Diary of a Dog-walker

by Edward Stourton

  But beyond that, everything is speculative. Do those deep brown eyes really speak of a certain soulful melancholy? Do the arched eyebrows reflect a baffled concern about the ineffable mysteries of the human world? How does a dog ‘think’ anyway, and would he recognize an ineffable mystery if he saw one? All these questions are unanswerable, and in trying to imagine a ‘voice’ for Kudu, I found myself constantly coming up against his essential ‘otherness’. If I pushed things too far, I realized, I really would turn him into a two-dimensional literary device.

  When the piece was published the Telegraph reversed our mug shots, giving him pride of place at the top of the page and consigning me to the foot of the column.

  The world beyond this kitchen is so very cruel

  19 September 2009

  I have – so everyone tells me – expressive eyes, and have found that widening them works wonders with humans; I confess I have in the past exploited their power to solicit a treat or two. But my Master, the wisest of men, has noticed that real melancholy now lies behind them, and he asked me to reflect here on the shame that has come upon my country.

  Usually, flopped on the kitchen floor in dreamy anticipation of a plate that needs licking, I enjoy the hour or so of early-evening gossip between Master and Mistress. But last week she brought shocking news from something called the Dogs Trust. There has, it seems, been a record rise in the number of my species being abandoned: 107,228 of us (what can such a monstrous number mean?) were rescued from the streets of this so-called dog-loving nation. She pointed to a headline: ‘Big Leap in Stray Dogs as Recession Bites’. That human appetite for doggy puns be damned! The story told how nearly ten thousand homeless dogs were – in that chilling euphemism – ‘put to sleep’.

  Once, this would not have worried me: when you are young there are simply too many bottoms to sniff. But my journey to the park takes me past Battersea Dogs Home, and the harrowing howls telling tales of homelessness have become almost too much to bear. Sometimes I meet inmates being walked in the park; one or two are angry – part of the puzzle of life is that some dogs are just not very nice people – but more often they are simply bowed by their misfortunes.

  The park brings the gap between rich and poor sharply into focus. All my friends are back with the autumn, greeting one another with Australian kisses (like French ones, but down under) and telling tales of exotic holidays – there are two terriers who spent a seaside summer on the Isle of Wight, and one flirty young bitch with a collar-bell claims to have flown to Tuscany. I live less glamorously than the Chelsea Set and, of course, have my complaints: why, for example, does my Master root out my carefully hidden bones just as they reach delicious maggoty maturity? But we are all so much more fortunate than our abandoned brothers and sisters.

  We are, of course, all pedigree and, yes, I do take pride in the fifteen Field Champions I count among my great-great-grandparents; my mother, Madeline of Meadowlea (her Kennel Club name), was born of the champion Springer Steadroc Sker and Miss Tickle, no less. But now that my social conscience has been pricked, I wonder a little about this obsession with breeding. There is a Battersea regular whose mistress introduces him, with a flamboyant French flourish, as a ‘Boar-hunting Grand Basset Griffon Vendéen’; he is a nice enough fellow, but how many boars are there in Battersea? And my Master recently brought news to dinner of a Labour peer buying a ‘Madagascan Coton de Tuléar’. Can we really tolerate such frivolity on the Left?

  All sorts of distressing news drifts down from the kitchen table: thousands of dogs have been clubbed to death in China because of a rabies scare, and a Danish MP wants to cull every one of his country’s mongrels to eliminate aggressive genes from the pool. How can the world beyond this comfortable kitchen be such a cruel place? There was a time when we could look down on these brute foreigners and their dog-phobic ways, but I wonder if that is really still so?

  Perhaps I should drop the ‘English’ from my name and become simply a ‘Springer Spaniel’.

  I shall not often have a public voice of this kind. May I add a personal message? I understand from my Master that my sister Mielie is not well, having eaten a plate of sausages with the cocktail sticks still attached; I wish her a full recovery.

  3

  The Humanness of Dogs

  A sixth sense, or just howling at the moon?

  3 October 2009

  I HAVE RECEIVED AN affecting letter from a reader, which I quote, minus a couple of identifying details, with his permission.

