I am writing this in between short intervals of vacuuming. Short because the vacuum cleaner cannot cope with the dog hair carpet. It sucks valiantly for a few minutes, stops and then, when it’s got its breath back, starts again. Any second now and it will splutter into life, the dog will flee halfway upstairs and gaze at me disdainfully and I will commence the battle with the dog debris that litters my carpets and my life.
The cleaner has given up on the front room. She hardly ever turns up now and, when she does, she calls me to tell me she can’t enter the front room as the dog is barking and won’t let her in. I don’t think the dog likes the cleaner but then, the cleaner does not like the dog.
I also receive frequent phone calls about the dog from the dog walker. I am in the office three days a week and, invariably, most afternoons, my mobile will flash ‘pauldogwalk.’
Pauldogwalk never has good news. This week he told me to research buying a collar that squirts lemon at the dog in an attempt to stop him disrupting pauldogwalk’s dog walks by dashing off and terrorising other dogs in the park.
‘He just wants to play,’ I protest. ‘He is a very friendly dog.’
‘He does just want to play,’ Pauldogwalk agrees. ‘But if another dog doesn’t want to play he winds them up.’
I sigh because I know what Pauldogwalk is talking about. The dog will circle the un-playful dog, growling and barking. One day he will circle the wrong un-playful dog and end up in a whole lot of trouble.
‘Today,’ Pauldogwalk tells me, ‘he chased a terrified Daschund for half an hour around the park.’
‘Oh,’ I say, taking a sip of my Pret-a-Manger white Americano. My boss, who I sit next to, is laughing. My boss thinks pauldogwalk is wet and, if he can’t cope with an unruly dog, shouldn’t be a dog walker.
Pauldogwalk hasn’t finished though. Now he’s in his stride he’s going to run slipshod through all my domestic affairs.
‘I don’t know how you cope with getting home to that sofa either,’ he says. I cope by picking up the yellow foam that is scattered across the floor every evening when I return from work, as if the moon has exploded in my front room, shoving it in to what remains of the sofa cushion covers, putting them back in place and then covering the whole sorry lumpy mess with a grey Ikea blanket. I cope by telling myself that one day, soon, when I have the money, I will buy myself a leather sofa that the dog will not see fit to destroy.
‘And your garden,’ Pauldogwalk says, really hitting his stride now. ‘Your garden is like a commune.’
He has a point here. I live in not the most salubrious part of south-east London, my flat one of five in an ex-local authority block with a communal garden. Some students moved into one of the flats below last summer and the age of aquarius has dawned. The garden is scattered with bongo drums, dream weavers made of twigs and large cushions covered in batik prints. Sometimes a tent is pitched to add to the Glastonbury vibe. Oh and there are chickens – three chickens who spend their nights in a home-built coop and their days pecking around the threadbare grass – the outdoor flooring equivalent of my carpets.
Most of the time I don’t mind the commune/garden as I like the students. And, basically, I’m just too lazy to mind. But, when someone else minds, I mind.
‘The students are having a festival in the garden,’ I tell Pauldogwalk now. ‘They are having a festival called the Sunset Festival in our garden and there will be stalls and workshops and an acoustic band playing on the decking.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Pauldogwalk laughs. Then he laughs some more. He is tickled.
Now that we are in good humour I ask: ‘Do you like the dog? I know he’s a pain in the arse, but do you like him? Do you think he’s a good dog?’
‘Yes,’ Paul says. ‘I like the dog. He’s one of my favourites.’
And I end the conversation smiling.
Monday, 3 May 2010
Sunday, 10 January 2010
A One Dog Night...
The Aborigines grade the temperature in these terms; cold – a one dog night; very cold – a two dog night; freezing – a ‘as many dogs as can possibly be rounded up on the bed’ night. Here, in a London that has been ravaged for the past fortnight by the ‘big freeze’, I round the dog up every night and he follows me upstairs dutifully, a baleful look in his brown eyes as he settles his neat little self on the bed. Possibly he envies the cat, which, by virtue of his regal bearing, enjoys free will and sleeps wherever he damn well chooses and, as the temperature has plummeted and the snow on the ground hardened into thick black ice, the cat has chosen the downstairs sofa. A couple of times I have rounded the cat up in my arms and carried him upstairs. He has settled in the crook of my legs for a few minutes, I have enjoyed his winter coat warmth, and then the dog has started his midnight feast of barking. This is a new thing, the dog’s nocturnal noise-it up – strange, since actually, given the temperature and the ice, less people are out and about after dark. Perhaps the world sounds different in the snow – perhaps noises bounce off it in a way that makes them more acute to a floppy-eared dog? Or maybe the foxes that have come into the garden over the past few nights have unsettled him and he now hears Fantastic Mr Fox in every footfall? The cat does not want to share the bed with this barking thing so he jumps off and heads back downstairs to the solitude of the sofa.
