by Jean Gill
‘THE stick in a forest.’
‘THE biscuit in a bakery’
‘Show us the object, give us a sniff and we follow our noses.’
‘Noses never fail.’
‘So on this particular occasion, it was business as usual, just like in class. There was a pile of national flags and all Neu had to do was pick out the French flag, tricolour they call it, pre-sniffed of course. He was chosen because he’s black.’
‘Not because I’m better, no, no, no, we work together when we can – Casper leads and I follow, checking for false trails. What we’d really like is to work for the drugs squad, preferably at an airport, but I don’t think our Human is up to it and so we have to do our best with the Handler we have.’
‘Anyway, there was Neu, in the middle of the field, surrounded by all the villagers and tourists. My master was right at the edge of the field, as if he was giving instructions but we all knew that Neu had it in the bag, without needing any encouragement. Neu had the tricolour in his teeth, gently so as not to tear it, the crowd ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ a bit so Neu teased them a bit longer, then that scent hit his nostrils. You could see his face twitch.’
Neu’s face obligingly repeated the motion. ‘Sausage,’ he reminisced, ‘in a burger bun. And I wanted to show them a bit more for their money. Anyone can do the tricolour.’
‘But only my brother could have retrieved a hot dog from the beer tent and come back for the flag! From the moment he ran off the field and into the tent I could see his plan and I was barking myself hoarse telling him to go for it!’
‘But it was not to be. I told you our Human just isn’t bright enough. He caught me when I was on my way back for the flag, with the hot dog in my mouth and he growled me out for leaving the field. The crowd was laughing and cheering, Casper here was cheering me on, but the moment was lost. My master held onto me and I couldn’t get back to the flag for my grand finale. It’s hard to forgive them sometimes but you have to remember how limited their faculties are. What about your Human?’
While we were swopping stories about our Humans, I kept half an ear on the conversation between the sources of our many disappointments. A good patou always has half an ear for what his master’s doing.
After they had performed the hand-shaking and verbal pleasantries, they got down to the nitty gritty. ‘Yes, I’m an old hand,’ the cockers’ master, François, told Marc. ‘My two are very talented, especially for tracking, but easily distracted. I want to keep going with basic obedience as well as some of the further training, so we’re back here again. You’re after the basic?’
‘Yes, the basic will be just fine for us.’
‘Well if I can channel some of the enthusiasm these two put into the wrong things, I’ll be a happy man. I could have killed them last week but I’m starting to see the funny side now. We live out in the wilds, no-one within miles,’
‘That would be useful.’
‘A barker huh?’ Marc nodded. ‘Well the disadvantage is that we’re a sitting duck for burglars and last week it happened. We came home and found a window smashed and all the electrical stuff gone, and the house completely trashed, stuffing coming out of furniture, books torn and thrown around, just sheer destruction. At the time we were relieved when we found the dogs were still there, safe and sound, and asleep in their beds.
Then the police came, did their little bit of forensic, and we found out why the dogs were so tired. It was the dogs that trashed the place. As far as the police can work out, the burglars smashed a window, entered, took the white goods and left through the door. If they had any contact with the dogs at all, then it was probably some attempt at friendly play. For whatever strange dog logic, the burglary triggered off some desire to join in or something, or stress at strangers being there, who knows... anyway, trash the place they did. I don’t know if the wife is ever going to forgive them for that... one reason we’re here is to get them out of her sight for an hour. ‘
‘Oh, my Christine just adores Sirius. We’ve had him from a puppy you know. He’s still a puppy now really.’
‘A puppy. Right.’
‘He might be a bit bigger than your average but he’s still going to be a puppy in his head until he’s at least two.’
‘Perhaps you should take him to puppy class then! But I’d pity the other pups! Speaking of which, that’s the puppies going. We’re on. Come on, boys. Good luck, Marc.’
The trainer, a woman of medium height, held a bicycle horn, which, we were told, was the signal to the masters to give whatever command word she instructed. So it was supposed to go something like this ; trainer pumps horn – beep beep noise and trainer says, ‘Tell your dogs to sit’ – master says, ‘Sit’ – dog (me) sits – treat and praise – dog (me) gets up.
