Additionally I was operating in a world of assumption that was based on the premise that Ollie must be counting himself lucky, that he had done well to be sprung from the NCDL centre, out of the way of that irritating little prick Martin, and into an environment where he was kept snug and cared for, fed, given toys, and played with and loved. It never crossed my mind to think that perhaps he hadn’t much wanted to leave Snetterton because he liked it there, that Martin was actually a close personal friend, that their love-hate relationship was the way it suited them, or that our house could represent some sort of confinement since it was not a forest or a dog-pen where he was free to do as he wanted, how and when he saw fit, and to express himself in his own way. No, none of this ever occurred to me back then, but it has occurred to me since.
So, from the outset, albeit that it might have been born of good intentions, I was responsible, with that night-time walking stuff, for creating a bit of an atmosphere between us.
***
If you acquire a pup in the more usual manner, weaned at eight weeks from the breeder, common advice you’ll be given is not to let it off the lead until it’s about four months old (or more, depending on breed) as its legs won’t be strong enough for the running about in which it will inevitably indulge. In Ollie’s case, because he’d been free to roam since before he was two months old, here was a protocol he’d never observed.
I thought about this. His limbs had come through it fine. He could shift about the house in style if the mood took him, he would race up the stairs to see what was what and be back down in a flash – on the run from a flapping curtain or a terrifying mystery object like a sudden ironing board. He’d perform a triple lutz of some originality to land himself back onto the safety of his bed. So his body was fit, but what about his mind? He did not like restriction. The coat, the lead: for him they were both equally wrong. If the night-time walks weren’t going too well, surely the daytime experience could be made better?
We began to explore the open spaces around us where he could be allowed some limited freedom. I discovered a variation on a meadow – a paddock – a meadow with a fence around it. We carried out basic ‘training’ in the paddock using one of those retractable leads: we established that he would come to our call/hand for certain treats above and beyond sausages, for example lambs’ liver or cheddar cheese. This treat diet precipitated the sort of farts you could slice and dice, it was beyond me that a stomach and bowel contained within the slenderness of his waist could produce nerve gas like that. Still, outdoors at least you could move away from the pong, after a fashion: having him at the end of the extension lead was like trying to take a ferret for a walk – disentangling him from the infinite number of variants he could find for getting himself into knots was a full time job in itself.
‘For fuck’s sake, let’s just let him off shall we?’
This is me suggesting the way forward. Fannying about in a meadow like this was exposing my patience threshold in all its dismal short-temperedness. So we did let him off. And, though he wasn’t at all brilliant at coming back or responding to any sort of instruction signalled by our whistling, calling, or changing the pitch of our voices, the freedom clearly delighted him.
Liberated from the lead, he relaxed; you could see his worries disappear. I watched him as he shot past us. Where indoors he would run and look worried at the same time, out here he could run and smile. He did a figure of eight, a loop the loop, the hop, skip and jump, any number of fifty-metre sprints, and several circuits. It was the first time I’d seen him happy since his arrival; it was clear in an instant that running was his vocation in life. So, to try and help build our bond, which had seemed fragile from the moment we left Snetterton (I noticed from the very beginning that he shied slightly from me, looking to Trezza for reassurance), I started to allow him off the lead at night too, in the carpark at the back of Carrow Road, Norwich City’s football ground.
Worries disappear, for one of us at least
This is also near to where we live, and was an area
that I was incorporating into our evening outings. Trezza would have been horrified if she had known, because of the roads nearby. But I was concerned to improve the quality of life on the emptying tour (just because he wasn’t keen, it didn’t stop me from carrying on).
First, I conducted experiments with the extension lead, which taught me that his behaviour on a span of tarmac was quite different to that in a paddock. Where the grass seemed to tickle his feet and have him drop the turbo, here his tendency was to the dainty: he trotted, like a ballerina. Slower, see. And more considered. I kept close by him once I’d set him free, though sometimes he would stray out of reach, and once out of reach he might keep himself at that distance, then stop, and look at me quizzically as I offered him the chicken which I’d picked off the bone on the way out.
