Red Dog

by Louis de Bernières

  Red Cat tried to spring onto Red Dog’s back, so that he could ride him around with his claws well stuck in, but Red Dog dodged out of the way just in time. Snout to snout, growling and hissing, neither animal would give ground. Red Cat scratched Red Dog again. Red Dog tried to bite, but missed. Then Nancy came round the corner and interrupted the whole confrontation.

  There was now a new vet in Roebourne, which was much closer than Port Hedland, and the new clinic wasn’t even properly completed yet. The young vet looked at the deep slashes in Red Dog’s nose, and tutted as he cleaned and stitched them. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but I saw a dog just like this last week. Had a thorn in his paw. Different owner, though. And the week before, somebody else brought in a dog just like this for immunisation. It’s weird. Hard to believe there’s so many dogs that all look the same.’

  Nancy smiled to herself. Red Dog was everybody’s dog now, and anyone would take him to the vet if there were need of it. People were taking bets to see how long it would be before the vet realised that all the different Red Dogs that looked the same were in fact the same Red Dog. So far he had been to the clinic five times, and the vet had still not put two and two together.

  When Red Dog returned to the caravan park he sniffed around until he found the freshest trail that Red Cat had left behind. There was something about that cat that interested him. He eventually tracked it to a patch of silver saltbush, where it was lying in wait for rabbits, and for just a short time they put on a repeat performance of the hissing and growling.

  Eventually it all seemed too much bother, however, and people were surprised to see them sitting side by side watching the evening coming down, listening to the kangaroos thumping out in the wilderness, just like two old folk on a bungalow verandah.

  They were unlikely friends, but friends is what they certainly became. Red Cat still hated dogs, but for Red Dog he made an exception. When Red Dog turned up at the caravan site, Red Cat would come bounding up, bump him under the chin with the top of his head, and wind in and out of his legs, tracing figures of eight, whilst he just stood there looking embarrassed. Red Dog still chased cats, but he made an exception for Red Cat. If anyone threatened his friend, it was Red Dog who ran up growling to defend him. He and Red Cat made quite a few dogs and foxes regret that they had ever ventured into their domain.

  One evening Nancy took a picture of Red Dog fast asleep under the bougainvillea with Red Cat sleeping on top of him. She had two copies printed, sent one of them to a magazine, and had the other framed so that she could put it up on the wall.

  RED DOG,

  DON AND THE RANGER

  Red Dog had travelled for about five years after John’s death before he got to know the men at the Dampier Salt Company, and this only happened because of an accident.

  He had hitched a lift with Peeto from Port Hedland back to Dampier, and had begun the journey safely enough, sitting in the front seat of the Ford Falcon, with his head out of the window as usual. The trouble was that he had eaten three sausages, a lamb chop, the remains of a steak and kidney pie, some baked beans and a bowl of cabbage with gravy at a hotel where he had befriended the cook. The consequence, of course, was another of his famous attacks of evil-smelling wind, and so Peeto had transferred him to the small trailer that he was towing behind his car.

  This trailer was heaped with swags and other camping gear, because Peeto had been on a fishing trip in the crocodile-infested mangrove swamps of Broome, and so Red Dog had been obliged to sit on top of that swaying mound, trying not to get flung off every time that the vehicle braked or went around a corner. When they reached the junction where they were to turn off towards Dampier, however, Peeto tried to get out in a hurry so that he wouldn’t have to wait for an approaching car. Red Dog was unprepared, as at that precise moment he was daydreaming about rabbits, and quite suddenly he went flying into the road, landing heavily and painfully, and twisting one of his hind legs. The car disappeared into the distance, the driver unaware that his famous passenger had parted company with him, and Red Dog hopped on three legs back to the side of the road.

  Red Dog was quite used to falling off trailers, and out of the trays of utes, as these were common mishaps for Western Australian dogs, and he knew that he would feel better before long. If necessary, three legs would be quite sufficient for walking on for the time being.

