Though miffed by this doggy indifference, I could not help reflecting on how much Kudu would have enjoyed Kyrgyzstan. The twelve-hour drive from the capital, Bishkek, to Osh, the scene of the recent violence, is a quite spectacular journey up high mountain passes and through deep gorges. Roughly halfway there is a vast, open plateau, a bigger expanse of green than a dog could ever dream of.
This is where the country’s nomads migrate in the summer to graze their herds, living in their traditional yurts amid the wild flowers, with snow-covered peaks gleaming in the distance. I saw several yurt dogs, standing sternly, like sentries, at the entrances to these circular tents. There were dogs herding goats, cows and even horses, and I watched one trotting happily at the heels of his master’s mount as he rode high into rolling hills. What a doggy paradise. Even better, the usual human–animal relationship is reversed in these remote ranges: if a horse, a cow or a dog strays on to the road, the traffic gives way.
I spent several days in Osh just before the recent violence there erupted so dramatically, and was struck by the easy-going harmony between the city’s human and canine populations (rather more harmonious than relations within the human population, as it now turns out). Most of Osh’s dogs are feral, but they have developed good manners and are treated with respect in consequence. The balcony of my room looked down on a busy crossroads, and one evening I watched an elderly mongrel make its way purposefully across the street to the tree below me. It did its business discreetly under the branches – well away from the pavement – and then returned the way it had come.
A good book is essential on trips like this – there is always a certain amount of hanging around – and I took Andrew O’Hagan’s jolly new novel The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and His Friend Marilyn Monroe, which is written entirely from the perspective of a Maltese Terrier, or Bichon Maltais (Maf is short for Mafia, the name being a little joke about the fact that he is a present to Marilyn Monroe from Frank Sinatra).
I didn’t like Maf very much. He has picked up a quite staggering level of erudition from a puppyhood association with the writer and critic Cyril Connolly at his first home in Sussex, and tends to flash his learning around in a vulgar manner. There is a very funny scene in which he takes against Lillian Hellman and Edmund Wilson at a Manhattan book launch, and bites them both because of their offensive views (on Trotsky and the British respectively). But biting is not a nice thing for a dog to do, even if he shows good taste in his victims.
But Maf is an extremely effective narrative technique. Marilyn Monroe takes him everywhere – to parties, to her shrink, to her bed – so he is able to report everything, including her private moments. And O’Hagan plays very perceptively with the idea that dogs somehow intuit certain things about the people around them, absorbing moods and thoughts even when they are unspoken. Certainly one of the pleasures of Kudu’s company is his capacity to give the impression that he knows what sort of spirits I am in, and is happy to lie around giving silent support if they are low.
Maff is a yappy little thing, and reading his Life and Opinions brought home to me how lucky we are to have a dog that does not bark. We know Kudu can bark – he does it in his sleep from time to time – but it is a form of communication he simply does not seem to favour. And here is an irony: the vuvuzelas, those droning bugles which drown out everything at World Cup matches, were, I am told, originally made from the horn of the kudu, the beast that gave our silent dog his name.
Dogs certainly change the dynamics of family relationships, but whether their influence on family life is entirely benign is a matter of some dispute. We made a quick checklist of pros and cons at supper one evening:
Pro-dog points
They stop arguments: it is absolutely impossible to raise your voice in front of most family dogs – they simply will not tolerate it. If you are really determined to have a domestic battle you have to do it in whispers.
They are a source of humour: Kudu has a gift for doing something silly with his ears at moments of tension.
They give you unconditional support after a hard day’s work.
They keep the cats in order.
They never take issue with your views (unlike most other members of the family).
They provide a safe topic of conversation, which everyone can enjoy without worrying too much about delivering an unintentional slight or snub to someone else.
Anti-dog points
They are extremely strict about the importance of a hierarchical family structure; in our household this means I am the one to be feared, my wife is the one to be loved, and the younger generation are for playing with. Nothing can change this.
