by Jean Gill
I looked at the different dogs there – they were all really big apart from one dachshund and that was the first thing I didn’t like. Now, you know perfectly well that I make fun of the little dogs we pass, and call them your breakfast, or a pair of gloves, but that’s not the same as being horrible in public and picking on the one small dog all the time. The trainer was saying things like, ‘You with the furry- teacosy’ and ‘the rugrat’, ‘Are you sure it’s training he needs not platform-soles,’ and ‘if you get him mad does he burst out of his little suit and turn into a green rottweiler.’ He thought it was so funny and all of it was just pretty stupid really.
The woman with the dachshund took it really well, just smiled as if it was good fun, but you could see she felt uncomfortable. Some of the others were embarrassed but nobody had the guts to say anything. That’s me too. I wish I’d said something. How is it that afterwards you always think of these really witty things to say. And the trainer was a big bloke so you could see he thought big blokes had big dogs, the macho thing, and little wimps and women had little dogs. And this dachshund looked at his mistress, so full of love, so keen to obey her, you just knew he could have been the star of the class with any half-decent trainer.
Then there was some of the usual walking round, orders and so on, but none of it done with respect and, I’m not bragging now Izzie, just telling the truth, I could have done it so much better. I’d have given them advice about leads to start with. Can you imagine, a full-grown rottweiler in a harness! Anyway, things got worse. The second rottweiler there was lunging at other dogs, a snap here, a snap there, all in the air because the master had him strung so tight on the lead he was choking and couldn’t actually get near another dog. The trainer said nothing about the way the master was tensing up the dog and just carried on as if everything was fine.
Then, the trainer wanted some work on ignoring other dogs and just walking past so at this stage they were all going to criss-cross. The woman with the dachshund was a bit nervous and asked if it was safe, meaning with the way this one rottweiler was growling at the others. ‘Don’t you worry, love, I don’t think your little killer will cause too much damage,’ was the reply so people laughed and it would have been difficult for anyone not to join in. Then off they went again and, of course, it was bound to happen. The aggressive rott lunged and snapped, pulling his master off-balance, He picked on a German Shepherd that wasn’t going to take it lying down and answered straight back, and the rott just turned furious and took a chunk out of the dachshund’s leg. So there were about four dogs getting into a fight, their masters pulling them off each other, kicking and hitting them, and what do you think the trainer did? Screamed his head off, joined in the kicking and hitting, then – I still can’t believe it – he went round the dogs that were being calmed down by their masters and he clouted each of them across the head! He yelled, ‘Teach your dogs a lesson they won’t forget so they never do that again!’ He didn’t go near the aggressive rott though – told the master he’d need a muzzle on his dog for next time and that he should ‘sort his dog out’. As if that wasn’t what the class was supposed to be for.
The dachshund had already gone – his mistress was rushing him off to the vet. I’m sure he’ll be all right physically but what do you think he’ll feel about other dogs now? And do you know what that bastard called after them? ‘He’s too small to mix with the big boys – you’d best find a puppy class somewhere’. No apology, nothing! And even the people there just carried on – they didn’t do criss-cross again but they used the walking in a circle exercises. The closest I heard to a complaint was one man saying he wasn’t going back because it might suit German Shepherds but his dog was a cross and he didn’t see the need for hitting like that. Well it doesn’t suit German Shepherds either, Izzie, and I’m not going back ever!
I’m just going to have to start all over again. Maybe find a proper Breeder, with a kennels, do a qualification in dog care, become a pet beautician! I just don’t know.’ The walk was over too quickly, as always, and we were heading back to my pen when we bumped into Sourface.
‘I thought you were going to wash out Pen 4!’
‘I felt like a walk,’ replied Elodie.
‘You felt like a walk,’ Sourface mimicked, putting her hands on her hips. ‘Well I feel like a holiday in the Maldives but we don’t get what we feel like, us, we have work to do!’
‘It’s good for the dogs to get out.’ Elodie wasn’t backing down and I could smell the burning resentment in Sourface as it caught fire and turned her face red.