  It was a man called Don who spotted Red Dog limping towards Dampier. Don worked for Dampier Salt, the company that had transformed the landscape of the area by digging out huge, shallow rectangular pits that they filled with seawater. The water then dried away, leaving behind it the gleaming white carpets of salt that sparkled and shimmered in the bright sunshine. If you stood on the high ground outside Dampier, you could look across the saltfields and see a great white mountain in the distance, where the company had heaped their harvest high, in preparation for processing.

  Don knew all about Red Dog, and had often seen him round about, but they had never until now been introduced, which was why Red Dog didn’t leap out in front of Don’s car in order to try to stop it. Red Dog only stopped people he knew, or vehicles that he recognised.

  Don stopped, however, and got out of his car. Red Dog lay down with his tongue hanging out, and allowed Don to roll him over. Don felt the injured leg gently, and said, ‘Well, mate, I can’t find anything wrong, but I reckon it’s a trip to the vet for you.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the new vet, when Don brought the casualty in, ‘it’s Red Dog again.’

  ‘You know him then,’ said Don.

  ‘I do now,’ said the vet. ‘For a long time I thought he was several dogs who all looked the same. Then I realised it was one dog with nine lives who belonged to everyone. Never heard of anything like it. Actually you can say I know him pretty well.’

  ‘How’s that, then?’ asked Don.

  ‘’Cause he took a fancy to my little bitch, and he kept coming back, and then he decided he was going to camp out on my verandah. Well, that was all right with me, except that he started to think it was his place altogether, and that was when the trouble began. Whenever another male dog turned up, Red tried to see him off, and then one day there was a dog that only came in for his jabs, and when he left he had five stitches.’

  ‘Don’t suppose Red liked it when another dog came near his sheila,’ laughed Don.

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed the vet, nodding his head. ‘So anyway, I had to tell him to leave, ’cause I can’t have him assaulting my customers. So off he went, and now he just comes back to say hello. He gets some tucker and a snooze on the porch, and then he’s off. You know what he does? He recognises any car from Dampier, and he goes and sits next to it ’til the driver comes back.’ The vet ruffled Red Dog’s ears, and added, ‘No hard feelings, eh mate?’

  The vet examined Red Dog’s leg but couldn’t find any breaks or fractures, so he decided that it was probably badly bruised. ‘I just want to see something,’ he said to Don, and he went to his cupboard and took out a new syringe, which he removed carefully from its sterilised plastic wrapping.

  ‘What are you gonna do, doc?’ asked Don. ‘Give him an anaesthetic?’

  ‘No,’ replied the vet, ‘it’s just that I’ve noticed that Red isn’t quite his old self any more.’

  ‘Well, he’s getting on a bit, isn’t he? Grey hairs on his snout. Does anyone know how old he is?’

  ‘About eight, I think.’

  ‘Well, what do you think might be wrong?’

  The vet looked thoughtful, and said, ‘He’s eight, and he’s spent his life travelling, and roughing it when he has to, so he’s got a right to be tired. But he’s a tough fella, and just recently he’s been losing fights and getting hurt more than he ought to. I’m going to check him out for heartworm.’

  ‘Oh, yuk,’ said Don, ‘what’s that?’

  ‘Just what it sounds like,’ said the vet. ‘It’s a worm that circulates in the blood when it’s a larva, and lives in the heart when it grows up. Sometimes you get
a great fistful of them living in there, and then the dog can die. It’s getting more common, and I’ve got a feeling that’s what’s up with Red. The trouble is, I’m going to have to keep him for quite a while, and this clinic isn’t even finished. I haven’t had the cages put in yet. Can you keep him under lock and key until I get the results?’

  ‘No worries,’ said Don.

  Later on the vet made a slide of a tiny sample of Red Dog’s blood, and placed it under the microscope. He was having a campaign against heartworm, and he found the whole business of detecting it and then getting rid of it to be quite exciting. It was a well-known problem further north, but in this region he was something of a pioneer, and it was proving to be more widespread than anyone had suspected. He adjusted the focus with the knurled wheel, and there, sure enough, were dozens of the heartworm microfilaria swimming about in Red Dog’s blood. ‘Gotcha,’ he said.