‘No, no, no, Marc – your dog mustn’t get up until you tell him to. You need to have a release command.’
‘I do? But I’ve never had a problem with him getting up or carrying on after a command.’
‘I haven’t got time to explain now Marc, just do it please.’ Ten pairs of canine eyes all turned in my direction. The honour of a patou was at stake. We walked around the ring again until ‘Beep-beep-beep’ and I didn’t wait for the rest, I sat – I’d show these B. Shepherds how sharp I could be if I wanted to and I would be straight up again after my treat. Unfortunately, Marc also felt challenged on the honour stakes, so when I tried to get straight up, he kept saying, ‘Stay, stay, stay,’ and pushing down on my rear end like it was a burger in a bap. Well, I just pushed right back and then skipped sideways so the two us sprawled in a heap with him saying, ‘He didn’t get up, though, did he.’
The trainer was shaking her head and we now had the attention of everyone in the room. ‘He mustn’t sit down when the beep goes, Mark, but when YOU say the word, and then you only give the command ONCE. And you need a command word for the release. Try ‘enough’ or ‘thank you’.
‘How’s about ‘nightmare’!’ muttered Marc, then more loudly. ‘So let me get this right. If he sits down too soon, I have to stop him sitting down, then I have to make him sit down at the right moment, then I have to stop him getting up, then I have to make him get up at the right moment and the right moment is whenever I say the right command word? Right?’
‘Exactly. Now I know you’re new Marc, but everyone needs their share of attention so perhaps you can just try your best?’ Marc tried his best. To be honest, I was getting a bit confused what with beeps and the trainer using our special words, then Marc using our special words and then all those sits and ups were losing me a little until the moment Marc yelled, ‘Sit Down, God damn it!’ and then I was completely lost. Every eye in the room was on me and I didn’t have a clue whether he meant ‘Sit’ or ‘Down’ so I waited a minute for clarification and then took a guess and lay down. 50:50 chance and I guessed wrong, or so I figured as Marc tried to haul me back into a sitting position. He’d told me at the vet’s that my current weight was 45kg and he’d seemed quite proud of that at the time but he was sweating now.
‘Time for a switch. Let’s try recall,’ said the trainer. ‘OK, in pairs, please. Marc, if you watch the first pair, you’ll get the idea.’
We all stood at one side of the hall then one by one, each master gave his dog to someone else, went across to the other side of the room, called the ‘Come here’ or something a bit like it and the dog was let loose to go to its master and get a treat. Boy, those Shepherds were keen and even the spaniels were hot under the paws to cross that room. Then it was our turn. Monsieur Cocker took my lead and Marc walked over to the other side of the room.
‘Here boy,’ he called. ‘Come here, Izzie.’ His voice shook a bit. ‘There’s a good boy,’ he pleaded.
The lead dropped, I started towards Marc, just from habit, not rushing of course. I wasn’t a Shepherd and I needed to think this one out. I had already taught Marc ‘Come here’ – it meant I went to him if I felt like it and I got a treat. What was in it for me to cross that
room to him? I couldn’t find a good answer to that. Why had the other dogs done it? That was an easy question. Either they didn’t have their masters properly under control so they felt they had to genuinely do what they were told, every time (perish the thought) or, Theory 2, they were getting better treats than I was. No, the more I thought about it, the better it would be for Marc’s training if I didn’t go to him. I needed to make it clear in front of all these Shepherds who was boss in our house, so I walked half-way, just to make it clear that the command was understood all right, so we could use it again another time if I wanted to, and then I headed off to say hello to a pretty Belgian at the far end of the row. Marc kept up his ‘Here Sirius’ for a bit until it became obvious that I wasn’t going to go anywhere near him and then the trainer moved over to join him.
‘Once only for the command, Marc, and say it as if you mean it. Let me show you. What’s his name again?’
‘Sirius.’
‘Right. Sirius, come here.’ She snapped it out nicely, even if she did use my long, I’m cross-with-you name, and her own Belgian Shepherd sat bolt upright in the corner where he’d been minding his own business since he’d been told to stay there. When he realised that he wasn’t the one being called, he lay down again peacefully. I remembered Theory 2 so I ambled over to the trainer to check it out. ‘Good boy!’ She gave me the same old treats I’d been getting from Marc and I still remember the disappointment. That was the last time I’d come when anyone called me, unless I felt like it.
