Helpers: A Guest Post by Dara Waldron
Oscar, a sheepdog abandoned on the hills of Ireland, forms an unexpected bond with a grieving writer who seeks to understand him. Speckled with lush imagery, this story is a powerful reflection on loss, healing and finding connection in a furry companion. Read on for an exclusive essay from Dara Waldron on writing Our Monthly Pick A Sheepdog Named Oscar.
Paperback $22.95
A Sheepdog Named Oscar: Love and Companionship in Rural Ireland
A Sheepdog Named Oscar: Love and Companionship in Rural Ireland
By Dara Waldron
In Stock Online
Paperback $22.95
A moving memoir of grief, healing, and the unbreakable bond between man and dog, set against the lush backdrop of rural Ireland.
A moving memoir of grief, healing, and the unbreakable bond between man and dog, set against the lush backdrop of rural Ireland.
A Sheepdog Named Oscar was written at a time of turbulence during the first wave of COVID-19. Ireland was in lockdown, and most people were working from home. I was motivated to write about something dear to me: my companionship with a border collie called Oscar, who had I rescued from a derelict farm in the East Clare region of Ireland three years prior to the pandemic. My father passed away in a car accident in June 2016. I was pent up with adrenaline, creative and nervous energy, yet to fully process the ‘gone forever’ bit that comes when someone dies suddenly. I had been writing a bi-weekly column about everyday encounters with art for an online arts and culture website that, against my initial expectations, became a source of comfort in the first year after my father’s death. I had moved to a small village called Murroe, located in the shadow of Glenstal Abbey and the Clare Glens, about fifteen minutes from the suburb of Limerick City I had lived in for fifteen years. I decided to get a dog and was advised to get a border collie. Without spoiling the story of the book, let us say that a set of events took place that led me to write three separate articles over a six-week period that explore the story of discovering that dog. In the process, a fascination grew with a ‘collie’ breed with such deep roots in Irish and British culture; some believe the word ‘collie’ derives from the Irish Gaelic ‘coiléan’ used by Irish monks who had moved to Scotland. The word literally means ‘helper.’ Collies are dogs that help in some way.
Over the four years that form the basis of A Sheepdog Named Oscar, ‘help’ began to manifest as care. And so, I set out to explore the heritage and culture of sheepdogs and collies as helpers who care, who have long since entered the most fascinating forms of symbioses with humans. I scurried down multiple rabbit holes, all the time looking to account for love I had for Oscar and love I believed, in the deepest recesses of my being, he had for me. Then one day, as the Covid pandemic raged, and we were still working from home, the commuting time and the stresses of going and returning to work reduced, I sat down to write about this love. I decided to write a love story that isn’t about a human meeting another, but a man finding a dog. I had thousands of photographs stored on my phone that documented our years together. Something else happened when turned into black and white. Like documentary film, they felt symbolic, authentic and true. I would try to weave these photos into the story of those four years so that readers would come to feel in their bones that ‘help’ and ‘care’ form part of the core of life and working dogs don’t just herd animals in a field. They are part of us.