In this, the ‘big freeze’, my probably ex-boyfriend wants me to take the dog down to Brighton, where he now lives, to go sledging for the day. He misses the dog – not as much as he misses the cat, a stray that we brought in from the cold this time last year, who he positively yearns for. But the cat is not as portable as the dog. The cat could not come to the doggie hotel in Dorset last month and me and the probably ex boyfriend spoke of sparks of guilt as we bade him farewell with pouches of Whiskas and he hid under the decking in the garden, watching us as, with dog and suitcase, we departed. The cat knew we were leaving him – not only leaving him but taking the dog with us – and the cat was cross. So cross that when probably ex-boyfriend stopped at the gate to run back into the garden and say goodbye to him he slunk further under the decking, causing for us a sorrowful dash for the bus. We reminded ourselves that the student downstairs likes the cat very much and would tend him well– that the cat is, in fact, a legend in her flat since the evening last Autumn when her housemates left out some cooked meat for the foxes that the cat stole in on and, when the foxes approached, he snarled and saw them off. He is cool, the cat, a veritable Alpha male to the dog’s cheerful Beta. In an American high school movie, the cat would be the aloof outsider; the dog one of the rambunctious and well-meaning friends of the leading jock.
Anyway, the doggie hotel was a success. We discovered that the dog can be let off the lead and will return when called. We discovered that the dog is terrified of the sea – has probably never seen it before – barking at it like some canine King Canute, as if, by the very force of his agitation, he can turn back the waves. Every morning, at breakfast, after me and probably ex boyfriend had been served our full English, a bowl of sausages was produced for the dog. And all the staff there praised him mightily on being a handsome boy, speculating on what the Jack Russell in him could be crossed with. A collie, by dint of his deep brown eyes; a fox terrier, by dint of his long, proud profile; a daschund, by dint of his long body?
(There is, on a pet store’s website, a dog DNA kit which can list, with 99% accuracy which components make up your canine. I’m tempted but would that take the fun out of it?)
On our return, a photograph of the dog was published on the hotel website’s dog page – every canine guest has its image reproduced there. I alerted the ex to this and he wrote a glowing comment about the dog, under a false name, as if he were merely browsing the dogs on show and had been struck by this one particular mutt.
‘What a beautiful dog! I want one. So alert, yet gentle looking. If his temperament is as gorgeous as his face and floppy ears, he must be the best dog in the world. No offence to the others but he’s clearly the loveliest and happiest dog on the page.’
Oh, it is easy when probably ex-boyfriend writes things like that to forget that, in the grip of his depression, he can be a nasty beggar. He is so unhappy, though, and I know the dog cheers him. He has a no dog night every night now. Maybe I will take the dog to Brighton after all.
In this, the ‘big freeze’, my probably ex-boyfriend wants me to take the dog down to Brighton, where he now lives, to go sledging for the day. He misses the dog – not as much as he misses the cat, a stray that we brought in from the cold this time last year, who he positively yearns for. But the cat is not as portable as the dog. The cat could not come to the doggie hotel in Dorset last month and me and the probably ex boyfriend spoke of sparks of guilt as we bade him farewell with pouches of Whiskas and he hid under the decking in the garden, watching us as, with dog and suitcase, we departed. The cat knew we were leaving him – not only leaving him but taking the dog with us – and the cat was cross. So cross that when probably ex-boyfriend stopped at the gate to run back into the garden and say goodbye to him he slunk further under the decking, causing for us a sorrowful dash for the bus. We reminded ourselves that the student downstairs likes the cat very much and would tend him well– that the cat is, in fact, a legend in her flat since the evening last Autumn when her housemates left out some cooked meat for the foxes that the cat stole in on and, when the foxes approached, he snarled and saw them off. He is cool, the cat, a veritable Alpha male to the dog’s cheerful Beta. In an American high school movie, the cat would be the aloof outsider; the dog one of the rambunctious and well-meaning friends of the leading jock.
Anyway, the doggie hotel was a success. We discovered that the dog can be let off the lead and will return when called. We discovered that the dog is terrified of the sea – has probably never seen it before – barking at it like some canine King Canute, as if, by the very force of his agitation, he can turn back the waves. Every morning, at breakfast, after me and probably ex boyfriend had been served our full English, a bowl of sausages was produced for the dog. And all the staff there praised him mightily on being a handsome boy, speculating on what the Jack Russell in him could be crossed with. A collie, by dint of his deep brown eyes; a fox terrier, by dint of his long, proud profile; a daschund, by dint of his long body?
(There is, on a pet store’s website, a dog DNA kit which can list, with 99% accuracy which components make up your canine. I’m tempted but would that take the fun out of it?)
On our return, a photograph of the dog was published on the hotel website’s dog page – every canine guest has its image reproduced there. I alerted the ex to this and he wrote a glowing comment about the dog, under a false name, as if he were merely browsing the dogs on show and had been struck by this one particular mutt.
‘What a beautiful dog! I want one. So alert, yet gentle looking. If his temperament is as gorgeous as his face and floppy ears, he must be the best dog in the world. No offence to the others but he’s clearly the loveliest and happiest dog on the page.’
Oh, it is easy when probably ex-boyfriend writes things like that to forget that, in the grip of his depression, he can be a nasty beggar. He is so unhappy, though, and I know the dog cheers him. He has a no dog night every night now. Maybe I will take the dog to Brighton after all.
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