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••• CHAPTER TWO •••

No Going Back

‘More powerful than the will to win is the courage to begin’

Ecuador, November 2014

Getting into the boats for the final leg of the race, I was reminded yet again what a compact and uncomfortable thing the kayak is. Even if it isn’t pitch dark, as it was this time, it is always a challenge to assemble our kit, pack it in the boat and get ourselves balanced and ready to push off. But this time I wanted the whole process to go on for ever. The last thing I wanted to do was get into the boats and push off.

I knew that behind me, standing a little way back, the dog was watching as we made our preparations. After nearly two days with him I knew that he was exhausted and weakened by the terrible wounds on his back, and I strongly suspected that he had used up all his strength on the short swim that he’d had to make crossing the river a few hours earlier.

Slowly, still trying to eke out the time, I helped Staffan put the boats in the water. Pitch dark as it was, I knew that no one could see how I was biting my lip to stop myself blubbing out loud. This is it, I told myself, he can’t follow us now. It’ll be too much. He’ll just go back to wherever he came from, and it will all be over. I’ll never see him again.

Trying hard to focus on the job in hand, I got into the boat behind my teammate Simon. Pushing off from the bank, I made myself put my paddle in the water in synch with Simon’s. Think about the race, I tried to tell myself. Think about how we must make up time on this section, how important it is that we push on, how being too slow on this section will finish our hopes of a good result for ever. Think, I told myself sternly, about how you’ve spent the whole year working up to this moment, and how nothing – nothing – must get in the way of making up time on this stretch.

Gripping the paddle tightly, I pushed hard against the water and our boat moved forward quickly and surely. Two more strokes and we left the bank well behind us. But still my ears strained against the noises of the water and the crowd on the bank.

And then I heard it. A single loud splash from just at the point on the bank where the dog had been standing. I allowed myself to look back. Sure enough I could make out the dog’s head as he paddled hard and determinedly towards our boat.

I turned round, knowing that we needed to push on quickly to catch up with the others. I gave another pull on the paddle and let myself look round again. The dog was now further behind, but, seeing the distance between us increase, he seemed to make a Herculean effort and speeded up.

My next stroke was not so strong. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was trying to give him a chance. Looking round again, though, I could see that the last effort had been nearly too much for him and he was falling behind again.

In that second, I realised that this was one of the most important moments of my life. If I did this thing, I told myself, I must do it properly. This was for ever. This was a moment in time that would always matter – for all my life I would stand by whatever happened in the next few minutes.

‘Stop,’ I said to Simon. He stopped paddling and looked round, puzzled. But I was looking behind us. In those few moments, the dog had pushed forward hard, as if he knew that this was it, this was his chance, and his life depended on what happened next.

Gradually he got closer, his head falling a little further under the water with every stroke. Then he was only inches away from the side of the boat. I leaned over. Putting my arms round the freezing, wet dog, and using all my strength I pulled him up into the boat with me.

This is it, I thought to myself. This is it for life.

Örnsköldsvik, Christmas 2015

As I jogged gently down one of my favourite hills above our house, I could see Arthur trotting in and out of the shrubs either side of the rocky path. It seemed like he was on a mission, but I rather suspected that he was just taking in the odd smell before he got to the main event – the lake at the bottom of the path.

I watched him speed up as we got closer to the water. He’d been out and about for a couple of hours, and I guessed he’d got quite hot. He ran full tilt into the edge of the lake and started to splash about in the icy water with what I could swear was a smile on his face. Now that he was soaking wet and bouncing around like a puppy, you could see how lithe and energetic he was. His love of water was now a far cry from those life-or-death struggles in the Ecuadorian river.

Sitting down on a large nearby stone, I settled down to watch him. It was incredible to think that he had lived so much of his life in a hot and humid climate. He had been part of the family for nine months now and he’d experienced most of the weather that my part of the Swedish High Coast could throw at him. And he seemed to like the cold most of all. Although he was yet to see the really deep snow that we tended to have at the very beginning of the year, he’d had plenty of freezing weather to get him used to the idea of ice and snow.

He seemed to revel in the cold December mornings, when we could all see our breath and had to dress ourselves in layers of warm clothes. On days like that, as soon as he was let off the lead he’d be off in a blaze of white on white – like the flash of a camera, everything a bright reflection of white fur and snow except for his flying orange ears.

Sometimes, in his eagerness to get outside, and especially if he thought there was the slightest danger of him being left behind (there wasn’t, of course), he would hurtle out of the front door and be suddenly taken by surprise by the slipperiness of the ice. He’d be moving so fast that at least one paw at a time would skid and slide under him. It was, I would think to myself, lucky he had four legs, or he’d be falling over all the time.

But soon it was time for us to head home. Christmas was only three days away – Arthur’s first, and Thor’s first too – and there was a lot to do.

When we got back, Helena was in the sitting room with Philippa and Thor. They were gathered round our first ever advent calendar; two stuffed toys called Mr Moose and Mr Deer, who were both dressed with special little Christmas gifts. ‘Only three more days to go – there, look at them.’ Helena was guiding Philippa’s hand to the last remaining presents. Chuckling with delight, Philippa opened a gold parcel.

I watched them all, mother and daughter holding each other close and talking cheerfully about their favourite present and what games they were going to play, Thor sleeping and Arthur looking on, just content to be with his family.

It was a happy time, but sometimes it was hard to conceal my nagging worry. Brazil had been tough, as tough as any race I can remember, and our results had reflected that with an overall finishing position of ninth in the world.