  In 1984 my first wife was dying in hospital, and my son and I took it in turns to spend time with her. Our dog, a super Welsh Springer Spaniel, would not sleep in the kitchen while she was away, he insisted on sleeping in either my bedroom or my son’s. My wife died when I was at the hospital. At 3.30 a.m., I phoned my son. ‘I know Mum died at three o’clock,’ he said. ‘Basil got up and howled.’ It was the only time in his fourteen years he did so.

  My correspondent wondered whether other readers might offer stories of canine ‘sixth sense’.

  I take Hamlet’s view: ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth,’ he tells his rationalist friend Horatio after the Ghost appears, ‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ An openness to such stories seems saner than a Dawkins-esque broadside against science-denying sentimentality. But researching the relevant literature has tilted me in the Dawkins direction: this story is from an American collection called Angel Dogs.

  The narrator, a retired marine, is walking his Jack Russell in a cemetery. I am afraid he has called the dog Corporal J.R. and given him his service number, USMC 21264539. We soon know that he might be a tiresome walking companion: ‘I always carry water, collapsible water bowl for J.R., J.R.’s first aid kit, a Swiss Army knife, a snack for both of us, my bird identification manual and my trusty Nikon 7x5 binoculars.’

  J.R. suddenly begins digging frantically, and our hero notices that the dog is uncovering a military grave. He helps shift the debris and … ‘My heart pounded as I read the inscription: “Jack A Russell, Texas, Cpl, Signals Corps, 1928–1952”.’ Our man describes how ‘Corporal J.R. laid his head on the headstone of Corporal Jack Russell, a soldier with his own name who was killed in the Korean War,’ and declares, ‘I continue to marvel how a little dog paid honour and respect by bringing new meaning to the belief that no soldier should ever be forgotten.’

  There is also a tale of an Arizona man whose religious confidence is restored when Temujin, his Mastiff, leads him to an abandoned baseball cap carrying the legend ‘No Fear’. I have lived in America and am a diehard Yankophile, but really!

  The commonest evidence of dog sixth sense is finding an eager animal waiting in the hall when we turn the door key. Kudu does this act terribly well, thumping his tail and, like the gun-dog he was bred to be, bringing a shoe as a welcome (he has a good soft mouth and, an incident involving a pair of Jimmy Choos belonging to a son’s girlfriend notwithstanding, the footwear usually survives).

  Here I definitely favour the rationalist explanation. I work at home, and often see the build-up to this performance behind the scenes: Kudu is just as excited when the postman approaches the front steps as he is in the moments before one of the family walks in. There is some science around about this, and it suggests that dogs have extremely sensitive hearing – a faculty that may also explain the well-attested cases (the first was recorded in Greece in the fourth century BC) of dogs becoming agitated before earthquakes.

  And then, as I mulled on the evidence for this column, my eighty-seven-year-old father-in-law came to stay, recovering from an infection. He was still weak, and had a couple of bad shivering bouts – Kudu immediately went into a severe fit of sympathetic whimpering. When the invalid retired to bed, the Dog accompanied him and spent hours keeping a watchful eye on his condition until he felt well.

  A sixth sense or acute sensitivity? It does not really matter what you call it, does it?

  This column provoked one of the most intriguing and amusing reader respons
es I have had. Checking the Telegraph Opinion website after the piece was published, I found the following story from someone called Craig:

  Some years ago, my friend had a black Labrador. He lived in a downstairs maisonette in London. It was an ordinary dog – friendly, well behaved and not particularly remarkable although obviously intelligent. My friend was divorced and lonely and the dog and I were his only real friends.

  On this particular occasion, we were sitting in his lounge and discussing women. He said that he had given up on dating agencies and lonely hearts ads and couldn’t meet anyone. The dog was in the room and I suppose ‘listening’. I remember the dog was there because he always sat at my feet when I came around. After a while, my friend said to the dog: ‘Merlin, find me a perfect woman, will you?’ and we both laughed. Minutes later we were in his kitchenette making a coffee when he heard Merlin barking really loudly in the front garden which he had accessed from the backyard. ‘Probably someone at the door,’ I said.