‘Don’t you tell me what’s good for dogs! Coming here with all your fancy airs and graces. Everything you know comes from books! And doesn’t include muck, which is what the real work is my girl. Mucking out. Day in and bloody day out. Not traipsing round the countryside.’ Two bitches, neither backing down, spelled trouble that could be a fight to the death. I nudged the Princess but this was not the day for her to be diplomatic.
‘Well while you’re mucking out, perhaps you can put some flea powder down and get some sprays or flea collars. These dogs you know so much about are scratching themselves to ribbons and all it would take would be a little preventive treatment...’
‘Fleas? Fleas are nothing! Shows how much you know. Don’t suppose you’ve thought of what your friend there is bringing back from your country walks together. If he hasn’t got infested with ticks, he’ll have grass spikelets and when you’re enjoying yourself all week, the ticks’ll give him piroplasmosis and he’ll be ill for the rest of his life – if he lives – and the spikelets will stick in his leg or his back and burrow their way God knows where to infect his throat so he chokes or make a weeping hole in whatever part of his body they end up!’ I started scratching myself. There were really some things I’d rather not know about. Sourface seemed to have won the face-off though. More’s the pity.
‘I’ll brush and check him before I go,’ Elodie said in a tight little voice and motioned me to walk on with her.
But Sourface never knew when to stop. ‘And apart from the time we haven’t got, with dogs coming in and going out every day, where do you think the money’s coming from for all this treatment you want us doing? Just tell me that then?’
Unfortunately, Elodie did. She whirled back round and yelled, ‘If some people emptied their own pockets of what shouldn’t be in them, there’d be plenty of money! Come on, Izzie,’ and without another word she stalked towards my pen, opened the door and entered, ignoring the shout behind her, ‘What do you mean by that? Come back here and explain what you mean!’
‘Oh Izzie, what’s going to become of us?’ Elodie pulled a brush and scissors out of her rucksack and started the long job of working through my knots and tangles. She cut off piles of greasy hair, sighed a lot when she saw the pink itchy patches on my flanks and she sprayed these with something that stung a bit but left a pleasant cool numbness behind. I felt her tears dropping on the patches of bare skin, like the spray but with love added. ‘This was supposed to be special,’ she told me, ‘the first time I’ve groomed you. And the first time you’ve been groomed since God knows how long. The cow! No ticks, no spikelets and that will get rid of the fleas for a bit anyway. I just wish I could help everyone.’ She packed her bag up again, looked wistfully around at all the dogs wagging their tails. ‘See you soon,’ she told us, she told me. Yet another Human promise to one more gullible dog.
*****
‘That looks bad.’ Jack flicked Éclair’s ear back into place and the whippet instinctively raised a back leg to scratch the offending part, already crusted with dried blood from previous scratching.
‘It’s driving me crazy. I can feel these... things... crawling round down inside my ear. If I could bite it off, I would – I’d have a matching pair then.’ No-one laughed. ‘At least the other ear’s safe!’
‘Ear-mites,’ Jack confirmed. ‘Thought as much. I can lick the surface clean but I can’t do anything about what’s going on deeper down...’
He turned to me. ‘Lots of the dogs with floppy ears have black mud in their ears... itchy and irritating but you can live with it. Not with mites though.’
Éclair bashed her head against the chain-link fencing and whimpered, ‘What am I going to do?’
‘When the Human comes, make it obvious to her. Put your head on one side, whine, scratch behind your ear, show you’re in pain. You’ve got to see a vet.’
It was Sourface who came with the food-bucket and we made sure she had a clear view of Éclair. I’d been keeping my distance anyway, my own lop ears itching with imaginary ants at the very idea of catching mites. Éclair followed Jack’s advice to the letter, pawing at Sourface to get her attention, then whining, scratching, shaking her head – the whole works.
Sourface put the bucket down again wearily. ‘There’s always something wrong with you lot, isn’t there. I swear you do it on purpose. I suppose I’d better get Madame Clunier.’ She picked up her bucket and carried on with feeding the dogs in the next pen, and the one after that. We listened to the routine noises of hungry dogs anticipating food, then quietening, in the usual wave of sound that indicated the feeding route round the centre and we waited. Finally we heard the voices of Bigwoman and Sourface coming our way.
