A Job for All Seasons

by Phyllida Barstow

  Then there is the vexed question of the particular space within the house which he can call his own. Given the choice, a dog will opt for an armchair, well-upholstered sofa or even a box-spring mattress well above floor-level draughts, and to this he will naturally gravitate despite his owner’s vigilance, even when he has been taught to lie in a basket on the ground. Even in his own home, jumping on furniture is generally forbidden, and absolutely taboo in other people’s houses; nor must he relieve himself on the carpet, bury bones beneath the sofa cushions, or chew rugs and chair-legs.

  Outside the house he may not bite strangers, chase sheep or cats, dig up flowerbeds, bark at postmen, snap at children, eat cowpats or roll in badger droppings. He may not scratch at fleas or lick his privates in company, fight, chase bitches, pheasants or livestock.

  The list of no-nos is never-ending, and nearly as restrictive are the things he must do to order, though few if any come naturally to him. Walking at heel. Sitting and staying. Keeping still and quiet while guns blast off close to him. Picking up dead game and delivering them to his handler without taking so much as a bite for himself. Coming back when called, even if the scent of a hot bitch or a catchable rabbit is burning his nose, drawing him like a powerful magnet, and his owner’s voice is faint in his ears. And he must travel in the luggage space of a smelly, noisy, metal box on wheels, and remain incarcerated there, sweltering or shivering according to season, until his master at last returns to the vehicle.

  Hardly the existence Man should wish on his best friend, but that’s what a dog’s life boils down to, and because so little of what he is allowed to do comes naturally, a battle of wills is inevitable – a battle which I invariably lose. Does it really matter? I think when the dog disobeys a direct order, and because he senses my uncertainty, he instantly decides: No, it doesn’t.

  Look at good dog-trainers and you see at once that uncertainty never enters their minds. They have a particular tone of voice – sharp, minatory, hard-edged – which commands canine attention. Strong, confident and focused, they know exactly how to dominate, exploiting their dog’s inbuilt desire to keep in with the leader of the pack. In fact, to train dogs successfully you have to become the leader of the pack, endlessly dominant, utterly consistent. You are the boss, and neither of you must forget it for a moment. You mustn’t allow the dog to go through a door ahead of you, you must not lie on the ground so he can look down on you. You must reward obedience and punish rebellion instantly, just as a pack-leader does, and your dog will understand the rules because that is the way canine society is ordered.

  Knowing how to treat a dog is one thing but putting the knowledge into practice quite another. I have never been a pack leader, finding the whole business of being the boss mentally exhausting. And this is no doubt why, within a few months of Kate’s arrival with us, her standards of behaviour had slipped noticeably. Ron had confounded medical opinion by living another two years after his first appearance at our house, so Kate was fully grown – a quiet, meek, short-coupled labrador with a charmingly broad domed head and sleek short coat, a broad otter-tail, and the sort of figure that easily spreads.

  Too quiet, she seemed to me. Too biddable, in fact verging on the lethargic, and in an effort to cheer her up I relaxed many of the strict rules she had been trained to respect. At first she looked amazed when incited to jump on to the wide sofa which took up most of one wall of Duff’s study, and when she eventually crept on to it she looked the picture of guilt: with bent legs and drooping ears, she curled up very small in the farthest corner and kept completely still.

  A month later, however, and she was sprawling at her ease, paws stretched out fore and aft, even raising her hackles if another animal looked like joining her – such a fixture on the sofa that any human who wanted to sit there had difficulty inducing her to budge up and make room.

  I also found it hard to resist the interest she showed in my cooking. It was undeniably convenient to have an eager scullery-maid who would clean the roasting tin right down to the shiny metal: she saved me a fortune in Brillo pads. She would rapidly hoover up any foodstuff from the floor, and edge-of-plate scraps rejected by the children found an appreciative consumer. So great was the appeal in her big brown lollipop eyes, so charming the gently-waving tail as she sat right beside one’s chair, that the temptation to slip her bits off the plate was almost overwhelming.