  We went to the front door and opened it and Merlin was standing next to a truly stunning-looking woman and barking. She said, ‘Hallo, is this your dog? He just jumped into my car as I opened the door to go … I have been visiting someone a few doors along!’ We stood there staring and dumbfounded.

  My friend Chris married Stunning-Sarah eighteen months later.

  I would love to know whether Chris and Stunning-Sarah lived happily ever after, and whether the magician-dog Merlin cast any more such happy spells on his master’s life. Craig (or Chris or Stunning-Sarah), if by some extraordinary piece of serendipity, you chance to read this, do please get in touch.

  Marshall McLuhan, the high-priest of modern media theory, famously described television as a ‘cool medium’ and radio as a ‘hot’ one. When I worked on television I found that the screen put a certain distance between me and the audience: people sometimes treated me as if I was not quite real. Radio is very different: listeners feel a much more intimate connection with the voices that come into their bedrooms and bathrooms, and they are often surprisingly uninhibited about berating or praising you for what they have heard you say.

  But a column is, I have discovered, even ‘hotter’: readers take what you write very personally indeed. I got into terrible trouble for the column on Covehithe (see here): my flippant comment about allowing the ‘casual canine desecration of several ancient gravestones’ did not go down at all well, and a local landowner tracked me down through my agents with a furious letter. I had to write her an abject apology, and it was upsetting because I really had thought Covehithe to be a magical place. It was a good lesson in the importance of weighing words carefully.

  For the most part, however, I have found the sense of a very direct relationship with readers a rewarding one. Most of the feedback reached me through the paper’s website, where readers are encouraged to express their views. The blogosphere is a wild and violent place: people seem to feel released from the sort of conventions that would inhibit them if they were writing for the printed page (I was once described as ‘a symptom of the moral degeneracy of modern Britain’ in the blog of a writer who would certainly never have said such a thing in her national newspaper column). But dog-owners are, by and large, gentle folk, and there has been remarkably little abuse.

  Some people simply have odd or eccentric dog jokes they want to share with a wider audience. Thus this: ‘My uncle had a dog named Bob. This was so spooky since everyone knows that normally Bob’s your uncle! In fact my uncle was named Arthur.’

  And there has been a fairly steady flow of good dog stories, some of which I incorporated into columns, some of which I just chuckled over, or shared with my family. The column became a conversation.

  Know thy President by his choice of pooch

  17 October 2009

  It is a journalistic commonplace that ‘dog bites man’ is not a story, but ‘man bites dog’ absolutely is. But try this: dog bites ex-president as punishment for moving him out of a palace with one of the most desirable gardens in the world.

  The facts are these. Jacques Chirac’s miniature Maltese Terrier, Sumo, had to be treated for mental health problems after leaving the Élysée and its glorious stretch of lawn. The Chiracs now live in a huge flat, courtesy of the late Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri (imagine what this newspaper would make of a similar arrangement for one of our ex-prime ministers), but this is apparently not grand enough for Sumo. He began ‘routinely’ assaulting his master, and recently savaged Monsieur Chirac’s stomach, causing great distress to Madame Chirac: ‘I was extremely frightened by all the blood,’ she said. ‘It’s awful, those little teeth!’ Sumo has been sent to the country in disgrace.

  For a dog columnist with an interest in international politics and a spell as Paris correspondent on the CV, this is as close as it gets to the perfect news story. Politics, the French culture of public life and the impenetrable oddness of the French doggy mind, all these things suggest themselves for comment. What riches for rumination during the walks on this week’s glorious autumn days! And I think that Kudu and I have reached a similar conclusion – although we approach the matter from different angles.

  My instinct is that to mine a moral from the story we should begin with the politics. And here is a spooky thing: George W. Bush’s Scottish Terrier Barney became a biter during his last days at the White House too. Could it be that unsuccessful presidents make bad dog-owners?

