Toby

Toby, the family’s black whippet, occupies a small but sharply defined place in John McGahern’s childhood memories: he is at once an unruly farm dog, a disappointing hunting companion, and the focus of a child’s intense attachment. His escape from an attempt to drown him briefly turns loss into joy, before his second removal makes that reprieve painfully short.

Identity and Place in the Household

Toby belongs to the everyday life of the family farm, where dogs are part of both work and companionship. John McGahern takes him on Sunday hunts with the Keegans, and later describes him in the cowhouse, returning to the child who has hidden there to grieve. These episodes give Toby a presence beyond that of a working animal: the child’s response to his absence and return makes their bond central to his story.

Hunting and the Winter Landscape

In the hard winter, Toby proves better at swallowing mice than at running down hares and rabbits. The Keegans nevertheless consider him useful in the hunt, saying he can turn the animals back into the path of their big fawn. The arrangement places Toby within a communal rural practice, but also makes the gap between the work expected of him and his actual abilities part of his portrait.

The hunting eventually stops when the frozen ground becomes too hard and the nails of both the greyhound and the whippet are torn and bleeding. Toby’s brief hunting life is thus shaped not only by his limitations but by the conditions of the land: the winter that makes the ground suitable for pursuit also injures the dogs and brings the activity to an end.

The Eggs and the Attempt to Remove Him

Later, the brown hens stop laying, and Toby is discovered swallowing their eggs as he had swallowed mice. The crisis becomes more serious when Breedge tries to take eggs from him and he bites her hand; she also says he attacked her face. John McGahern promises to tie Toby up and take him everywhere on a lead, but the promise cannot prevent the decision that Toby has to go.

The workmen take Toby away in the evening. Distraught, John McGahern hides among the cows to cry against their warm necks. Toby then reappears, wet and shivering, leaping into the cowhouse, putting his paws on the child’s shoulders, and licking his face. The workmen had put him in a sack weighted with stones, tied its mouth, and thrown it into the deep part of Garradice off the avenue of trees leading to Ollerton’s. As the sack sank, Toby chewed his way out and swam ashore, reaching home before the men did.

Reprieve, Loss, and Narrative Significance

Toby’s escape earns only a few days’ reprieve. When the workmen take him away a second time, John McGahern stands dry-eyed between the cows for a long time, praying for another miracle. Toby does not come back. The account does not describe what happens to him after that removal, but the contrast between his first, astonishing return and his final absence gives the episode its force.

Toby’s story turns on a reversal the child can scarcely control: an animal condemned to be taken away survives, returns in a rush of physical affection, and is then lost again. The details remain concrete—the sack, the lake, the wet dog’s paws on the child’s shoulders—and make the bond visible without separating it from the farm’s practical demands. Toby’s brief return sustains hope; his failure to return the second time marks the boundary of that hope.