They ladder tights.
They provide an additional source of tension over the performance of domestic tasks – ‘Has anyone fed/walked the dog?’
They put muddy paws on white bedspreads.
They are jealous, and will not tolerate any expression of affection between adults of even a remotely erotic nature. This is not a matter to dwell on in a book of this kind, but shut the bedroom door.
They also provide – as I discovered to my cost and recorded in the next column – an opportunity for devastating teenage commentary on the foibles of the older members of the household.
Dingoes are mere dunces compared with my Einstein
10 July 2010
Under the headline ‘Your pet dog may be lovable … but it’s none too bright’, this newspaper recently reported the results of some research into the problem-solving abilities of domestic dogs and wild Australian dingoes (Canis familiaris and Canis dingo, to give them their proper scientific names).
Dr Bradley Smith, a psychologist at the University of South Australia, subjected a group of dingoes to what is known as the ‘detour test’. This involves placing some food at the intersection point of a V-shaped transparent fence; the subject of the experiment is then shown the food from the wrong side of the fence, and has to work out how to get it. The dingoes very quickly (in twenty seconds on average) realized that they first had to walk away from the food in order to get back to it. Domestic dogs in the same situation apparently just sat there panting, looking puzzled, and appealed to their masters or mistresses for help.
The Australian papers ran the ‘dogs are stupid’ line even more strongly than the Telegraph: ‘Dingoes deemed as top dogs, domestics dissed as dunces’ was one headline. But problem-solving of this kind is a very narrow definition of intelligence; if you judged humans in the same way you would, for example, presumably rank the practical Crocodile Dundee above the scatty Wittgenstein.
The story prompted me to dig out the canine IQ test that has been languishing on a shelf since my stepdaughter, Rosy, gave it to me for Christmas. This does indeed test for a much wider range of abilities, and we decided to put Kudu through his paces.
His problem-solving skills are impressive: when we placed a treat under a mug in front of him he took a nano-second to work out that he could get the treat by knocking over the mug. He was good on language recognition (you say the word ‘refrigerator’ in the voice you usually use to call your dog, and if it responds, I am afraid it is not very clever) and not bad on short-term memory. He was weak in the social-learning section, and we did not quite have the energy for the experiment that involved moving all the furniture in a room to see whether he would notice. Overall I scored him at a creditable CIQ figure of 45: ‘Your dog is in the high range of intelligence,’ declared the booklet, ‘and should be capable of doing virtually any task he is called upon to do.’
It is true that I did weight the scores a little to take account of environmental factors: I was cooking a barbecue while we did the tests, and Kudu was not unreasonably distracted by the smells at times. Rosy, who was acting as my research partner, took issue with my scoring and has refused to endorse the results. Indeed, she insisted on drawing up this disclaimer:
Contrary to what Edward may tell you, I’m sorry to announce, Kudu is not the glowing chosen one he is portrayed t
o be. I knew, whilst standing in front of the shelf debating whether or not to buy Edward a dog IQ test for Christmas, there would be a struggle. Not on Kudu’s behalf, but on Ed’s. You see, in my eyes, Edward is suffering from a form of denial in regards to our furry friend. A prime example of this was when we actually attempted the test. If Kudu did badly on a particular question, I was told to skip it out as the conditions were not up to the standard which they would be in a laboratory. However (shock horror!), if he did well, any concerns of this were lost and I was informed our clever little boy was too intelligent for these ‘silly questions’.
Kudu has always been over-indulged and this was only one of many occasions that I have had to witness it. Not once have I heard Edward refer to anyone as ‘sweetie’, not even his children. Kudu, however, has been blessed with the name since setting foot in the household.
I’m sorry, Edward – you’ve been exposed!
