'It’s instinctive for Bertie to make as much physical contact with me as possible, to use his body as a buffer between me and the rest of the world'
My dog Bert can smell depression. I’m convinced of it. I live with bipolar disorder and still quite regularly plod through depressive episodes, despite being pleasantly medicated. I don’t
my side, with his snout on my shoulder and his hot breath in my ear. He will stay there until I move.Some days, when I’m depressed, I just sleep. It’s an escape for me; a way of slipping out of my existence for a time.It’s a heavy sleep, a sleep I can taste on my tongue when I wake. Passing out for hours can be disorienting. So it is a comfort to wake beside a small mammal, one whose pink chest rises and falls as he inhales and exhales through wet nostrils.
I opted for the latter with enormous dread, knowing from experience how ghastly that can be. Before I could swap one smooth red pill for two new white ones, I had to taper down my dose gradually and then come off all medication for a few weeks. So that the drugs didn’t clash in my system, I had'The warmth of his stout body beside me says that being awake is going to be okay'.
Then I started taking the new pills, but it took more than a month for them to start making a difference.
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