Someone to Look Up To

by Jean Gill

  Then when I looked at all the stories, there you were, my Izzie, chained up on a mountainside, lonely – even if you did have other animals. And not even dogs for company. I saw how friendly you were with the dogs in the farmyard, which is just as well because you’re going to have two wonderful friends in your new home.

  And then I’ll have to find this great trainer I’ve told you we’re going to, because the truth is, I have no idea who to choose. I’ve spent hours online reading what trainers say about themselves and just when I think, yes, this all makes sense, there’s something that I know is just not true and I don’t see the point in going to someone who knows less than I do.’ I pricked up my ears at that. I’d heard someone say that before and it hadn’t been a good sign.

  ‘This is where I’ve got to. It’s got to be someone with plenty of experience training all kinds of dogs, including difficult ones. I want someone who does the training herself, who doesn’t just squeeze a car horn and tell a load of confused masters what orders to give – that just doesn’t work. I want someone who doesn’t think you should hit dogs or shout at them.’ Now I remembered. It was Stratos’ master who didn’t see the point in classes. University of Life. Surely Elodie wasn’t making Denis’ mistakes?

  Elodie continued, ‘I don’t mind at all if most of what she says and does is common practice and common knowledge – it stands to reason that if something’s good and has worked for donkeys’ years, we’re still doing it. But if there’s so much as one really stupid piece of advice in what she says, then I’m not going to her. And so far that knocks out everyone.

  It’s all very well, using all this modern observation of dog behaviour to help us give the right messages but some Behaviourists have no sense! You just wouldn’t believe what rubbish I’ve read! ‘Pull a dog’s ear if she behaves badly, because that’s what another dog would do to dominate’. Great way to get bitten. ‘Never go to the same level as the dog by sitting or even worse lying on the floor beside him.’ So that knocks out all the fun I’ve ever had rolling around on the floor with Caboche and Jet. ‘Don’t give your dog too much praise, it will spoil him.’ How stupid! ‘Never allow a dog onto your bed because the alpha male and female sleep separately.’ I reckon if you’ve got the right relationship with your dog, you can allow your dog to do whatever suits you – that’s the point isn’t it? But that’s also my question, Izzie, just how do you make sure you have the right relationship with your dog? And I’m still looking for someone to teach me.’

  The car slowed and I slewed to one side as Elodie flicked the clicking switch and turned the wheel. ‘Well here we are. Your new home.’

  Perhaps I should leave the story there, the perfect love, the perfect ending. And I know you will say I was ungrateful when I tell you what happened next. But you see, sometimes love isn’t enough.

  Chapter 20.

  In the beginning it was perfect. When the car boot was opened, I blinked, paused on the brink of this new life, then jumped into my future. Or more literally into the sniffs and yaps of two excited furballs. When you reach a certain age, every new experience has echoes of another, older one that predisposes you to react one way rather than another. One golden cocker spaniel, one black, interrupting each other all the time, brought back the memories and I waited calmly for a pause in the yapping.

  ‘Tell him about the mouse...’

  ‘But he’s only just got here – he’ll want water first, before stories.’

  ‘No, no, no – introductions before water.’

  ‘But he knows our little girl already.’

  ‘No, not Elodie.’

  ‘David and Adelphe, yes, yes, yes.’

  ‘No, idiot, us!’ Their little curly tails had left me in no doubt as to their intentions being friendly and my own tail was waving an aroundera in response. ‘Caboche,’ the golden one barked, ‘and the noisy one’s my sister, Jet.’

  ‘Sirius,’ I said, simply. Of the Soum de Gaia was no longer important.

  While I was greeted by the spaniels, Elodie kissed the older man and woman waiting on the driveway. The man, David, came over to me and held out his hand politely, under my muzzle. He smelled of engine oil and spaniel and I let him caress my face and neck, even stroke the top of my head, which normally I wouldn’t permit on first meeting. A male has his standards.