He would sit considering the matter; was the food/possible-return-to-lead trade-off worth it? His appetite always won, and while he was eating out of one hand I would take hold of his collar with the other.
Having done what we came to do, we would walk back through the scary streets with the scary noises, back over the scary railway bridge, Ollie pulling furiously and me tugging him back and saying ‘Heel’ to no effect at all. Even having completed his night-time businesses I would invariably wake in the morning to find more. Where did it all come from?
***
As I’d mentioned to the Vizsla lady, Trezza and I both work from home. In the daytime I took to wandering downstairs from my office more often than was necessary to look in on Ollie, to see if he was all right. I’d find him sitting nervously on, or under, his throw, or in his other basket in the dining-room (it had been decided that he needed a selection of beds). Never particularly keen, as time went on he welcomed me less. He didn’t seem to like me coming into his space. And he didn’t seem to like being looked at, either. He would turn his face towards the wall and cast occasional neurotic glances backwards to see if I was still there, as though he hoped I’d be gone. If I approached him to tickle him under his chin, he edged away. I’d try stroking his back, which went down no better. I couldn’t work him out. Shouldn’t he be delighted every time I showed up? After all, it could mean food or an excursion.
Ollie didn’t seem normal. That said, in the first few days and weeks, I felt the whole idea was abnormal anyway – having this weird creature in our house, our living space. Beyond the unfamiliarity, it seemed wrong. His claws tip-tapping over the floorboards made an odd percussion that disturbed me. His permanent nervous presence created a bad vibe. We’d get our paths crossed and I’d trip over him, or vice-versa. Worse, I’d tread on his tail and make him yelp; he’d back off looking more than his usual worried self, looking genuinely fearful, and when I’d try to stroke him to say sorry, he’d back further off.
We didn’t seem to know how to deal with each other at all. I wondered what on earth I’d been thinking about, bringing a wild animal into the house. I’d lived with cats before but cats really do mind their own business: you simply install the cat flap, the rest is down to them. With Ollie, I felt responsible. I should have seen that he was in some kind of distress, maybe, but I didn’t interpret him that way. In my impatient inexperience I thought that he was being a bit dense, that what he needed to do was to sort himself out. I was surprised that in trying the obvious, the reassurance of gentle touching, I was not getting through. Rather the opposite. He remained significantly more relaxed with Trezza, and when Jack turned up he actually wagged, a signal of happiness that we never saw.
All the same, I imagined he’d come round, in the end. I would remove myself from his sightline – so as not to upset him by looking at him – and observe him through the crack between door and frame, a surveillance that allowed me to note that he wasn’t much better in my absence: occasionally, he’d put his head down and sigh; otherwise he spent his whole time looking around nervously at all the things that alarmed him – the curtain, the windowpane that might rattle
if any wind came, the lampshade – no doubt all the while dreading the reappearance of the scary fly.
***
After a couple of weeks of the outdoor training with short runs in the paddock, we set out on our first big off-lead session in the parkland to the south side of the University of East Anglia. I don’t recall much about it, which must mean it was a more or less incident-free day, which would have made it a very untypical outing. Sometimes we walked him together, but soon fell into a routine where I did the morning and Trezza the later one; in the first weeks we compared notes on Ollie’s ways.
There are other parks in Norwich, but the land to the south side of the campus is by far the biggest open space, a few hundred acres consisting of copse, rough fields, sports pitches, a river, and a lake. The river is separated from the sports pitches by a long hedge with stiles, the copses are scattered throughout, and footpaths run at angles. A couple of bridges cross the river, one a footbridge, the other a single lane university road (the road where we met the whippet in the preface). This road is mainly used by cycling fascists who yield to no one (I have grown to loathe this sector of society even more than I do musicals: no other group contains quite such an over-representative sample of sanctimonious, sixth-form, whole-grain prats). As well as the two-wheeled fascists, the road is trafficked by speeding tractors pulling grass-cutters, and an excess of foreign students on foot passing between their lessons and residences. The foreign students tend to be wary of dogs, the vehicles and the two-wheeled fascists less so. There may be matches taking place on the pitches, and there are many joggers. Occasionally you come across lovers who are up to something, and, in good weather, groups of partying teenagers. The University Goths’ Sword Fencing & Dressing-up Society is often to be seen re-enacting a moment from myth.