  Inevitably her figure, which had always been comfortable, began to balloon, for despite all the exercise she took on her sporting expeditions, around the house she was extremely indolent and often remained in the same place for hours on end. I was surprised, too, to find how much the presence of a single labrador added to the housework. Quite apart from large, muddy pawprints on the kitchen floor’s tiles, her black coat was continually shedding, not just in the normal seasonal changes of spring and autumn, but all year round.

  When it began to come out in handfuls, I was alarmed enough to arrange a blood test. It revealed an under-performing thyroid gland, which explained not only her bulging eyes but also her habitual lethargy. The vet gave her pills, but these came too late to prevent her entire coat falling out. Few creatures look more repellent than a fat, bald labrador with a grey, wrinkled skin and I am sure poor Kate felt it keenly. Though the vet assured us it was nothing catching, her unnatural appearance made people disinclined to touch her, as they would have shrunk from a leper. No one was more relieved than me when at last a faint fuzz began to cover her nakedness, but it was a good six months before she looked normal again.

  Kate was nearly four when we woke up with a jolt to the fact that if we wanted to breed from her, it was now or never. In fact she was already rather old for a prima gravida, but since she had been full-grown when we had took her on, we had nearly forgotten that her breeding window was rapidly closing. Once a bitch has had one litter, and proved that all systems are in working order, she can go on breeding merrily into old age – my mother’s labrador produced four puppies when she was ten years old – though obviously the process is riskier for an elderly bitch, and the Kennel Club declines to register puppies born to mothers over eight.

  The hunt began at once for a suitable sire, one who would complement Kate’s looks and character and minimise those aspects in which she was less than perfect, in particular the malfunctioning thyroid. A well-bred energetic dog with a good thick coat and a host of distinguished ancestors was what we had in mind, and pretty soon we found what appeared an ideal partner, Goldcoin by name, a proven stud dog with the coveted Ch for Champion liberally scattered throughout his pedigree, of charming looks and nature, and living a mere thirty miles away.

  Kate duly came in season, a date was arranged, and the mating took place with never a hitch. Very soon it was apparent that she was pregnant, and we waited with bated breath for the happy event.

  What we had failed to take into account, however, was that we would have been better suited by a working labrador sire rather than one bred for the show-bench. Even working labradors fall into two categories, the so-called Peg Dog which traditionally belongs to a Gun – usually a large-boned retriever with a noble head who is required to sit quietly at his master’s peg throughout each drive, and only pick up the birds he has shot when the horn has blown and the guns fall silent – and the Keeper’s Dog – generally sharper, lighter and more athletic in build and distinctly more energetic – who hunts through the coverts in the beating line, driving game towards the guns.

  Show labradors, on the other hand, are bred less for sporting use than for their looks and sunny natures. All the built-in physical characteristics of the breed are slightly exaggerated. Their noses are shorter, their foreheads and chests broader, their coats thicker. They are generally more rounded in figure than either of the working types, and must be placid enough to wait for their classes for hours, sit on a bench, submit to endless grooming, and look happy when obliged to pose with their tails humiliatingly stretched out by their handlers.

  Goldcoin – aka Barney
– belonged in the show-dog category. He had never been trained to retrieve game, and though friendly and extrovert by nature as well as being undeniably handsome with his rich, thick yellow coat, short broad head, and blunt tail, he was at heart a pet rather than a compagnon de chasse, lacking the special skills needed by sporting dogs: their drive and stamina, unquestioning obedience, the hunting instinct hardwired into the depths of their being. Kate herself, though bred on the same lines, had never been near the showring and was a fanatically keen hunter. A better choice of sire to complement her bloodline would have been a Field Trial Champion, but with her about to give birth it was too late for second thoughts.

  The long-expected day came, and passed, and nothing happened. Two more crawled by, with Kate becoming balloonlike and more lethargic by the hour, and then one wet evening when we had almost forgotten her condition and were about to go to bed, she lumbered off the sofa and asked to go outside.