  ‘It’s all right, Adelphe, you can give him a stroke.’ The woman approached timidly and I flinched when she dived her hand down on top of my head, but gritted my teeth and accepted it. My mistress’ people were my people. I sensed the human tensions relax a little.

  ‘He seems friendly enough with our two,’ David conceded, ‘and with us, but I hope you know what you’re doing, Elodie.’

  ‘I hadn’t expected him to be so... big.’ Adelphe said.

  Elodie laughed. ‘He’s a big softie. You’ll see’. Then she let me off the lead to ‘go and play’. The spaniels didn’t need to be told twice and careered round in competitive races of their own devising, encouraged by the Humans who threw a ball for them to fetch.

  I tried to join in. I jumped around the spaniels, careful not to step on them and I started to run too. That’s when I discovered the invisible chain. I would start to run, then stop, at exactly the distance the chain would have jerked me back.

  ‘Has he got a problem with his legs, Elodie?’ Adelphe asked.

  Elodie’s eyes met mine. ‘Oh Izzie. What has she done to you!’

  I started to run again and after several run/stop, run/stop fiascos, I found that if I concentrated really hard I could break through the invisible chain barrier. I still slowed down, my body believing in the chain that my brain said wasn’t there but at least I didn’t stop dead. I was panting with the effort though.

  ‘It will come, Izzie. It will come.’ I watched the spaniels, their ears flying as they chased each other round the garden and I lay down on the grass. I was a good guardian and it was something I could do. Elodie sat down beside me, stroking me, telling me how wonderful I was and I rolled onto my back to give her full authority to caress my stomach as much as she liked, just there, where the bare flesh showed.

  The spaniels took this as an invitation to them too, which they accepted with the exuberance they seemed to find for every activity. It was a shock to have two small dogs land on me from different sides but we were soon a rolling, scrabbling, play-snapping pile of fur. Elodie jumped out of the way, laughing.

  ‘He’s not hurting them, is he dear?’

  ‘No,’ replied Elodie and her father at the same time, while I batted alternate dogs off my rear quarters, which they had decided was the safest target for a little harassment. It wasn’t the all-out wrestling I’d known with Snow but it was fun and it was such a long time since I’d had physical contact with another dog. I’d thought everything would just go back to how it used to be and my failure to run had shaken me, made me wonder what else had been taken away from me.

  Imagine that you are the guest of a tribe in the deepest, most remote part of the Amazon rainforest. You know nothing of their language, nothing of their culture and you know only one person there, who understands you. I followed Elodie everywhere and when I was beside her, I was calm enough to observe this new world. The inside of a house seemed too hot, cluttered with obstacles that made strange noises and I just didn’t know where to go for what. One question was answered when Elodie put down a mat in the cool hall and told me ‘Your corner, go to your corner.’ Then she took me to the mat and gave me a biscuit. She did this a few times until I got the idea and as long as she was nearby, I didn’t mind going onto the mat to please her. But if I couldn’t see her, I grew anxious. The walls closed in on me, I couldn’t fulfil my duties as a guardian because all the noises indoors were threats. It had just been too long since I had lived in a house.

  I breathed again when I was allowed outside. Elodie walked with me round the boundaries of our terrain and let me take up position on a rise, where I could see the entry to the house and bark my warnings.
She left me there and I accepted the job she’d given me. I was a good guardian and I barked to tell the family each time there was a car in the lane, I continued barking if the car stopped and when one car opened its boot for a dog to jump out, I barked the full wolf warning – every patou knows that stray dogs are as dangerous as wolves for the flock. Elodie came back to get me.

  ‘You’re going to have to come in now Sirius or the neighbours are going to complain.’ I resisted her as it was nearly twilight and apart from Storytime, every patou knows that twilight and night are the most dangerous times. I wanted to protect her and her family and I certainly knew more than she did about guarding. But she wouldn’t listen to reason and insisted, with collar and lead, that I go back into the house with her, where I paced about and worried, until it reached Human bedtime.