  The vet did not particularly want to have Red Dog living with him whilst he underwent treatment, because it was bad idea to have him biting his other customers. He also realised that Don would be unable to keep Red Dog confined, because he would escape at the first opportunity, and that would spoil the effectiveness of the treatment. Then he had a brainwave, and he rang the ranger.

  The ranger was responsible for rounding up stray dogs and keeping them in a pen until their owners came to collect them.

  ‘Right, mate,’ said the ranger, when the vet had told him what he wanted, ‘but, you see, Red Dog isn’t really a stray, is he? He’s a sort of professional traveller.’

  ‘But he doesn’t belong to anyone, so he must be a stray.’

  ‘I see your point, but I can only hold dogs in the pound until the owner comes for them, and then they have to pay for the upkeep. So who’s going to pay for Red Dog?’

  The vet was slightly shocked; ‘Red Dog doesn’t have to pay! Red Dog’s in common.’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line, and then the ranger sighed. ‘Well, I dare say,’ he said, ‘I can keep him in the pound while you do the treatment. I can’t say I’m happy about it, ’cause the budget’s tight enough as it is, but since it’s Red Dog we’re talking about …’

  So it was that Red Dog was confined to the dog-pound with the stray dogs of Roebourne Shire, and funnily enough, he seemed quite happy about it. He appeared to know that whereas the other dogs were humble captives, he was an honoured guest, and so he shamelessly lorded it over the other dogs, keeping them in their place and being firm with them if ever they got out of line. For the time being he gave up his yearning for constant travel, and relaxed as if he were on holiday. He was so good that he even went out with the ranger to look for strays, sitting up in the front seat of the ranger’s yellow ute, whilst the strays were tied up in the back. In the meantime he submitted to all the tests and injections as if he were good-naturedly humouring the vet.

  Back at the single men’s quarters of Dampier Salt, Don told the others about how Red Dog was confined to the pound whilst he was being treated. Someone from Dampier Salt told someone else that Red Dog was in the pound, and then someone told Vanno at Hamersley Iron.

  Peeto, Vanno and Jocko were horrified. ‘Jeez,’ said Peeto, ‘ain’t that where they kill the strays?’

  ‘Only if they can’t find the owner,’ said Jocko.

  ‘Red Dog, he ain’t got an owner,’ said Peeto. ‘Only Red Dog owns Red Dog.’

  ‘They wouldn’t put down Red Dog,’ said Vanno.

  ‘The world’s full of people who’d put down Red Dog,’ said Peeto. ‘The world’s a bad place, and it’s only getting badder.’

  The men thought about it for a while, and before long their anger and concern got the better of them. ‘There’s only one thing to do,’ said Jocko at last.

  That night, at two in the morning, the three men drove to Roebourne. Outside the ranger’s pound they put on gloves, and Vanno took a large pair of boltcutters from the boot of the car. They were three foot long, capable of cutting through thick iron rods, and they seemed to weigh a ton.

  They felt just like commandos as they crept towards the wire. An owl shrieked in a Christmas tree, and they nearly jumped out of their skins. Peeto tripped over Vanno and they all said ‘shhhhhhh’ to each other. The dogs began to bark, and Peeto said, ‘We gotta be quick.’

  Vanno cut the hasp of the lock with his boltcutters, and slipped inside. Hastily he pulled a torch from his pocket, and flashed its light from one dog to another. They were barking like crazy, making a terrible noise and fuss, and he began to regret coming on this expedition at all. It occurred to him that not only might he get caught, but any one of these mutts might give him a good biting. ‘Red,’ he whispered, ‘Red, where are you?’

  He felt a muzzle nudging at his hand, and he snatched it away because he thought he was about to be attacked. He looked down, and there was the unmistakably robust shadow of Red Dog. He thrust the torch back into his pocket, picked the dog up, tucked him under his arm, and ran out, making sure that none of the other captives escaped with him.

  His co-conspirators patted him on the back and whispered their congratulations. They piled back into the car and sped away, whooping with relief and happiness, and Red Dog licked their faces and nipped at their hands. Back in Dampier they went to Peeto’s hut and drank a few stubbies to celebrate, repeating the highlights of their exploit.

