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.