These are the principal hazards that may impede Ollie while he is pursuing his lifetime’s ambition: to personally greet every other dog in the world. Once he’s off the lead he’s away to his nearest brother as quickly as possible, which is quick. Many people take him for a greyhound and ask if we race him, which is a fair mistake to make.
Even in his early stages when he was still slight and immature he was no slouch; as he grew he became a rocket. And as he did not seem to be a normal dog in the head, neither was his running style conventional. Before he put his ears back and really gathered some steam, his warm-up consisted of bouncing. Boing, boing, boing. Then he’d stop and hang in mid-air – like the fight sequences in The Matrix – while he assessed the lie of the land. On touchdown he ran beautifully, his body elastic, his technique effortless. To say he flew over the ground would be accurate. I noticed people stop and turn to watch, even people without a dog, even nervy foreign students.
As he neared his object-dog, his normal method was to scorch the grass in an emergency stop, pulling up short, and hunching down with his stomach flat to the ground, hind legs tucked in, front legs splayed in front. If you wanted a study of an Anubis, this was the moment. Head half-up, half-down, ears pricked, body trembling with excitement, he waited to see what on earth would happen next. Or sometimes not. Sometimes he didn’t pull up short, sometimes he just sledged straight in around the back of the object-dog, opened his jaws and put them round the object-dog’s neck.
This, I came to understand, is his way of saying, ‘C’mon baby! Chase me.’ But there are owners who tend to misinterpret it as an attack. If I can see their point of view these days, I was less happy with their general attitude back when Ollie was clearly a super-lightweight pup who only wants to play.
There are some senses in which you feel you never learn a thing. In so much as I’d given the matter any thought at all, I’d assumed that dog-loving animal lovers would be nice people, loving animals as they do. I had not considered the possible corollary – they keep a dog because they are misanthropic twerps and a dog does not answer back. In the beginning I was a cheerful person, in the way people on holiday are cheerful – I was in a new place doing a new activity, I was out in nature and I was feeling good.
Ollie only wanting to play
However, I found many of my friendly ‘Good Mornings’ blanked, much more often than you would believe. I was taken aback by how rude country dog-walking folk could be. But never mind me, what about Ollie? If they noticed him at all, it was to shoo him away or to curse him.
Some of these other owners don’t love animals either, with the sole exception of their own ball-fixated Border collie-cross. (Border collie-cross owners tend to confuse their animals’ obsessive natures with Good Behaviour. And any dog that is not like theirs falls a long way short of the standard; they will glower at you down the barrel of their nose to leave you in no doubt about this.)
While border collie-cross owners may be the pre-eminent School Ma’ms in the world of dog control, decorum, and manners, there are many other examples to be taken into account. There were three old boys who patrolled together, one in camouflage gear, another with a Union Jack t-shirt, the third their Sherpa. This self-proclaimed ‘People’s Army’ had three trusty old hounds to go with them. Though I was on the same shift, and saw them every day, they never once acknowledged Ollie’s efforts to play with these dogs, who were every bit as standoffish as their owners. The interpretation was simple. Worse than new kids in the playground, we were invading their land. Moreover, we lacked discipline. I continued to put in my unacknowledged ‘Good Mornings’, to agitate them, to set their nostrils twitching above their Kitchener moustaches. Still, at least they didn’t pick their dogs up, like some, or put them back on the lead, like others, as soon as they caught sight of Ollie.
