Someone to Look Up To

by Jean Gill

  From then on, every time Tabby Cat left her litter, rubbing against me as she stretched her limbs before the hunt, I was extra-vigilant. A warning bark or two, just to let them know I was there, was enough to keep most predators away. But some were sneakier than others. I’d already had one twilight run-in with a fox who thought he’d help himself to the chickens and hadn’t been put off by my warnings. No, the cool character approached my territory in swift circles, giving his high bark from ten different directions. Like a gullible fool, I went to the end of my chain in each direction, barking what I’d do to him if he came close enough. And from that, he took bearings and worked out exactly what my limits were. Then he slunk in, well short of my chain length, sending a scurry of squawks and feathers as the chickens fought each other to reach their roosts in the trees. Barking mad and helpless, I watched the lunge of his maw and a brown hen grabbed, still complaining from the fox’s mouth as she disappeared with him into the dark.

  I learned from that not to give away the fact that I was chained but to stay in one position and bark, keep them guessing. Wolves and bears were unlikely to come down from the high mountains but if they did, I was ready. I practised the moves, running the length of my chain and rearing on my hind legs to clash against my imaginary opponent, while the chickens scattered around me in panic. I let my collar grow imaginary spikes – on the outside – and my chain be just one more weapon in my armoury, something I could wear with pride. ‘I am the guardian,’ I roared, shaking out the full mane of white hair which had grown since spring moult. The reply was in whinnies, yowls, mews, clucks and quacks – yes, ducks had joined the flock, churning a recent rain-pool to mud with their webbed feet.

  Twilight, the violet hour, Storytime, was also in-between the day creatures and the night creatures, when one could eat the other, and I had to stay vigilant. Sometimes I had to break off talking to Snow to send a warning out into the shadows and my senses grew ever sharper for danger, always on watch. So it happened that just when Snow was telling me about building plans and show cheats, my sixth sense was aware of swooping wings and, faster than a scream for help, one of the kittens had panicked and was running into the open, mewling as the rush of owl wings descended closer and the great talons dropped into clutch position. Tabby Cat’s cry told me she was on her way back, but not near enough, and I roared a great, ‘No!’ at the owl as I charged towards the two shapes, gnashing my teeth at the white face fixed on its prey. The kitten was trembling at my feet as, faced with seventy kilogrammes of angry patou, the owl suddenly braked and achieved as near vertical take-off as I’d ever seen. Septimus would have been in his element studying the owl but all I thought of was the little one. I picked her up in my mouth by the loose scruff of her neck and padded back near the shed, where I lay her down between my paws.

  This was how Tabby Cat found us, me licking her little daughter, who was already shaking off her fear, patting my paws with her little claws. Maternal instinct is always strongest when combined with the fear of loss, and the smell of anguish and relief rose pungent from the mother cat who dived between my great paws, hauling out her offspring, purring, then thwacking her roughly for being so stupid. I merited some hissing and spitting, whether for allowing the owl anywhere near, or for presuming to touch her kitten, or just because I was there and it felt good to hiss and spit, I don’t know. But I was also entitled to a double dose of rubbing and purring, which was duly delivered before Tabby Cat berated her daughter all the way back to their den beneath the trees.

  From that day on Little Tab visited me, tangling her tiny claws in my fur, rasping her rough tongue on any knots she found. She was the spitting image of her mother, who looked indulgently on as the light of her life whacked a patou on the nose and then skittered sideways. There were five kittens, all bouncing out of their den these days. When Little Tab ran over to me, the others formed a cautious wide-eyed band behind her, scattering like chickens if I stood up or said, ‘Boo!’ only to re-group and take teeny steps in my direction once more. It is a privilege to watch little ones grow, to re-discover the world through their curiosity and surprise, to feel the life running through their tiny bodies as they pluck up courage, tap you and run away, only to come back, bolder each time. And if one of those little ones grows up to be your good friend, this is one of the treasures life brings your way. I didn’t know what to do with the first dead mouse that Little Tab brought me but I licked her as pack anyway. And although she ranged further and further away, so her adventures were beyond my ken, when she came back there was always a warm place for her against my side or, as she’d first discovered, between my paws.