  I opened the back door and saw her pad off towards the lilac bush on the edge of the little pond and, when I called her a few minutes later for her bedtime biscuit, she hurried back indoors shaking water from her coat, and heaved herself back on the sofa.

  No action tonight, we thought; but seeing she was already overdue we decided to take turns in checking her at four hourly intervals. It seemed that I had barely fallen asleep before Duff was shaking me awake again, saying, ‘She’s had two puppies,’ and sure enough, there was Kate looking very pleased with herself, whining softly as she licked and nuzzled the rolypoly little slugs, one yellow, one black, the picture of fulfilled motherhood.

  And that, it seemed, was that. Labradors are noted for large litters, and the vet had told us to expect four puppies at least, but everything in Kate’s demeanour suggested she considered the incident closed. No huffing or straining or panting: all she seemed to yearn for was a good long sleep. The puppies didn’t look particularly big, but after waiting for two hours we decided she wasn’t going to produce any more, so we arranged a barrier of chairbacks and cushions to stop them falling on to the floor, gave Kate a fresh bowl of water, and went back to bed.

  Next morning brought a sad explanation. Two dead puppies, sodden with rain, lay in the garden, one under the lilac bush and the other on the concrete path – a sharp lesson never to allow an overdue bitch out alone, particularly in the dark. Still, Kate buckled down to motherhood with great enthusiasm and the little survivors grew exponentially on rations designed for four.

  From the sofa where they were born, they moved to a comfortably secluded, curtained lair in the lower half of one kitchen cupboard, which we had adapted to serve as a whelping box, and for the next three weeks it was easy to forget they were there, so quietly did the sleek little butterballs sleep and feed, feed and sleep in their dark cave, so discreetly did their mother pop in and out to attend to them. It was a happy, tranquil, easygoing period: the calm before the storm.

  The first indication that calm had run its course was when I glanced down and met the gaze of bright eyes peering out from beneath their curtain. Next morning four front paws were reaching for the top of the confining plank, and hours later a fat body hoisted itself ponderously on to the edge, swayed back and forth, and plopped like a jellyfish on to the lino. Hastily I put it back where it belonged, but that was it: once one had the trick, the other followed. By lunchtime it was plain that kitchen days were over.

  Time to move to the outdoor kennel, but now the weather, which had been exceptionally warm for April, turned wet, cold and windy. We screened the front of the kennel with a builders’ sheet to cut down the draught and, though it was distinctly colder than the kitchen, cuddled together in the carpeted inner house the puppies were cosy enough.

  Now the pace of their development hotted up. Hardly had we learnt to cope with one stage than they were on to the next. Worming at weekly intervals. Solid food to take the strain off Kate, who was beginning to look gaunt and ragged although she was eating wolfishly. Since this was before the days of specially-balanced puppy-feed containing all essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals and so on, we gave them raw beef mince mixed first with Farex (in which they dabbled their paws and spread all over the newspaper on which we had placed the bowl), then with bashed-up dog-biscuit.

  By now Kate was getting pretty fed up with their demands, and visited them only briefly before hopping out of the kennel with a martyred look. We gave them playtime for twenty minutes or so morning and evening and this, together with feeding and cleaning out the kennel, took sizeable chunks out of our waking hours as the puppies grew more athletic and adventurous. Their energy would seem inexhaustible until they returned to the kennel to crash out in a gently twitching dog-pudding; inexhaustible, too, was their goodwill towards people.

  They learnt to come to a whistle and a reward of mince, and perfected less admirable skills like rolling in muck, tearing clumps of lupins to shreds, and open-cast mining on the lawn. Chickens squawked and fled at their approach, the horses trod warily, careful not to step on soft paws. The cats eyed them coldly and stood their ground with fur fluffed out and tails bent in menacing arches until the puppies retreated abashed, ears drooping.