  ‘Jeez,’ said Peeto, ‘that owl near killed me with fright. I almost had a little accident.’

  ‘I thought we were done for,’ said Jocko, ‘when the dogs set to barking.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Vanno, patting Red Dog on the head, and cupping his chin in his hand, ‘just look what your mates are prepared to do for you,’

  The next morning the ranger glumly rang up the vet and told him that Red Dog had been kidnapped during the night.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the vet, ‘it’s a disaster. I’ve only done half the treatment.’

  ‘We’ll have to find him and bring him back,’ said the ranger.

  ‘Yes, but how? You know what he’s like. He could easily be in Carnarvon by now, or down at Tom Price.’

  ‘We’ll just have to ask around,’ said the ranger, ‘and follow up any leads.’

  ‘Why would anyone kidnap him?’ demanded the vet, exasperated. ‘It’s so damned stupid.’

  ‘Probably thought we were going to put him down,’ said the ranger. ‘That fella’s got lots of friends.’

  The two men resigned themselves to having lost their patient, and to leaving him full of the lethal worms until he showed up again, and the ranger hung up. He got his keys from the kitchen, finished his cup of coffee and went outside into the blazing light. In the distance there was a beautiful mirage of a sailing ship in full sail above the horizon, and the ranger stopped for a moment to marvel at it. Then he got into his vehicle and drove off in the direction of the Miaree Pool. He stopped for petrol and went inside to pay the cashier.

  When he came out, he stuffed his wallet back into his pocket and then walked towards his yellow ute. The ranger could hardly believe his eyes, because there was Red Dog sitting next to the passenger door, asking to be let it. The ranger put his hand to his forehead, shook his head, and laughed.

  So it was that Red Dog finished his treament for heartworm and took on a new lease of life. He went to find Don at the Dampier Salt Company, and made friends with the men there. They were the same kind as those who worked at Hamersley Iron: exiles, foreigners, transients, people earning a fast buck so that they could start a new life elsewhere. They seldom stayed for long, but always the tradition and custom of caring for Red Dog survived.

  He was allowed to stay in whichever hut he liked; all he had to do was scratch at the door and he was welcomed in. The blokes made him a member of the union and the sports and social club, they kept a timesheet and they gave him a book of canteen tickets. His job was to polish off the leftovers. Don opened a bank account for him with the Wales Bank, under the name ‘Red Dog’, and money was paid into it w
henever the lads had a whip-round to raise funds for his vet’s bills. Don also registered him with the shire, so that he would no longer run the risk of being classified as a stray, and his official title became ‘The Dog of the North-West.’

  That may have been his official title, but at Dampier Salt he acquired another name altogether. In Australia anyone with red hair shares the common fate of being called ‘Bluey’, and that’s what they called him, too.

  RED DOG

  AND THE DREADED CRIBBAGES

  Back in the time when there were almost no houses and only two caravan parks in Karratha, Red Dog liked to call in on the caravans that belonged to his many friends and providers. He would expect to be washed, de-ticked, and fed, and then he would stay a couple of days until he felt like setting off on his travels once more.

  Red Dog particularly liked one of the parks, because that was where his mate Red Cat lived, as well as Nancy and Patsy, but, and it was a big BUT, there was one small problem. Actually, the truth is that there were two big problems, and they were married to each other.

  Mr and Mrs Cribbage were the caretakers of the caravan park. They lived off pigsnout sandwiches, sweet milky tea, and cigarettes, and it was their duty to keep the place tidy and neat. They would sort out any difficulties that people might have with water-supply or electricity. If the bulbs blew in the dunnies, Mr Cribbage would sigh with irritation and change them. If Red Cat raided a bin and overturned it, it was Mrs Cribbage who would sigh with irritation and set it upright. This is all to say that they were fairly typical caretakers, who were seldom pleased when their leisure was interrupted by their jobs, or when their cups of tea had to be abandoned in mid-sip.

  The unfortunate thing about Mr and Mrs Cribbage was that they were pernickety about enforcing the rules, even the stupid ones that any normal person would ignore, and one of these rules was ‘NO DOGS’.