Owners became the bane of my life. Not dogs, who, in the main, were superb. Left to its own devices even the most pumped-up, steroid-abusing Staffordshire Bull Terrier sporting the studded collar and nose ring would offer Ollie a playful snarl, a Colgate smile, and twenty terrifying laps snapping at his hindquarters just for a laugh. Breeds with reputations to live up to – Dobermanns, Rottweilers, Ridgebacks – all turned out to be pussycats once you got to know them: chasing the new boy, tipping him upside down and giving him a bit of a kicking was right up their street, especially as the fool kept coming back for more. I was more scared of these animals than Ollie was.
To be fair and accurate, a good number of owners were more than fine, too. But it wasn’t long before I was giving a wide berth both to specific miserablists as well as whole categories of irritant: besides the pickers-up and the putters-on-the-lead, there were the Thatcherite disciplinarians (‘No, no, no, no no no no – Niet!’), the aloof, and the snooty (‘I didn’t pay a fortune for this pedigree to have it associate with the likes of you’). Principal amongst these stiffs were the pairs you only ever see on Saturday and Sunday (like traffic jams at retail parks, dog-walking peaks at the weekend).
The pairs of stiffs come in all ages, but they are easy to identify as they arrive in uniform: His ’n Hers Observer-Special-Offer Wellington boots, beige chinos for him, beige jodhpurs for her, a Barbour jacket apiece with the little rectangular Barbour Prefect badges pinned on the breasts, and Lady Di scarves for both, all brand new and starched. They walk a shampooed Labrador or golden retriever and they walk it in a curious, dainty manner, because in their private universe they are in the Main Ring at Crufts having just retained the Supreme Champion of Champions Rosette for the third successive year. Their dog is never allowed off the lead. Sometimes it’s not a retriever; instead it’s a Wiemaraner.
I don’t know why they bother, why they don’t just settle for a couple of mountain bikes instead. One thing is for certain: they do not want some reprobate like Ollie ruining their day by trying to be friendly. He was – he is – very persistent. And equally disobedient. So far as he is concerned, the words, ‘Ollie: Stop’ and ‘Ollie: No!’ are amongst the most meaningless in the language. Attempting to catch hold of his collar while he sledges little Freddy, apparently taking chunks of fur out of his neck, is a nightmare – like trying to tickle trout and catch soap in the bath a
ll at the same time with one arm tied behind your back. To give little Freddy credit, in most instances he at least tends to give the impression that he’d be happy to play the game, if only he knew how, and was a bit fitter – difficult, as this excursion represents his entire weekly exercise.
As I dive about trying to field Ollie, the stiffs stand, suppressing emotion, while the disgraceful behaviour goes on, and on. And on.
And on.
It could be several long minutes before I actually got hold of the pest, or, much more likely, he would go off in a different direction of his own accord, having been distracted by the sight of his next victim.
At first I’d apologise, but I soon stopped bothering, because I didn’t feel sorry. Here is a public message to all Labrador-Retriever-Observer-Special-Offer Wiemaraner-Wellington-Boot-Couples everywhere: If you’re going to have a dog, LET IT PLAY, you odious farts.
But, as the weeks added up to a month, then two months, and the season began to turn, and Ollie still refused to listen to a single word I said, his antics began to wear on me. While he got up to his stuff, I took to pretending I wasn’t with him – there are plenty of trees to hide behind in a copse. We thought of obedience classes, obviously, but he was so far short of any sort of standard of behaviour, unresponsive to any command at all, with the possible exception of ‘Sit’ (providing he was in the mood), that we just didn’t think he was ready. In addition, he was an entirely different animal indoors, where I imagined these classes took place. So instead of trying to train him, I grew stubble, wore shades, and dressed to give the impression of being the kind of person you wouldn’t want to pick an argument with, or even talk to at all. If I encountered someone new, who wouldn’t know it was a lie, I might use the line, ‘That’s the last time I look after this dog,’ as though he belonged to a friend. I stopped saying, ‘Good Morning’, for what it was worth. All the same, I acknowledged to myself that the dog was out of hand, and that realistically something had to be done.
Walking Ollie Page 5