In Good Company: Dog Days
...My dog is acutely intelligent. When husband and me attempted an experiment, my husband pretended to attack me to test dog’s reaction, our mongrel rolled over and laughed...
But when Enid Blackburn wrote those words her pet was entering into his dotage.
My dog's days are definitely numbered. Coming up to fifteen years next birthday, he and our sixteen-year-old have grown up together.
They gambolled alongside each other as babies, now they have both reached the same growling stage, snapping their jaws angrily when anyone disturbs them, but sadly he will not grow out of it. No doubt about it – one day soon he will have to go.
He cannot hold his liquor anymore; his incontinence is driving me mad. When a tree is not available he’ll make do with one by any other name, such as a chair, table leg, etc. He once disgraced himself by performing a leg-up on my husband’s trousers, while he was still inside them. The times I’ve pleaded with him to let me wash his mouldy old gardening pants! When the dog mistook him for a clump of rubbish, I could not have put it better myself.
Sometimes he limps and wobbles his stiff joints so much as he tries to stand up, he looks a hundred years old. Yet when the wind is in the right direction, he can detect the waft from any seasonal bitch within a mile, with miraculously rejuvenating effects.
I never wanted a black mongrel with non-matching ears and tail and two sandy paws, which he likes to cross over and place in the hearth on cold evenings. I fancied something posh, like a Pekinese. But he looked so cute and cuddly as a pup and the price was exactly right, ‘Free to good home.’
In return for free bed and board the last fifteen years, the perpetual ear-caressing from 7pm onwards, I don’t kid myself he feels any loyalty towards me. Of course when I’m eating a juicy steak he adores me. He would follow me anywhere – until it was finished. Unlike the majority of pet-pamperers I do not cherish the illusion that he loves me in return.
My dog is acutely intelligent. When husband and me attempted an experiment, my husband pretended to attack me to test dog’s reaction, our mongrel rolled over and laughed.
Our canine’s coat, glossy as a seal, has only ever been bathed, apart from canal dips, three times. The last because he was lousy and would insist in crouching in uncouth positions of exposure in front of Reggie Bosanquet; feverishly raking the back of his neck with his hind leg, or he would aggressively attempt to nibble his unreachables when visitors were present.
These embarrassing posturings would be accompanied by a syncopated stomping from his non-scratching foot, a stimulating source of amusement when we all joined in one night.
With the aid of some smelly carbolic-like substance from a pet shop I eventually put a stop to this entertainment. Most of his ‘cures’ came from pet shops or my pill bottles. He hasn’t cost us much in vet bills. I hope my teeth are as strong as his are when I reach the same stage. I put his healthy condition down to regularly gnawing on marrow bones.
About the time we were all being urged to travel on an egg, he went a step further and acquired the taste for chicken – alive preferably. He wasn’t greedy, one a day would do. Around the seventh day we followed the advice of a farmer friend and tied two chicken corpses around his neck then fastened him up outside. ‘You’ll see,’ our friend promised, ‘Leave him there till they rot – he’ll never touch another.’
Early next day we visited the doghouse. He had already breakfasted, there was a pile of feathers and four feet left hanging round his neck. But we cured him – we sold the rest of the hens.
The day will surely dawn when someone will have to shh! You know what. But who will nuzzle his silky brow under my hand, whose hot, rough tongue will lick away the midnight movie tears, whose late night stomach gurgles will brighten up Match of the Day, when he’s . . . gone? If only he was suffer-ing, passing sentence would be easy. Wouldn’t it?
