A Job for All Seasons

by Phyllida Barstow

  Try as the breeder may to give each puppy he sells the best possible chance, there is no ducking the fact that a dog’s life is a lottery. Once they leave home you are unlikely ever to see them again, and you have no control over the circumstances in which they will spend the next fifteen-odd years. With hindsight, I see we were lucky that Kate’s first litter presented us with no problems of ownership at all.

  Kate and Pumpkin, Pumpkin and Pansy, Pansy and Zephyr – we continued with mother-and-daughter partnerships through several generations, always retaining one female descendant of Kate’s until that particular line came to a halt with Zephyr who, despite repeated attempts, failed to breed. But though the female line had remained constant, a different sires had produced large variations in their looks and temperament.

  Show-bred on both sides, Pumpkin was as round as her name implies, but when we chose as her mate a lean, rangy Field Trial Champion, the resulting puppies were slim and long-legged, twice as fast as their dam and, it has to be said, far from biddable. Pansy could run down a rabbit and would course a wounded pheasant over several fields before shouts and whistles recalled her to a sense of her duty. Even when held at the peg by a choke lead, she could burst my fingers open with a violent heave if she saw the chance of leaping at a low-flying bird, and by no stretch of imagination could she be called a good gun-dog.

  As a deerstalker’s helpmeet, however, she came into her own, creeping silently behind Duff as he padded through the woods at dawn and dusk, ready to freeze to immobility when he put out a warning hand, and drop to the ground at the faintest hiss. He could leave her sitting, tense as a wire spring, while he crawled forward into a firing position, and if by chance temptation overcame her and she wriggled forward to join him, it was in absolute silence.

  She never had the least difficulty in distinguishing between her two roles, and automatically adjusted her behaviour according to whether he was carrying a rifle or a shotgun. The faintest jingle of the keys to the gun cupboard had her out of her basket in a trice, huffing and wiggling and thrashing her tail with delight at the prospect of sporting action. Though a black dog shows up very clearly against the soft greys and greens of hills when stalking red deer in Scotland, she was so low to the ground that providing she stayed to heel, the legs of the stalkers in front concealed her until they actually moved on to their firing point, when she had to be put on the lead and held a few yards back for fear of inadvertently spooking an out-lying deer. Her reward for silence and stillness was permission to supervise the gralloch and possibly solicit a morsel of liver.

  It was when stalking fallow deer in leafy woodland, however, that she was invaluable. Shot through the heart, a beast will frequently make a great leap forward, and all too easily vanish in some small hollow full of thick brambles or scrub. Off Pansy would shoot off like an arrow, nose glued to the blood-spoor, and bay the dead beast until her master came up.

  With each of our labradors in turn, I would be surprised by the way in which so gentle a house-dog would be transformed into a fearless hunter who had no hesitation in tackling a quarry many times her size, and my heart was in my mouth on one occasion in Scotland when I was left in charge of cobby, short-legged Jemima, while Duff crawled forward for the last hundred yards.

  We of the rearguard settled down to wait silently among the peat-hags, tucking hands into pockets in search of warmth, and had been dozing fitfully for twenty minutes or so when startled into full alertness by the shot. Jemima sat up, tense as a spring, while we waited for a signal that all was well, and when it eventually came I released her to join her master a couple of hundred yards ahead.

  Prematurely, as it turned out. Though the stag had crumpled and vanished into the network of hags, he was by no means dead, and as the men walked forward peering to right and left, he suddenly appeared between them and the dog.

  Jemima, who had been making a beeline for her master, swerved and hurtled directly towards the stag, which swung to face her, head lowered, antlers as menacing as a cheval de frise. For a moment they confronted each other in classic pose no more than six feet apart, the stout little black bitch with lips drawn back and teeth bared, ears flat to her head, and the stag daring her to come on.

  We humans stood frozen in horror, the rearguard too far away to intervene, the stalkers themselves too close to shoot without endangering the dog. In any case no shout or whistle would have penetrated Jemima’s concentration and, with those wickedly sharp antlers so close, any distraction might have proved fatal.

  Wild-dog instinct was closer to the surface than I imagined, though, and as the stag stamped, breaking the spell, Jemima circled behind him to nip and worry as expertly as if she had rehearsed this scenario a dozen times. Round jumped the stag, antlers thrashing. Round darted Jemima, evading by a whisker the branching spikes seeking to impale her. For a moment more the deadly dance continued until suddenly the stag had had enough.

  Away he cantered, with Jemima pursuing close enough to bring him to bay once more, but her short legs were no match for his great bounds, and as the space between them increased, the stalker took a snap neck-shot and the stag crumpled in the heather.