  Meanwhile, we were coping with paperwork and the vaccinations puppies need before they leave home or mix with other dogs. Forms flew back and forth from the Kennel Club and eventually we were issued with an eight-generation pedigree for each of them. Since there were only two we were spared the worry of choosing new owners. The spherical black bitch we called Pumpkin and planned to keep, while Buie – the yellow dog who looked so like his father – was going to live with him in part payment of the stud fee.

  All our subsequent ventures into breeding labradors have, with minor variations, followed very much the same pattern – a month of peace followed by four weeks of intense activity – but the real difference has been that in every other case the litters have been much larger, and at the age of eight weeks most of the puppies had to be sold. Eight from Pumpkin’s first litter of nine. Seven from her second, and seven again – all of whom we sold – from an unauthorised misalliance with an Irish sheepdog. Pumpkin’s daughter Pansy produced seven, eight, and eleven puppies and Jemima, a black bitch from a different family when Kate’s line came to an end, produced first nine and then a whopping twelve, far too many for her to cope with alone.

  Even when we and Nature had reduced the litter to a manageable size, they meant continual hard work for us all, plus an anxious fortnight while we assessed the characters and capabilities of people who replied to advertisements. There is a critical moment in a puppy’s development, between the age of eight and ten weeks, when it is weaned by its dam and needs to bond anew, preferably with a human, and any delay makes the process harder and the relationship less secure.

  When the advertisements appeared in the sporting and local press, the telephone would begin to ring and keep it up intermittently for several months – long after all the puppies were placed – as people read back numbers of the magazine and were seized with a desire for a young labrador. But how can you tell from a half-hour visit whether a total stranger is a suitable owner for your puppy?

  We made some ground rules. Callers who asked if the dog would be all right on his own while they were out at work all day we dismissed out of hand, and we were wary of those who said their children longed for a puppy, but even with those caveats it was difficult to choose between prospective buyers.

  They were all so different. Sometimes the wife called the shots and sometimes the dog-lover was plainly the husband. Some brought ‘expert’ friends who clapped loudly in the astonished puppies’ faces and gave them psychological tests. Others clasped them to their bosoms and shrieked when their faces were licked. Some were keen on bloodlines and assiduously perused pedigrees and hip/eye scores, but many prospective owners barely glanced at the papers. Some asked the price and held whispered consultations; others simply reached into their back pockets.

  One sturdy black dog puppy was bought and paid for in minutes
by a local woman who seemed both knowledgeable and sensible, only for her to bring him back next morning saying shamefacedly that her four-year-old son was terrified of him. Another dog from the same litter we saw driven away with deep misgiving because although the husband wanted him, the wife, who would be in charge of him during office hours, was tepid-to-cool about having a dog at all. She would have preferred a bitch, fearing that a dog might lift his leg against her yew hedges, but since all the bitches were already spoken for, it was the dog or nothing.

  We worried a good deal about that puppy – needlessly as it turned out, for when we saw him a year later he was plainly the pride of the family, tall, handsome, and completely at one with his owners. What’s more, the yew hedges had survived unscathed.

  At ten weeks, when all his siblings had been sold, a single yellow dog puppy remained from Jemima’s second litter and, inconveniently, I had lost my heart to him. Not a good choice. He was a low-slung, rather serious little chap, always half a beat behind the others. The wrong colour for deer-stalking, the wrong sex for a bitch-owning household, but I loved him, weaving fantasies of a non-sporting companion who would help with the sheep and poultry and scorn the pursuit of game.

  It was not to be. At the eleventh hour a large, jolly Indian lady, a professional carer, swept into the yard and scooped him into her arms. Even I could see they were made for one another. Spreading sweetness and light among the sick and elderly was just what this puppy would do best. As her big 4x4 drove away, his solemn yellow face and ears just visible above the dashboard, we could only wish him – along with the rest of the litter – all the luck in the world, because he was sure to need it.