That had not been good enough for Peak Performance, and just a week before they had announced that they were withdrawing sponsorship from the team. It was a blow. Not an unexpected one, but a blow for all that. We had used their sponsorship and our own money to fund the – substantial – costs of the race, and without a sponsor for future races we were going to have to either think of some way to earn money to pay back the debts, or find new sponsors fast. As a professional athlete I don’t have that many options open to me. Generally speaking, Sweden is a tough place in this respect: if you are a very able athlete you get to go to college and do your sport, and are hugely encouraged to be the best you can. But that’s all you do – you don’t, unlike in the US for instance, complete another degree that you can fall back on when the sports stops. And, in most sports, you tend to have to stop relatively young. That’s why life can be very, very hard for some Swedish athletes after they’ve peaked.

So I knew that January was going to be hard for us, and it also didn’t help that I was nowhere near physically recovered from the Brazil race. It always took me a while to get over a championship race, and I was still weakened by the sleeplessness and exhaustion of those seven days.

Then I looked over at Arthur, lying on his bed with his head on his paws, and thought about the book that we’d been asked to write: the story of Arthur and me. It was wonderful that people wanted to know more about him, and about how we’d found each other, and it was a fantastic distraction to be working on the book and reliving those moments in the jungle.

I looked at Arthur as he concentrated hard on licking his front right paw. In a way, I thought, he was now helping me, just as I’d helped him.

I have never loved Christmas as much as I do now. Being with Helena as we watch Philippa play, and holding Thor close as he sleeps at last after a noisy day, is as close as it can get to heaven. And of course we are only complete when we have Arthur lying in the corner, or sitting on our laps, or licking clean his smart new black Christmas bowls.

Those black bowls had been the subject of much debate. Arthur, perhaps because he is an old soul, doesn’t really do toys. So we knew we’d have to give him a serious present, and what could be more serious than the thing you eat and drink from? We’d found these beautiful black bowls, and decided to give them to him straight away; it didn’t seem fair to make him wait till the actual day.

The next few days seemed to go by in a whirl of activity, not least because interest in us – or, more accurately, Arthur – seemed to be as great as ever. All the Swedish media seemed to want a shot of Arthur and me, Arthur and the children, Arthur and Helena . . . and, above all, Arthur running about in the cold fresh air of Sweden. That was fine by us, because after all it was the interest of all his fans worldwide that had got us the help I had needed to bring him to Sweden in the first place. If there hadn’t been thousands of ‘likes’ on social media, and masses of TV and newspaper interest, who knows if the authorities would have let him make the journey.

So we were happy to have all those photocalls and to give interviews. And thankfully, it snowed. ‘Thankfully’ not just because it gave the photographers their best photo opportunities, but also because it has turned out that Arthur loves the snow. He never misses an opportunity to run about in it, and roll about in it, and then when he’s had enough of that he’ll stick his face full on into the middle of a pile of snow and give it a good hard rub. He’ll emerge from the pile like a sort of snow monster, with all the little bits of snow sticking to his thick fur. The first time he did that Philippa fell about giggling. Not surprising really, and I’m sure Arthur knew we were laughing with him not at him.

After two days of being ‘open to the public’ and all the coverage it generated, it was good to get back to being just the family. And we had a very important family ceremony to perform before we headed off to stay with my mother and father for New Year.

On 20 December, we christened Thor in Själevad’s church, just a few miles down the road from Örnsköldsvik. It’s a lovely church in a lovely setting. In a nationwide poll a few years ago it was voted Sweden’s most beautiful church, and I agree with the nation. It was a solemn occasion and for once, Arthur had to wait outside, but he behaved beautifully, almost as if he knew how important the day was.

We headed off to my parents’ house in Själevad for New Year and more family gatherings – my sister and her family would be there too, so my parents would have a very full house. Unlike Helena’s parents, who live in the middle of farmland with the nearest neighbours a mile or so away, my parents have neighbours quite close by. In the course of what was otherwise a very happy New Year, this became a bit of an issue with Arthur.

I guess if you’re a dog you like to explore any new territory you find yourself in. When Arthur first came to live with us, he looked around the house for a few minutes, decided that this was where he had always been meant to live and immediately settled down into the bed we’d bought for him. (Helena says this is because the house smelt of me, but I’m sure he also felt it looked comfortable and manageable.) But mostly he didn’t really go off on his own from that point on.

Of course, he does have a way of chasing things sometimes. Mostly cats. So he has been known to rush off suddenly and for no good reason that we can see, but he does always come back. I’m sure he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. A dog’s got to do what a dog’s got to do.

But it isn’t quite so easy when he’s at someone else’s house. At Helena’s family home there’s a wide area of country to explore and chase things in before he meets any neighbours. With my parents’ house it is, as I say, different. There are some busy roads and also neighbours close by, and you never know what people will think about seeing strange dogs in their garden. So when Arthur went out for a bigger-than-usual explore, disappearing for longer than normal, we worried that he might have disturbed some of the neighbours.

So at the end of our stay we made a special point of going to see them to make sure they hadn’t been upset. It was brilliant that they said, oh no, we loved seeing Arthur, he’s such a lovely dog, we wish he’d come by more often. But still, Helena and I did think that it would be best to see if a dog trainer couldn’t give us some tips for how best to ask Arthur to come back when he wandered off on one of his explores. Not training as such, but just getting him to come when he might be in danger.