  Warmth, or rather the lack of it, was becoming more and more important for the other animals, who didn’t have my long, weather-proof coat. First snow was of course sighted on the peaks while we were still in leaf-fall but our nights too grew chill, fresh and starry, with frost sparkling around us at dawn. The shed became popular and the chickens less so; the floor below their roosts in the shed was thick in droppings that smelled of concentrated acid, that oozed black onto your paws if you accidentally stood on it and that made half the shed a no-go area. The cats moved back down to the farmhouse and its fire. My Breeder tied blankets on the horses’ backs.

  And one night the magic happened.

  ‘Snow!’ I barked at Storytime.

  ‘Snow!’ she agreed, playtime in her voice. She spared me the details of mock combat in the drifts, of rolling a patou in the deep white covering and we shared instead the pleasures I could know too, the solitary pleasure of spinning to catch the flakes on your tongue, seeing your own pawprints, rolling in a tingle of cold. The snow made us pups again and I longed for a playmate but my sister had never been able to repeat her bid for freedom; however hard she tried, she could not find a way past the shock-ribbon.

  The rapture of first snowfall diminished to familiar pleasures as the snow stayed ... and stayed. Winter had arrived and if I enjoyed the cold, I missed the friends who had moved back to the farmhouse, especially Little Tab. Once again, I adjusted to the new now of my life, watching the forest creatures who lost their shyness in hunger, scrabbling through the snow for worms and grubs, or tracking spoor across the white desert. Eyes glowed in the dark, measuring my strength and wisely deciding that my food was not for the taking. Berries grew scarce, vanishing overnight as a swoop of birds discovered them and moved on. No-one could hide in the white, nor hare nor fox, but no-one could move fast on the ground either. The advantage was to those in the air and the great raptors swept the skies, unhindered. The aim was the same but the rules had changed and everyone was adjusting, taught by cold and hunger.

  I felt neither, so I lay in the snow and watched my mountains flaunt their winter clothes, shrouded and sombre when the snow was falling then dazzling blue-white sky-snow reflections in the following daytime. Or red-white at dawn and dusk, flooding the landscape with blood. You could shrivel and cower in the shadow of such peaks or you could stand tall, throw back your head and be part of it, know your age-old right to be here, feel the mountains coursing through your veins.

  Winter cocooned me in its endless white now so that the melt took me unawares. A tiny white flower drooped its fragile head in the melting snow, alive and pushing upwards, the first round in the annual fight of spring against winter. Little Tab and the other cats re-appeared. She would always be Little Tab to me but of course she was as big as her mother now, and her purring vibrated right through my own body, though she still played the kitten between my paws.

  It was during one of winter’s late retaliations that Snow gave me the news of Mother’s death. She was in her eighth year, not old, but we big dogs do die young. The vet said that her womb had turned septic and she could only have been saved if her Human had taken her to him as soon as the symptoms began, and then she would have needed an emergency operation that may or may not have worked.

  So the warm place which had nurtured us before birth and ushered us into this world had turned poison
ous. Snow and I sang a proper farewell, told the Soum de Gaia stories, admitted one more to our store of ancestors, but what you don’t feel, you don’t feel. She had never forgiven me and I didn’t know her. Snow seemed to have finally come into her own, and her voice filled with the authority of leader, the Alpha of Soum de Gaia. You Humans think it is always a male who leads a pack. Not so. There are many examples of great female leadership, calm, decisive, fair-minded and I knew better than most that if it came to a physical challenge, Snow could flash her little teeth in a way that would have shocked her show judges. Beauty Queen and leader, she had it all. And with that knowledge came a great sense of being at ease in her own fur. So it was only a question of time before the next news reached me.

  First, there was the non-event of my second birthday, Snow yowling to me at twilight that we should do something special. ‘There’s not a lot you can do on a chain,’ I told her.

  ‘Then destroy something,’ she replied, typical Snow.

  So I did. I pounded a corner of the shed that had been snow-damaged (appropriate, I thought) and when I had bashed a hole through I took some rotting planks in my teeth and chewed on them, savouring the mould and softness of the decaying wood.

  ‘This must have rotted right through! But I can’t understand how it happened so quickly!’ my Breeder would comment the next day. ‘Any other dog and I’d think you had something to do with it, but you’re not the destructive kind...’