  Then Elodie took my mat and told me to follow her. She placed the mat by her bed and told me this was my place. Yes, I remembered sleeping beside my Human at night and it seemed right to me. Everything I did had echoes. But I felt too hot, I could hear faint night noises and missed the cool air and the stars. I paced and worried.

  ‘It will come,’ Elodie promised me and sleepily stroked my head when I did lie down beside her, too tired to do anything other than sleep uncomfortably until morning.

  We went on walks together, hunting further and further afield, in tune with each other. This time, my memories chimed perfectly with the present. My best memories of walks with a Human were of those when Elodie had been beside me. This time she was my signed mistress, the one whose days I accompanied, whose sleep I guarded. My aroundera touched the clouds, I pranced when I walked, I wanted everyone to see us together. It was all I could do not to whine non-stop with excitement. I’d have played recall, sit, down and stay with her all day long, to hear the pleasure in her voice when I obeyed her. And instead of the wasteground, we had open fields and woods, endless smells to explore. Even a river.

  When she took me to the river, I hesitated, looked at Elodie. There was no Newfoundland to lead me or tell me what to do. ‘Go ahead little boy. Have fun,’ she encouraged me and I didn’t need to be told twice. I plunged into the water, enjoyed the shock as the cold hit me, the different currents curling around me at different temperatures and I showed off every trick I knew, with Elodie whooping and laughing on the bank as she watched me. Then, for the sheer pleasure of the exercise, I just powered along with the current, swimming, swimming, swimming... with Elodie jogging along the bank in parallel. That’s when I realised something was missing, but this time it was something I was overjoyed to be rid of. There was no invisible chain in the water, nothing that checked me and slowed me down, nothing but the water itself. In the river I was the same young dog I’d once been. And if I could be like that in the river, then I could be like that again out of it, too.

  ‘Look at me,’ I barked. ‘I’m free.’

  ‘Oh Izzie. It’s good to see you having fun! We need to have more fun together.’ And the next time we went to the river, Elodie stripped off her outer clothes to a swimming costume and she came in with me. This was a whole new set of games and she didn’t seem to appreciate some of the ways I used to play with the Newfie. Lack of fur is a real disadvantage for you Humans. On the other paw, she could swim faster than I could and she could turn quickly too, so she seemed to like the games of chase. Recall in the water was a very different proposition and she seemed more worried than delighted when I responded to it.

  ‘Gently Izzie, gently. You weigh seventy kilogrammes and I’m just fifty! No....’ and she lost her footing as I shouldered her. She ducked under the water to come up again spluttering. She could stand up and I couldn’t, which gave her a very unfair advantage.

  What seemed to please Elodie the most was a game we discovered by accident. She’d rolled onto her back and was floating, not moving her limbs, and it reminded me of all the pretend rescues I’d done with Newfie so instinctively I swam alongside, took her wrist in my mouth and towed her. She was so surprised she struggled and gulped water but then she went on her back again to see what would happen and of course I towed her again. Moments like that kept me going, feeling the trust between us, but it wasn’t easy.

  Then Elodie told me the holidays were over and she was going back to work. I watched through the window as her car left the drive, without me, and it was as if someone had sliced out part of my brain so that I only had two feelings; panic and the need to get back the missing part of me. I went round and round the rooms of the house open to me, as if it was the S.P.A. cage or the circle allowed by my chain, forgetting all I had ever learned about pacing and the dangers of going mad. The spaniels tried wuffing friendly advice along the lines of ‘She’ll be back, don’t worry’ but they had their masters there, they were indoor dogs and they weren’t me. David and Adelphe tried to stroke me and reassure me, which of course convinced me that I had lost Elodie forever. I had plenty of supporting evidence for reasoning that way, in so far as I was reasoning at all by this stage. So there I was, seventy kilogrammes of panic-stricken, whimpering lonely patou. And I committed a crime against Humans.