A bit of a shock, that, from a sixteen-year-old! Rather than confront this unflattering picture of myself, I took refuge with Kudu in my writing-shed, where I am amassing a small library of great writers who have been dog-lovers. Here is the Greek historian Xenophon on his favourite bitch:
When we are at dinner she mouths one or other of us by the foot, as a hint that she should have her portion. She has more language than any other dog I ever knew, and can always tell you what she wants. Thus she was once whipped, when she had puppies, and to this day if anyone uses the word ‘whip’ she goes to the speaker, crouches down begging, and puts her mouth up to be kissed; then, jumping up with a grin, she puts her paws on his shoulders, and will not release him till all signs of threatening temper have vanished.
If Xenophon can be that sentimental, then, frankly, so can I!
An English tradition we can really live without
24 July 2010
Returning from the opera one balmy evening, my wife and I were tempted into the garden for a nightcap. The honeysuckle by the back door is exceptionally vigorous this year, and our jasmine has repaid the effort I put into a hard pruning: the scent is intoxicating. We sat in silence, drinking our wine, snatches of Fidelio chasing through our minds, and enjoyed the symphony of smells. It was just as an English summer night ought to be.
The nursery school next door is empty at night, so when we heard noises there we assumed it was foxes. Kudu told us otherwise, stock still and staring into the darkness (if it is foxes he does a wild circuit of the flowerbeds, inflicting maximum damage). There was a young man in the school garden – apparently playing with his dog.
He seemed reasonable when I remonstrated with him over the wall, but it pays to be prudent with an intruder in the dark, especially one accompanied by a large dog (Kudu had gone back to his nightly rounds of the shrubs by now). So I politely asked the man to leave and promised that I would not call the police unless he came back.
Just as we turned to the house his dog leapt at the branch of a tree, hanging on ferociously with its teeth. ‘He’ll be doing that to other dogs soon,’ our intruder declared cheerfully. The primary-school garden was being used to train a fighting-dog. This realization provoked a not-at-all polite (and probably not entirely prudent) tirade from my wife about animal cruelty, and neither the dog nor its handler has been seen since.
The incident prompted me to do some research into dog-fighting, and I am afraid the tradition is every bit as English as the smell of honeysuckle on a summer’s evening. The Romans were so impressed by the ferocity of English Mastiffs that they sent them to fight in the Colosseum. And little more than a mile from the scene of our nocturnal encounter, just over the Thames, there used to be a fearsome place called the Westminster Pit, which was entirely devoted to the pleasure of watching animals trying to kill one another.
In its heyday (the early nineteenth century), dog-fighting at the Pit was a highly formalized affair. The dogs – usually Staffordshire Bull Terriers – were weighed like boxers to ensure an equal contest. Some handlers smeared their dogs with pepper as a deterrent to biting, so each handler was allowed to lick the opponent’s fur to check for cheating.
There was a line or ‘scratch’ drawn across the centre of the Pit, and the handlers would take their charges to opposing corners. Each round began with one of the dogs being allowed to attack first (known as ‘scratching’ or ‘coming up to scratch’), and continue until one of the dogs ‘faulted’ by retreating from battle. The fight ended when a dog failed to ‘come up to scratch’ (thus presumably the modern use of the phrase) at the beginning of a round.
These battles could last for twenty rounds or more, and even a death did not immediately end them. If a dog was killed the other dog had to ‘stay at the corpse’ for a further ten minutes. Then there was a break and a new round began. If it was the dead dog’s turn to ‘scratch’, the fight was automatically lost. But if it was the live dog’s turn and he did not ‘come up to scratch’ – through exhaustion or loss of spirit – he lost the fight even though he had killed his opponent.
These rules put a premium on aggression, and reading the way handlers boasted about what they euphemistically called the ‘gameness’ of their dogs is chilling. Dog-fighting was still legal in many American states until the 1960s, and British breeders used to export their dogs there. Here is one British enthusiast writing in the 1940s: ‘It is natural that a sport demanding such gameness should produce some remarkable dogs. I saw a dog last year which refused to mate a bitch which was dead hot in season. Every time he was loosed he went straight for her throat and we had to choke him off eight times before he eventually mated her and he even tried to worry her when he was knotted.’ For training a fighter, the same writer recommends an old tyre be ‘hung up so he can jump up, catch hold and shake himself’ – our young man had the right idea with the tree.