  So I was two years old. As was Snow. Only two.

  ‘I was far too young to be taken to Tarquin,’ Snow reflected. ‘But of course I didn’t think I was. Just another example of her greed.’

  ‘So you were too young for Rockie too,’ I teased.

  ‘That’s different,’ she said, as I knew she would, then with a hint of the little bitch she used to be, ‘you wouldn’t understand.’ There was a silence, then ‘Marc will come,’ she told me.

  ‘Someone will come,’ I bayed in return. My faith had shrunk from a glowing core to a small hard nut, un-crackable, but giving me nothing.

  The new season of show gossip started again and I noticed that one particular male was getting rave reviews, and not just from the judges. It was, as I say, just a question of time. Snow was absent more and more from Storytime and dreamily distracted when she did make contact. Her most frequent contribution was ‘Sorry, what did you say? I missed that.’

  So it came as no surprise to smell her excitement on the wind, hear her weary voice announcing, ‘I did it, Sirius, ten puppies! You’re an uncle!’

  I watched the stars long into that night and my chain chafed me in a way it hadn’t done for ages. I thought of kittens growing up and of Snow’s puppies that I would never see. But I was a dog not a Human, I had my ears and my nose, and as soon as they could yap, Snow made her pups tell stories to Uncle Sirius, tales of inter-sibling rivalries and friendships, of the pointlessness of blue and green rabbits.

  ‘Some things don’t change,’ their mother told me. ‘And you’ll never guess, Sirius. Two of my boys are dead ringers for Stratos and you.’

  Perhaps it was sisterly imagination or perhaps it was true. Perhaps two of the family faces had swum the gene pool to appear again in this new generation. I wished them both luck.

  Chapter 18.

  This was only the first litter of Snow’s puppies that would join in Storytime before their Choosing came. Snow was as fiercely proud in motherhood as in everything else and no pup of hers was allowed to step out of line. She passed on all the old family stories, all the pride in being a Soum de Gaia, but she passed on something more important, too. However much she chivvied her babies, she couldn’t disguise the tide of affection that swept over her just at the sweet clean warm-straw smell of little ones, the pat of a tiny paw or the innocent faces asleep in a puppy-pile. After their Choosing, Snow would race round her terrain, hurling last instructions out into empty air and she would fill Storytime with memories of the foibles and adventures of each of her little treasures.

  ‘There you are,’ I told her, when she passed on news of such and such a puppy, whose family had sent a photo or some gossip to our Breeder. ‘If they didn’t go out into the world, they wouldn’t have their own adventures, and you wouldn’t have all these stories to tell me.’

  Snow had stories of her own too, of travel, the show circuit and all the people she met. It was a great moment for Soum de Gaia when Savoie-Fer, now Champion of France and Spain, was eligible for Crufts, and went there. He’d have been proud of the celebrations in the Pyrenees when we heard the news that he’d won not just Best Male but Best in Breed. Snow had explained all the terms to me but I still didn’t really understand any of it. I just trusted her judgement and if she said ‘We must celebrate’ then celebrate we would. If my Breeder found that another piece of shed had mysteriously self-destructed, then so be it.

  ‘Of course he didn’t win Best in Show,’ Snow explained to me. ‘Patous never do. Even the most prettied-up, powdered patou is in a different league from most show dogs.’

  ‘A league of our own.’

  ‘Exactly. How can you compare a patou with a Pomeranian!’

  ‘Perhaps one day...’

  ‘Not in our life-time, Sirius, not till they recruit judges differently. Even with specialist judges, it’s almost the same with Best in Breed – male, male, male. Males are bigger so males are better, more patou than us females. No, they don’t judge what’s in front of them, they look for what they’ve already got in their heads. Prejudice rules. And I can tell you that they only have to see certain names – yes, including Soum de Gaia – and they’re already thinking, ‘Hmmm, I can’t go wrong if I choose that one,’ unless of course the breeder has argued with them and annoyed them – and then they go the other way! And there’s more than one judge likes a pretty face and a smile – on the handler, not the dog! Don’t get me started. If it wasn’t for my puppies and their futures, I’d say to hell with shows, but there it is.’

