrador
This dog is well loved and well fed. He’s a corner shop connoisseur. He knew about air fryers before they were cool. He is seriously stupid, though. He loves playing fetch but he still hasn’t got the hang of the game – he’ll bring you something in his mouth, he really wants you to throw it, but he doesn’t realise he has to let go of the stupid thing first. Clueless, but endlessly patient with (and adored by) drunk teenagers.

3 Alice’s 3-legged greyhound
It was world shattering playground news when this dog got hit by a car back in year 6. She’s been doing fine with 3 legs ever since, though. When I was back from uni I saw Alice walking the dog and we had a big grown-up conversation about jobs and stuff. I’m obviously a humanities student destined for creative unemployment; she told me she wanted to become a paramedic. It surprised me since we used to really abuse our Moshi Monsters back in the day... but the more I think about it, the more I think it suits her.

4 Daisy’s curly spaniel thing
This dog is called Milo. I knew Daisy when I was little and went back to her big party for her 18th, and she still had all the same garden stuff from when we were kids. Things like trampolines can be ironically cool again in your late teens, possibly since they are now lethally dangerous if you are adult-sized and/or intoxicated. At the end of the night I was sitting in a beanbag chair in front of a TV where we used to watch cartoons, and there was Milo, somehow still alive. Everything in that house looked exactly the same – except Daisy. Most of the 18th birthday parties I went to were strange or sad in some way, actually.

5 Tom’s black dog
At least I think this dog is black. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it in the daytime. You used to see Tom’s dad walking the dog at night and now you see Tom doing it. Tom’s got this crazy bouncy walk like a cartoon character. You can spot him a mile off, even in the dark. If I’m racing up the hill in the car and I see him, I’ll really lean on my horn. The dog’s too deaf to care but Tom always jumps out of his skin. He loves it really.

Mnemotope is a radically open literary magazine for people who don’t think their stories belong in a literary magazine. There’s no theme, no editing, and no restrictions on grammar or form, resulting in a journal that’s literally unlike any other.

Rowan Morrow is a student living in Leeds. My Friends' Old Dogs is the first piece he's had published in a proper magazine! He hopes to have many more. You can also see him on Instagram (if he approves your friend request).

Lucile Farroni is an illustrator based in Paris. She brings life to a diverse range of subjects, specialising in lifestyle scenes and tasty food illustrations. You can see more of her work on Instagram.

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