‘We’ll call that the end for today,’ announced the trainer, beaming. ‘You know what you need to work on for next time, Marc, and I’m sorry but we just can’t afford individual attention, you know. Some of the others here are moving on to agility and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these names figuring right up there among the best.’
‘Thanks,’ said Marc.
That night, we gave up waiting for Christine to come home and she woke us up when she did.
‘You’re late.’
‘You know what the girls are like. How did class go?’ asked Christine, as she climbed into bed.
‘Great,’ said Marc, ‘but you were probably right not to come. I think you’d find it boring.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, darling. And I have so much to do, anyway.... no, don’t do that... I’m really tired...’
Chapter 6.
‘He’s taken over our life, Marc. He chews everything, he steals everything and he still pees round the house! At nine months!’
‘He’s not peeing. He’s territory-marking now he’s an adolescent. He’s got all the testosterone kicking in.’
‘You can do as much male bonding as you like but it looks like pee to me, it smells like pee and it sure as hell has to be cleaned up like pee!’
‘Give Christine a paw,’ Marc told me, so I did. And I cocked my head on one side to give her a sideways look. That usually did the trick. But today I might as well have cocked my leg, and over her, to judge by the reaction.
‘Go away, Sirius’. The words were accompanied by a shove. Ah, she wanted to play. I shoved her back. ‘See,’ she shouted, ‘he won’t do anything he’s told. Nothing!’ And she left the game and the room, while I wagged my tail, hoping to calm the atmosphere. I looked at Marc.
‘Come on boy. Let’s go out,’ Now that really got the tail wagging and we walked and walked, sharing our thoughts on Christine for a long time. Hormones, we agreed. Hers, not mine.
When we got back to the house, the kitchen table was set for lunch and Christine seemed much calmer. The phone rang and Christine rushed to answer it while Marc went to hang his coat up. Naturally, I investigated lunch. I could hear Marc heading back to the kitchen, so, a bit short of time, I selected some cheese.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Marc moved the cheeses out of reach and sat down to guard the table. I couldn’t say a word. My mouth was full of the most wonderful milky, fruity, salt taste I had ever known but unfortunately my teeth had sunk into the cheese and stuck solid. I couldn’t move my tongue. How was I going to breathe? No sooner had the thought occurred than I needed to and I couldn’t . ‘Wmppp,’ I tried to tell Marc but no sound arrived. ‘Wrrrrt,’ I tried again. He didn’t even look at me.
‘See you Tuesday then.’ The telephone clicked back into its holder and Christine was actually humming to herself when she came into the kitchen.
‘Who was that?’
‘Marie.’ Christine sat down to eat, oblivious to my silent pleas, even though I stood there, quivering. She looked at the cheeses. ‘Where’s the Beaufort?’
‘Ah,’ said Marc. I was out of the room for a minute and I think Sirius might have had a little bit of cheese...’
‘Marc!’ Christine was shrieking again. She did that even more these days. ‘It wasn’t a little bit! It was a slab of Beaufort.’ She turned to me, her eyes narrowing. At last. I wagged my tail, desperately, hopefully. ‘Oh my God, it’s still there! Look at him – he’s got cheeks like a hamster’s.’
‘You big idiot,’ Marc told me, as he prized open my jaw and stretched it enough to remove my trophy. I tried for a snatch at just a little bit as it flew out of reach but I was too late. It broke my heart to see all that wonderful cheese going out of reach, into the bin. I’d have to work on jaw-strengthening exercises before going for anything that big again but it would be worth it. I licked all the bits stuck in my teeth and was licking them again when I heard a sound I hadn’t heard for a while. Christine was laughing. Better still, Marc joined in and the two of them leaned against each other for support, pointing at me and laughing some more. Humans. No understanding them. I just carried on licking my teeth.