  When I did it, Adelphe shrieked so much I felt even more scared, if that was possible and David shouted so much I thought he was going to hit me. Instead, he told me to go outside, I was a bad dog, and I went up to my place where I could guard them to make up for everything and to wonder why I’d done it in the first place, but I knew that, really. I’d been scared out of my mind and everything had smelled wrong, this house I didn’t really know with its furniture tripping me up, its spaniels and furniture polish. I’d just wanted to make it smell more friendly, more like my home.

  I concentrated on the job; a yellow van meant someone weak, who tried to attack the family by putting his hand in a box. I gave the full anti-wolf bark and he ran away fast in his van, as always. Easy. Then there was the car that stopped down the road. I gave it full volume. By the end of the day, I was feeling quite pleased with myself when I saw Elodie’s car coming back up the lane. I went berserk with excitement but she ignored me completely and went into the house. I followed.

  I jumped all over the place with excitement but Elodie just walked away, went into another room and closed the door. Some time later she came out and called me to her. I went like a rocket but the frenzy of first seeing her had gone and I didn’t feel like jumping so I just nuzzled her, licked her and enjoyed her caresses.

  ‘We need to talk, Elodie,’ her father called from the living room where they’d shut themselves in with the spaniels. Elodie took me into the room with her and sent me to lie in my corner.

  ‘He’s gone bonkers without you,’ David continued. Elodie sighed. ‘He’s peed in the kitchen so we had to send him outside and he’s done nothing but bark his head off all day. We just can’t have that, you know.’

  ‘It’s only been a fortnight, Dad. You’ve got to give him time to adjust. And this is my first day back at work. He’ll get used to it and he’ll be able to see I’m coming back.’ She came over and sat on the floor beside me. ‘It’s not surprising he’s anxious after all he’s been through.’

  ‘That’s what I mean, love,’ her father’s voice was kind and reasonable. ‘I did warn you that it might be too difficult for you. No-one will think the worse of you if you admit that and I’m sure Izzie will find another home... he’s a beautiful, sweet dog – but he’s got problems. And we’ve got to think of other people too. Apart from the neighbours, it’s not fair on your mother.’

  I waited for Elodie to explain what a good guardian I was. ‘I know,’ she said. Everything has echoes. You look back and you see the turning points but what makes the hairs rise on your neck is when you see one at the time you are in it. The clock ticked in the silence and a sleeping spaniel farted.

  ‘Elodie’s right,’ said Adelphe, ‘It is only a fortnight. And I don’t want to give up on Izzie. What’s a little urine and some barking compared with the love of a dog. Look at him.’ They looked. ‘You can’t help loving h
im. And when I think of what he’s been through, it makes my blood boil, it really does. I don’t know as much about dogs as you two do but it’s a bit like getting married isn’t. You have to get used to each other’s funny little ways and... adjust a bit. So we’ve got some adjusting to do and so has Sirius.’

  ‘What do you mean, funny little ways?’ demanded David.

  ‘Anyway,’ Adelphe rushed on, ‘the other thing I wanted to say is that you were going to see this trainer-woman who will help you develop more technique and I think that’s a good idea, so you go ahead, dear.’

  ‘It’s not that I’d forgotten,’ Elodie said slowly, ‘it’s that it’s not so easy to find the right person.’

  ‘Well that’s up to you really, isn’t it?’’

  ‘I think your mother’s being very generous Elodie, very generous. Perhaps your perfect trainer doesn’t exist but even if you learn a bit more from someone and ignore the things that aren’t right...’

  Elodie shook her head firmly. ‘It doesn’t work like that, Dad. With dog training, just one bit wrong and everything’s wrong. And I won’t have someone destroy what I’ve built so far with Izzie. OK, I’ll go and look again. And thank you Mum. I needed someone to tell me to keep going. I have been starting to wonder if I’ve done the right thing. But I do love him so.’