‘... too many dogs. Not surprising they’re spreading disease and there’s just nothing I can do to prevent it. New one coming in, that has to be kept on its own, and we’re just running out of space. We’ve left it long enough, Lea, sentimental fools that we are. We’ll just have to make a selection...’ I never would understand people. I would never have believed that Bigwoman and Sourface would Choose some of us to go their homes and be their pets. I wasn’t sure that was necessarily better than being in the pen with the others, however cramped things were, but at least it showed that they cared.
‘I agree completely. And the other thing we’ve left too long is this question of volunteers.’
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about that, too. I’m not sure it’s worth all the paperwork we have to do. When we have an Inspection, that’s all they go on about, ‘insurance for volunteers, suitable training for volunteers, what tasks do they carry out, information about the dogs... on and on.’
‘They take up my time with all their questions and for every job they do, I have to check up on them and put things right. They overfeed the dogs, fuss them too much and wind them up, waste time taking them for walks when they could be washing down the pens. And I don’t trust what they say to other people....’
‘What do you mean?’ Bigwoman’s voice was sharp.
‘I’ve heard confidential things about the centre being spoken about in the street.’
‘Like what?’’
‘All kinds of things. How we canvas for money and who’s made donations. Rumours about the finances here...’
‘Indeed. Well we’ll see about that. Thank you for letting me know, Lea.’
‘You know I will always work for the good of the centre, Madame Clunier.’ Sourface was simpering now as she opened the door into our pen and the two women came in, eyes only for Éclair, who was whining and holding her head askew.
Bigwoman bent over Éclair and, without any roughness, folded back her one ear. She inspected it for a few seconds, then shook her head. Then she looked at the fur alongside Éclair’s flank. She pounced and squashed a flea between her index finger and her thumb, to a little smear of black and red. She shook her head again and sighed.
‘You never can tell, Lea. The way that dog was behaving, you’d have thought there was a problem with her ear but that’s so clean you’d think it had been polished.’ Jack barked frantically and put his paws up, scrabbling against Bigwoman’s legs. ‘No, you get down. So the ear’s fine. And we’re looking at a strong reaction to fleas – you can see she’s been scratching - that’s what the blood is from, and she’s clearly upset. Typical whippet, over-sensitive. Because of what happened to her, I suspect she has some sort of neurotic reaction to have a go at her remaining ear, whatever’s wrong with her. Psychological problems, the poor thing.’
‘She’s got ear-mites, you stupid woman,’ Jack barked frantically, so stressed he started chasing his tail in a circle.
‘At least that’s easily solved,’ Bigwoman continued as she opened the door for Sourface to go through. ‘Flea powder all the dogs in the pen, throw out the blanket, they don’t need it in summer anyway, and buy a flea collar for the whippet, just to make sure. That should sort it out.’
Sourface carried out her orders as efficiently as if she’d always thought it a good idea to get rid of our fleas. It seemed strange not to have the permanent flicker of insect life pursuing its microscopic life along the forest trails of my body hair. We were grateful for the relief. But we had to listen to Éclair whining, becoming more and more incoherent from lack of sleep and pain. ‘Voices in my head,’ I heard her whimper. Jack made it his business to lick her ear clean as far as he could until the time came when she told him, ‘No,it hurts too much, I can’t bear for it to be touched any more,’ and he slumped down beside her, talking to her in the lucid moments that became rarer and rarer. Sometimes you could see pus oozing from her ear and the smell of rancid flesh grew stronger but Jack never left her side.
‘Drama queen!’ laughed Sourface at feeding time, watching Éclair’s crazed attempts to deaden the pain. ‘You’re not catching me like that twice!’
We looked forward to storytelling that night even more than usual – something, anything to take our minds off Éclair.
At last. ‘Storytime!’ the chorus raced round the pens and once more Jack barked his order, ‘Newcomer first!’ and we all stilled, waiting.