  All dog-owners know that their hounds can pick up their moods, and Barney’s victims were members of the press corps. A Reuters correspondent tried to give him a pat a few days after the Republican defeat in the presidential election, and Barney gave him a nasty nip in the finger. Is it too fanciful to suggest that he was fulfilling his master’s private fantasies?

  Kudu looks at the dog first and the master second, and I have a shrewd idea that the Sumo and Barney stories would confirm one of his prejudices: I realize this is by far and away the most controversial statement this column has ever ventured, but I am beginning to suspect he disapproves of small dogs.

  We passed a woman on Clapham Common carrying a diminutive pooch like a baby in a papoose. Kudu did not growl – he has extremely good manners – but he fired a look of bemused disdain at the thing. What, after all, is the point of a walk if you cannot run constantly in circles on the important business of picking up smells, pausing only to roll in fox poo from time to time?

  Kudu may be on to something here: is a very small dog appropriate for a man in power? Vladimir Putin apparently thought not, and once told George Bush that a Scottish Terrier was beneath the dignity of a world leader, boasting that his own Labrador was ‘bigger, tougher, stronger, faster, meaner’ than the American First Dog. This took place before Barney’s savaging of the White House press corps, of course, and you can see where Mr Putin is coming from. But what sort of a politician thinks being mean is something to take pride in?

  Whether you look at the dog first or the man first, the principle is the same: you will know one if you know the other. And while party politics is not the business of the column, that is not a bad way to judge a leader.

  Oh, and I have a sense of where David Cameron stands on the dog thing, because of something he let slip in the studio. But I am keeping schtum.

  Cameron told me – I think during Thought for the Day – that he had once owned a Springer. At the time I worried that revealing this fact might have listeners pricking up their ears for any hint of a Tory bias in my broadcasting. He also warned me that they get smelly when they are old; we have not got there yet, but I suspect he is probably right.

  Join a US Howl-oween Parade? No thanks …

  31 October 2009

  Restless on the Amtrak from Washington to New York, I made my way to the dining car. We were skimming the open reaches of water along the Delaware coast and, as I admired the handsome houses with their lawns down to moorings on the sound, I fell in with a couple of Wall Street types heading home.

  The collars were open, the s
ilk ties at half-mast, the tailored suits a little rumpled, and they were lining up the beers. We talked escrow, liquidity and leverage. I shook my head sympathetically about the search for a zero-plus position, wondered how long the numbers would stack and went over the wall with them on a couple of deals. It was like being in a Spielberg movie – as America so often is: one of these guys, I thought, will get home and find an alien in the tool shed.

  The man in Institutional Risk Analysis – ho-ho, I hear you say – suddenly turned sentimental: ‘Can’t wait to get back to Westchester,’ he said, ‘and have a good romp with my Westie in the yard!’ He and his fellow Master of the Universe then talked dogs all the way through New Jersey with as much enthusiasm as they had shown for high finance.

  Travelling the United States with a dog columnist’s eye for the first time, I was struck by the way its dog cultures vary. Washington is an easy-going place with a southern culture of politesse: its dogs conform perfectly to its ethos, appearing for a leisurely amble along its wide, tree-lined streets twice daily, never pulling on their leads (unlike a certain person I could mention) and greeting one another with polite reserve. Most of the dogs I encountered in New York, by contrast, were like my hotel room there: tiny and ludicrously ‘designer’. And in the über-hip Californian workspace of the Google-plex (where, in a perfect Californian moment, I witnessed one of the Internet giant’s legendary founders roller-blading through Reception carrying his lunch) they have an open dog policy – the hounds mingle happily with the geeks ‘writing code’.

  America knocks our claim to be a dog-loving country into the proverbial cocked hat.

  In the United States, if you want a partner who shares your doggy enthusiasms, there is a special singles agency (www.datemypet.com, if you are interested). If it is dog news you are after, the New York Post has a weekly page – with features on such matters as Canine Acupuncture. Modern Dog magazine can tell you where to find the Top Ten Dog Blogs. And if you are facing doggy bereavement, how about a ‘memorial pillow’, which allows you to ‘conceal the ashes in a discreet interior pouch so you can hold them close’?