  Snow wasn’t the only one discovering motherhood. Little Tab had disappeared in late spring and when I heard the mewing, I knew it was only a question of time before a little stripey band of thieves and burglars played ‘Stalk the dog’ under their mother’s supervision. Little Tab herself always reclaimed pride of place against my body and, with her as role model, these kittens were the boldest I’d ever known, swinging experimentally from my tail if I stood up or batting a fly off my nose with a ‘Woops’ when they clawed my nose instead.

  And time passed. Three litters of Snow’s puppies joined Storytime and left the farmhouse. Snow’s joy echoed across the mountains when one little girl was Chosen by her Human to stay and Ulla added her little voice to the twilight. Four litters of Little Tab’s kittens discovered places on a dog’s body that kittens really shouldn’t dig their claws into. ‘Happy third birthday, little brother,’ rang into the night, and ‘Happy fourth birthday.’ I had forgotten I wore a chain, I had forgotten that I once had a family but there was always the hard nut in my stomach reminding me that I was waiting for something, that I was observing others’ lives, not living my own. But I think I’d realised that this might be it. That you could spend your whole life waiting and you just had to make the best of it. My youth was over.

  So it was a shock when, having already seen my Breeder that morning for top-up on food, I heard two voices coming up my hillside.

  ‘I’ve looked after him for nearly three years now – and I can tell you that no other breeder would do that for a dog. You do it for one and every irresponsible owner thinks he can just return a dog when he’s had enough, like taking clothes back to the shop.’ Same old story. I lay down again. ‘Well I can’t keep him any longer. This is a working farm and we need the land.’

  ‘Have you tried to find a home for him?’ Female, warm, melodic voice, hiding thoughts.

  ‘Well of course, we tried.’ Big sigh. ‘But people want puppies. And I have to be honest so if someone asked about him, I’d have to say that he bit a child. That�
��s why he was in the S.P.A. you know. And as soon as they contacted me, I went running to rescue him. But I have my own dogs to think of and...’

  ‘So tell me about him.’ A hint of coldness.

  ‘He’s a beautiful dog, a Soum de Gaia of course – I assume you’re familiar with our pedigree? His first owners separated and the second owners were probably too soft with him. You need a fist of iron in a velvet glove with Pyreneans, you know. You have to be firm.’

  ‘So I keep being told.’

  ‘I’d forgotten, you know the breed of course. Do you have any yourself?’

  ‘One three-year old I adopted, and a black patou puppy.’

  Tinkling laughter. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, but that must be a Newfoundland. There’s no such thing as a black patou.’

  ‘She is a one-off. Dad has never been identified but all she seems to have got from him is the colour – she’s pure patou. Black patou.’

  Audible sniff. ‘Well Sirius is a good guardian, marvellous with other animals – he lives with horses, cats, even chickens.’ My heart sank. I could see the new S.P.A. notice already, ‘Sirius, Pyrenean Mountain Dog, 4 years old. Good with animals.’ Was I really four years old? ‘He’s not suitable for a household with children, of course.’ Of course. ‘And I think you’ll find that he’s quite sociable, although he hasn’t seen anyone other than me for some time...’

  ‘For how long exactly?’

  ‘Well... let me see... for nearly three years actually.’

  There was a long, cold silence.

  ‘And how is he with other dogs?’

  ‘Obviously I haven’t been able to keep him with my dogs...’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘... but in principle there’s no problem.’

  And the two figures came into view and I couldn’t help myself. Even if she was from a S.P.A., even if it meant madness in a pen, she smelled of happy dogs and my tail wagged of itself when I saw her and as soon as she came within reach, she held out her arms and said ‘You sweetheart, you,’ I didn’t have to be asked twice. I jumped at her, put my paws on her shoulders, licked her face and she didn’t seem in the least bit taken aback. She laughed and scratched behind my ears, blew at me with a horse-noise and laughed again when I shook my head, stood down and wuffed. I went into a play-bowing position and she stamped her feet. I bounced, she stamped her feet again. She ran backwards, I ran towards her – and the chain stopped me. I stood looking at her, unable to get closer and her mouth turned into a narrow slit as her eyes focused on the chain.