A voice as deep as thunder echoing round the mountains tolled, ‘I was born under skies so blue they dazzle, where the snow’s so white the glitter bursts against your closed eyelids, where the mountains dance in the winter sunshine, dance all year round. I was born in the Pyrenees, with my two sisters and four brothers.’
One name ripped from my throat in a roar. ‘Stratos!’
‘Stratos’ howled the pack. ‘Stratos!’ we greeted my brother.
‘Why does he have to be alone in a pen? Why is he here?’ I growled desperately to Prince, the source of all gossip.
Jack silenced me with a look and barked, ‘Let us hear the story of Stratos.’
Chapter 12.
‘My brothers and sisters were a disappointment to me,’ Stratos began, endearing as ever, ‘too easy to knock over, too ready to submit. I was a strong puppy and I wanted to develop my muscles and reflexes to the perfection I imagined my father to be. All I knew of my father was what my mother told me and that filled my imagination with a proud male, the one I wanted to grow up to be.’ The scent of Stratos’ urine wafted down-wind to me. How had I not recognised it sooner, the acrid tang, salty, like mine but stronger, more concentrated, grass-killing. ‘I copied the adult moves, the sideways pounce to catch a dog unawares and take it straight into a submission roll, the grip to the death on a tail...’ my own tail swung nervously, ‘and my own favourite, the ear-hold. I tend to attack from the right, lunge for the right ear and then I can lead my catch wherever I want, clockwise in a circle, straight to a Human, or down to hit the ground on his back.
But these were just the play of puppyhood with weak companions. I was always waiting for someone stronger, more of a challenge. On the day of my Choosing, I knew I’d found him. He was tall as a house, his eyes sent fiery sparks and forbade me to look into them. When I looked away, polite little pup that I was, he said, ‘Good boy’ and his voice was a volcano, a rumble with the threat of eruption always there.’ This wasn’t quite how I’d remembered Stratos’ Human but I suppose we see our stories differently and it was strangely alienating to be a bit part in Stratos’ story, about to disappear from it. We grow used to being the centre of our own stories and the earth shifts to reveal the abyss, non-being, death, when we disappear from someone else’s story, not even missed. Still, if only for the sake of my reminiscin
g muscles, I was glad we’d moved on from tales of our shared puppyhood.
‘He swung me up into the air so that my feet touched nothing but clouds and I was scared. And I wanted to please him and be called ‘Good dog’. And my inner wolf wanted to grow up and fight him. To fight well, and to lose, to a real master. He put me down on the ground again and where his fingers touched me, stroking me, I felt the root of each hair follicle connect to his body. I was his dog and I was charged up with belonging. When he, Denis, passed me to his Female, Nina, I felt warm towards the whole world and I curled up like the little baby I still was and slept in her arms. It is good to be loved.
‘It is good to be loved,’ we howled.
‘Even the strongest dog that ever lived needs to be loved. And needs to be mastered.’
‘Loved and mastered,’ we echoed.
‘I knew nothing about houses, room, furniture... you remember what it was like to miss your mother, your brothers and your sisters, to find not one familiar smell, nowhere that you can settle because everything is new. You are full of curiosity and exhausted by so much to take in. You remember?’
‘We remember.’
‘Denis went somewhere and I heard a door open. I was sniffing around a chair and had only just realised that it smelled of dog, very recent dog, when a rattle of barks alerted me seconds before a black and white terrier landed on me, ordering me to submit quickly or else. Even though I was well-mannered enough to acknowledge his greater age and roll on my back straight away, he nipped my legs fiercely. ‘I’m the boss here and don’t you forget it!’ he was barking and by this time – you know how slow Humans are – Nina was shrieking ‘Fredo!’ and swotting at the terrier with a cushion and Denis had come back in from the other room, following the terrier but much more slowly. He speeded up now, shouting ‘Fredo! No!’ and the shock ran right through me as his big hand welted the terrier’s head. This was the first time I’d seen a Human hit a dog. I was very pleased about it at the time. Fredo whimpered, ‘Sorry, master,’ and let me go, but not without a snarled, ‘See you later.’