Most of us recoil at the idea of aggression. Kudu’s best friend, the Poodle Teddy, has been in trouble for dominating a Basset Hound while with his dog-walker, and it gave his mistress sleepless nights. She considered neutering him, but decided against it after canvassing opinion among the dog-walkers of Battersea Park (approaching total strangers about castration must, if you will forgive the pun, have taken balls). I am happy to report that Teddy has grown through his anti-Basset phase, and is as bouncy, cheerful and masculine as ever.
Fighting-dogs are a raw issue in the small park where I take Kudu for his afternoon walks – and it has sparked a turf war that is pure south London.
The park is in the middle of a very pretty conservation area of middle-class family homes, which is itself bordered by some of the roughest estates in the capital. Both the family-dog owners from the conservation area and the fighting-dog owners from the estates regard it as their preserve. There is no question about which side would win if it came to an open fight: some of the creatures you see being led in on studded leads make Cerberus look like a lapdog. But for the most part the two sides maintain an uneasy truce, with the fighting-dog owners monopolizing the dog run and the family-dog owners huddled defiantly together in the middle of the open grass, mobile phones at the ready to take pictures and call the police if anything untoward should occur. Kudu has narrowly escaped a couple of serious maulings – ‘Honest, it’s the first time he’s ever done anything like that,’ the owners declare, as they yank their slavering beasts back under control.
I find the idea of breeding and training a dog to fight profoundly repugnant, but I feel a little queasy about saying this because I do very much enjoy the way dogs are used in another sport that many people consider cruel. Occasionally I go shooting, and watching dogs work on a shoot is every bit as much fun as the sport itself. The discipline of good gun-dogs is awe-inspiring: despite quivering with excitement they will stay perfectly still during a drive until they are told to pick up a dead bird. But the real appeal of seeing them in action is the self-evident pleasure they take in doing something useful. I once met an engaging young black Cocker Spaniel out on his first shoot after being trained; every time he collected a de
ad pheasant he did a victory lap round his master’s legs before dropping the bird.
Dogs can also be a great leveller on these occasions. At a partridge shoot (they are incredibly difficult birds to hit, and way above my level), I found myself next to a man I silently nicknamed ‘the Wall of Death’. The sky above him was black with falling birds at every drive, while the lucky ones who chose my position were able to flutter unmolested to safety over my head. He had two beautiful Springers, and you could tell they were expensively trained by the way they sat patiently and attentively at his feet while the drive was in progress. As soon as the whistle signalled its end they were off about their picking-up duties, but one of them had an eccentricity: instead of bringing the birds back to its master, it simply arranged them in a series of neat piles at different ends of the fields. It was extremely comic to watch, and made me feel able to swap dog-disobedience stories with the WoD (who turned out to be very charming and not in the least smug) on something like equal terms.
8
A Dog’s-Eye View
STUDIO LIFE IS seductive. You broadcast without stirring from a comfortable chair, and there is a small army of eager producers and skilled technicians on hand to support you. Some of the younger ones seem to admire you – unsettling at first, but you very quickly get used to the luxury. Taxis are booked to bring you in and take you home, and grumpy moods are tolerated. Best of all, no one can cut you off or meddle with your material: once the microphone goes live, the airtime is yours.
Reporting, by contrast, can be hard pounding, and is very much a young person’s game. It means cramped planes and long flights, epic journeys in elderly and unsafe cars, endless, often grim, hotels; it means missing precious family moments and learning to love waking early and working late; it means long hours in the antechambers of those who think themselves mighty, and interviews doggedly pursued in the near-certain knowledge of disappointment.
Diary of a Dog-walker Page 11