Marc and I kept going to training classes. The best bit was catching up on gossip while we waited for the puppies to finish. Some of the Shepherds had interesting stories to tell even though they seemed a bit driven in everything they did. Everything was a competition; who could sit the fastest, who could catch a ball without it bouncing, who could hear a mouse squeak a thousand miles away. They probably competed in their dreams. But I was way ahead of them in training Humans and I was so proud of Marc, I felt I could indulge him by responding to the command words most of the time. He was happy and the trainer kept holding Marc up as a shining example of how well her methods worked. Life couldn’t have been better.
Each time we went out for a walk, the ground smelled more of mouldering leaves and if there was a strong wind, trees would shake the leaves in a storm around us as we walked, a crunch or a squelch underfoot as we walked, depending on the weather. It was warm but no longer too hot and the rivers had filled up again so they were ‘healthier’ according to Marc. We met up with new friends, a Newfoundland and his Human, someone from Marc’s work.
The first time we met up, we walked the path by the river, where sweeps of pebble border merged the ripples with the land. It had been some time since I’d met a dog the same size as me, never mind bigger, and the relief of playing no-holds-barred was so great, I was in the water before you could say, ‘Wet stuff.’
‘Marc,’ I howled, ‘drowning!’ but the two Humans were continuing along the path oblivious to my head going under for the third time. And then the scruff of my neck was pulled, shaken and I came up for breath once more. My legs were automatically paddling like a chicken’s in a fox’s mouth and I found that if I kept my head low in the water, just nostrils out for breathing, instead of struggling to get my head as high as possible, I could at least keep breathing.
‘Like this, dummy,’ Porthos told me, as he struck out for the middle of the river. If you’ve never seen a Newfie swim, you should. And what a teacher! It’s not just webbed paws they have, it’s water on the brain. They’re in their element and they know it. ‘Hey, watch me Sirius!’ and he lunged with all the power in those shoulders, stretching his muzzle to grip a dead branch with his teeth and shift it from a rock cleft into mid-flow. He shifted his teeth to one end of the branch, directing the other end nearer and nearer my mouth and
I took the hint. There we were, clamped onto a branch, going with the flow. Dog, but it was fun. ‘More power to your back legs and less splash,’ he’d yell. ‘Splash is just for fun. Don’t do an aroundera in the water for Dog’s sake!’ Porthos just kept inventing games and improving my technique and it’s quite possible that we really didn’t hear our masters the first four times they yelled ‘Come here!’
‘See you again, sport,’ said Porthos’ master and I didn’t know if he was talking to me or Marc but it sounded good either way. And it was. An afternoon in the river with Porthos was the best work-out a dog could want. One time we saved a man’s life. Newfies do it all the time, you know. Porthos told me all about his heroes, the Sea Rescue team down at les Saintes-Maries in the Camargue. He’d watched them on a Show Day and picked up some techniques. ‘The sea teddy-bears,’ they called them. Can you imagine! A bit like having a ‘fluffy firemen’ day! But they’re good, believe me. First you’ve got to have the swimming skills and the strength but then the knack is in the teeth. You’ve got to grip the right bit in the right way. If it’s a Human drowning, then the wrist is the bit to hang onto. ‘When we were with our masters, Porthos showed me where the wrist was. ‘Not too tight or you’ll break the skin and that counts as biting, but not too loose either or you’ll lose him. And then there’s objects that Humans might be on top of, like boats or floats – if your teeth so much as touch an inflatable – pzow! bits of rubber everywhere and screaming Human to deal with. No, you’ve got to find something you can grip...’
So when we saw a man in a boat adrift on the river, holding some sort of stick with string on it, jerking his arm back and forward in a plea for help, we were on the case so fast the Teddy-bears Rescue Team would have begged us to join. With all his experience, Porthos went straight for the painter and I followed his lead, finding enough room further along the rope to get my teeth round it too. We both locked jaws round the painter for all we were worth and started towing the boat safely to the shore. The man was still shocked from his near-death experience and was shouting and waving the stick in the air. He’d been there so long that there was even a fish trapped on the end of his string but, with all the waving around, the fish soon wriggled free. We battled against the current, which runs deep and cold in some parts of the river, eddying round hidden boulders or submerged tree trunks. The boat was heavy and my jaws were aching by the time we got the man safely to the bank, where our masters were waiting anxiously.
