Anubis

I guess you could say that Anubis has always been my patron saint.

Ever since I was much younger and totally fell in love with Egyptology after watching the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie for the first time, I thought that the god Anubis was badass.

You never really see him in the first movie, he's there in spirit in the second as well as in the form of the Anubis warriors, and let's just pretend the third one never happened. The concept of life and death though, embodied in the ethereal presence of the God of the Underworld (for those less up to date with Egyptian mythology though let me just say that's a very simplistic way to describe it), has always stuck with me. I look for Anubis in any mythos. He's there in the Mummy franchise, he's there in Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and he's even there in my own books (as yet unpublished) as a major catalyst.

Like Hades in Greek mythology, Anubis represents the balance between life and death and he's famous for being the one that weighs the heart of the deceased against a feather to determine if you are pure of heart or not. If yes, you can ascend to the afterlife. If not, Anubis is going to feed your black heart to the demon, Amit. Its the coolest.



The Egyptian gods are all represented by a totem, usually an animal. Some lore has them as actual shape-shifters which stems from the otherworldlyness that comes with their godliness. Irrespective of whether its purely symbolic or not, Anubis is represented by the Jackal. Like this:

What kind of dog does that look like to you?

Back in around 2011 when my parents were splitting up, my Mum and her now husband went in shares to sponsor a greyhound at the racecourse in Perth. My stepdad's family were involved in training and breeding, and my Mum (like me) is a big dog lover and thought it might be really cool. So, they adopted this big, gangly little greyhound. His kennel name was 'Boots', his racing name was 'Anglo-Banglo' (to represent our Anglo-Indian heritage), but his official name was 'Anubis'.

I loved Anubis, he was a big dork. 

I never saw him race because I was starting to feel very uncomfortable about animal racing at the time and I couldn't bear to see something go wrong on the track as well. And although he was very fast, his time as Anglo-Banglo was short-lived because he simply just got tired of racing. He scored fast times in the trials to the excitement of the trainers but when it came time to race on the track he'd get out of the gate and run in a different direction or prance around. He was a smart dog, he was taking the piss because he didn't feel like doing it anymore. 

No longer running, Anubis finally came home to live with us. 

He was fine prancing through the house until we replaced the carpet with floorboards, then he was too scared to walk on them. He let me carry him around and tone my arms sometimes but freaked out when someone tried to pat him from behind. We worried he might try to attack the cats, particularly our fluffy white one, Silas, since he'd been trained to chase rabbits of similar aesthetic but it turns out all the cats just bullied him. The latest addition to our home last December, Frankie, was the latest to do so by spreading out on Anubis' bed until the dog started to cry and we had to move the cat. 

Anubis was a sprinter. Take him to the dog beach, he'd run up the beach and back at full velocity but that was it. I'd try to take him for a 30 minute walk around the block and he'd be half passed out before we even got back and need a full day to recover. I think Anubis spent more time curled up on his bed or sleeping than any of our cats ever did. 

Unless there was food around, that is. Anubis would eat anything and everything, especially if he knew he wasn't supposed to. When it wasn't something he wasn't allowed he became a ninja, even on the flooring he was afraid of. There have been many, many occasions when I've been eating or cooking and out of seemingly nowhere a snout will appear over my shoulder. 

One night my friend and I made some particularly ridiculous 'Hypo cupcakes', inspired by the hypno cake we saw on pintrest that was effectively a marbled rainbow cake comprised of vibrant colours. We baked a batch of six, iced them and went off to get something from outside. My mum was sitting nearby at the dining table with my stepdad mid-conversation and Anubis was on his bed in the family room. When we came back Anubis was still on his bed, my mum was still in the same place talking and there were only five cupcakes but no one saw or heard a thing. The only evidence we ever found of the missing cupcake was a tiny scrap of the baking paper in Anubis' bed, no one saw or heard him take it. 

A separate time saw him dive in like a vulture to consume an entire chocolate cake my mum dropped on the floor before she could even react. 

He was smart, stealthy, gluttonous and lazy and over the years he became such an integral part of our family. He even brought new zest for life for my dog, Rueben, who I lost about 4 years ago now, and had been depressed after losing his mother, Holly, about 3 years prior Anubis' arrival. 

Unfortunately, Anubis had been partially responsible for Rueben's death at the time. Their rough play had been too much for the older dog and Rueben had died from the shock shortly before I got home and Anubis was depressed for a long time after. If you ever showed him Rueben's collar or asked him 'where's Rueben', he hid his face. 

When I first moved away he was upset with me. He wouldn't look at me and sulked when I was around. Eventually he was ok and I always spent lots of time with him whenever I was in Perth to visit. Often taking photos for when I was back home in Sydney. 

Yesterday Anubis, about to turn 10 years old now, had an accident and severely fractured his leg. He went in for surgery today but what we didn't know was that he'd developed terminal bone cancer. His legs, always gangly and long, were always strong so whilst he was jumping around like he always did might have hurt him it shouldn't have snapped the bone so easily. 

What should have been a relatively standard surgery never occurred because the cancer was too far gone. The bones would have taken a long time to heal, if ever, and he'd have suffered likely with only a few months left. My mum had no choice but to make the decision to put him down or see him suffer. Its been a very emotional day for all of us. 

I'm no stranger to losing a pet. In almost 30 years I can name almost every single one that I've lost (except the fish). There was Claude, Nero, Meisha, Nessie, Peter, Holly, Rueben, Salem, and now Anubis. Cats, dogs, rabbits. Pets are family and it never gets easier. If I could I'd never have to lose any of them. I've loved them all. 

It still hurts today though, and I hate that I wasn't there to say goodbye. 

RIP Anubis

2009 - 2019

Sam xox