Dog leaves Harold for a schoolgirl

Dog leaves Harold for a schoolgirl is a pivotal event in Harold Fry's pilgrimage, marking the moment when his last companion abandons him at a bus shelter in Hexham, choosing instead to follow a young schoolgirl onto a bus. This loss strips Harold of his final source of comfort and precipitates his deepest crisis of faith, as he begins to question whether his journey has any meaning at all. The event occurs during the final, most harrowing stretch of Harold's walk toward St Bernadine's Hospice, and it functions as both a devastating personal blow and a symbolic culmination of the isolation that has been building throughout his journey.

The Context of Loss

By the time Harold reaches the outskirts of Hexham, he has already been walking for weeks, and the journey has taken a profound toll on his body and mind. His yachting shoes are in tatters, the soles thin as fabric, and he has bound them with the roll of blue duct tape that Martina gave him, wrapping it round and round and round, crossing underneath the foot and up over towards the ankle, so that the shoe has become a part of himself. He has lost all sense of time, and whether or not he has eaten, and he no longer takes any interest in what he sees, or the difference between things, or their names. A tree is no more than another of the things he passes. The dog has been his constant companion through this ordeal, sitting at his feet with concern whenever he pauses for breath, and it has stopped straying from his path and stopped bringing stones. The animal's presence has been a small but vital anchor, a living connection to the world that Harold feels he has failed to leave any impression upon.

The Crisis of Faith

In the hours before the dog's departure, Harold's flat, subdued feeling has grown into something more violently accusing. The more he dwells on how little he matters, the more he believes it. He asks himself who he is to go to Queenie, and what it would matter if Rich Lion took his place. He thinks of his journey so far, the people he has met, the places he has seen, the skies beneath which he has slept, and he can no longer see himself among them. The roads he has walked are full of different cars, and the people he has passed are passing other people. His footprints, however firm, would be washed away by rain. It is as if he has never been in any of the places he has been, or met the strangers he has met. He looks behind, and already there is no trace, no sign, of him anywhere. He concludes that he has made a mess of being a husband, father and friend, and even a mess of being a son. It is not simply that he has betrayed Queenie, and that his parents did not want him, but rather that he passes through life and leaves no impression. He means nothing.

The Discovery and the Bus Shelter

Harold goes to cross the A696 in the direction of Cambo, and realizes the dog is missing. He feels a shower of panic, wondering if the animal has been hurt and he has not noticed. He retraces his steps, scouring the road and the gutters, but there is no sign of it. He tries to remember when he last registered its presence, and cannot believe he has failed even in this simple task. He waves down cars, asking drivers if they have seen a dog, a little tufty thing about so high, but they speed away, as if he were dangerous. Catching sight of him, a small child clings to her car seat and sobs. There is nothing for it but to retrace his steps towards Hexham. He finds Dog sitting in a bus shelter, at the feet of a young girl. She is wearing a school uniform, and has long dark hair that is almost the autumn colour of its fur, and a kind look about her. Stooping to pat its head, she picks up something by her shoe, and stows it in her pocket. Harold is about to call out, 'Don't throw the stone,' but he does not. The girl's bus draws up beside her and she gets on it, followed by the dog. It looks as if it knows where it is heading. He watches the bus drive away, with the girl and the dog on it. They do not look back or wave.

The Aftermath and the Unraveling

Harold reasons that the animal has made its own decision. It has chosen to walk with him for a while, and then it has chosen to stop, and walk instead with the young girl. Life is like that. But in losing his last companion, Harold feels a further layer of skin has been ripped from him. He is afraid of what will come next, and knows he has not got it in him to take much more. The hours turn into days and he cannot remember how one is different from another. He begins to make mistakes, setting off with the first cracks of dawn, compelled to go towards the emerging light, regardless of whether or not it lies in the direction of Berwick. He argues with his compass when it points south, convinced it is broken, or worse, that it is deliberately lying. Sometimes he walks ten miles only to discover he has travelled a large looping circle, and is back almost where he has started. He takes diversions to follow a shout or a figure, but they lead to nothing. Near the crest of a hill, he sees a woman calling for help, but after an hour of climbing he finds she is a dead tree trunk. He frequently loses his footing and stumbles, and when his glasses snap a second time, he leaves them behind. Deprived of rest and hope, other things begin to slip from him. He finds he cannot remember David's face. He can picture his dark eyes, and the way they stared, but when he tries to conjure up the fringe that flopped over them, he can see only Queenie's tight curls. It is like fixing a jigsaw together in his mind, but without all the pieces. He loses all sense of time, and whether or not he has eaten, and he no longer cares. Sometimes the only words in his head are the ones that ask why he is still walking when it would make no difference. A lone crow passes overhead, its black wings beating the air like a whip, and fills him with such inhuman fear that he is driven onward.

The Journey's End

Despite the crisis, Harold continues. On, on, on. These are the only words, and he does not know whether they are ones he cries out, or words in his mind, or whether someone else is calling them. He thinks he might be the only person left in the world, no more than a body that houses a walk, blue-duct-tape feet and Berwick-upon-Tweed. At three thirty on a Tuesday afternoon he smells salt in the wind, and an hour later he reaches the brow of a hill and sees a town lying before him, fringed by the endless gap that is the sea. He approaches the pinkish-grey town walls but no one stops, or looks twice, or offers him food. Eighty-seven days after setting out to post a letter, Harold Fry arrives at the gates of St Bernadine's Hospice. Including mistakes and diversions, his journey has amounted to six hundred and twenty-seven miles. The building before him is modern and unassuming, flanked by trembling trees, with an old-fashioned street lamp close to the main entrance and a sign pointing to a car park. Several bodies sit in deck chairs on the lawn, like clothes set out to dry, and a seagull wheels and barks overhead. Harold walks the soft curve of the tarmac drive and lifts his finger to the buzzer, wishing the moment would hold itself, like an image cut out of time, his dark finger against the white button, the sun on his shoulders, the seagull laughing. His journey is over.