  My mouth was dry and my heart racing as if I had run a mile as I rushed to put the fearless hunter back on the lead. Never again, I vowed. Never again will I put her in such danger. But danger comes in unexpected forms, and unfortunately it was a promise I was unable to keep.

  In common with many thick-coated dogs, outdoor living suits labradors best and Jemima was always perfectly comfortable sleeping in the kennel just across the farmyard from our bedroom window. From her miniature four poster bed she could monitor the comings and goings of badgers, foxes, cats and other nocturnal prowlers. She knew exactly when the household began to stir: first the radio, then the bedroom light, bathroom light, then the clump of feet on the stairs, and could gauge to a second how long it would take between the rattle of curtains drawn back to the turning of the porch key as the first riser came to let her out.

  Sometimes as I dressed I would watch her uncurl from her tight, Chelsea-bunlike sleeping position with tail covering nose, stretch, yawn, bow, then sit up straight with ears pricked as the familiar household sounds succeeded one another, her tail wagging ever more furiously as the moment of release approached. A few joyful licks and paws-ups, a couple of laps of the yard and recourse to her own specially favoured patch of rough grass which had turned miserably yellow from daily libations, and she was ready to trot in for breakfast.

  For the rest of the time, however, apart from her daily walks she was constantly with us in the house or car, living at a temperature better suited to humans than canines and, in retrospect, my own explanation for the skin troubles that began to plague her was that she was always slightly too hot. Dogs have no sweat glands and their skin is notably tough, which makes them slow to react to changes of temperature. I have seen my mother’s labrador lie up against the bars of an electric fire until her fur was actually smoking. When she finally registered discomfort there were parallel ginger lines on her yellow coat where the hair was singed, but she appeared quite unbothered.

  So was it overheating that made Jemima so itchy? Or could it have been connected to her status as quasi human, in effect our substitute child, and obliged continually to behave in a way that was contrary to her nature? A single dog in a household is treated very much as a human member of the family would be, whereas two dogs or more will form their own small pack, with a proper canine hierarchy, and behave in a way that is much more natural and therefore less stressful for them.

  Here I am on shaky ground, scientifically speaking, but stress certainly exacerbates eczema, psoriasis and skin problems of the kind among susceptible humans, so might it not do the same for dogs?

  When circumstances obliged a continually-itchy London-based beagle of our acquaintance, who lived a most undoglike life as the pet and sole companion of a highly-strung make-up artist, to board for a month in the country where he not only lived outdoors,
but was able to bark and dig and run free in a big paddock with all the other dog-boarders, his skin improved out of all recognition. Instead of lying for hours at a time by his owner’s computer or accompanying her to photo-shoots, he was able to revert to dog-dom, with spectacular results; but as soon as he returned to his old life his old problems recommenced.

  At the time, where Jemima was concerned, I didn’t attribute her skin troubles to the lack of canine company. Rather, because she constantly flapped her ears, we suspected mites and were prescribed bottle after bottle of very expensive emulsion – liquid gold, we called it – to squirt directly into the aural canal, a process none of us enjoyed. It did no discernible good.

  ‘Must be an allergy,’ said the vet, and prescribed special shampoos and lotions. Working these into her thick coat, lathering, rinsing and rubbing her dry was messy and timeconsuming, and in true labrador fashion she would take the first opportunity to rid herself of the clinical smell by rolling in a cowpat, so would have to be hosed off anew.

  That did no good either.

  The condition got marginally better when we were in Scotland, out on the hill all day, but even then she would go into tormenting orgies of scratching at night, and since on holiday she had to share our bedroom none of us got much sleep.

  As the vet’s bills mounted and each remedy seemed more useless than the last one, we reluctantly agreed to the nuclear option: steroids. These stopped the itching all right, but the side-effects – incontinence and a ravening appetite – were almost more dire than the condition itself.

  By this time we were living on our own small farm, where there were countless temptations for a hungry dog. We hurdled off the muckheap and put bolts on every feedbin that might be lifted by a questing nose. Intense vigilance or a lead was necessary when crossing fields with grazing livestock to prevent her eating dung, while the chances of her finding and crunching up a myxy rabbit or the rotting carcase of a pheasant took much of the pleasure out of a stroll in the woods. Indoors I grew used to pushing all food well back from the edge of the kitchen table and work surfaces and, with a complicated arrangement of bars outside the windowsill where the cats’ dishes were placed, Duff made their dining-area impregnable to attack by labrador.

  Her most infamous feat occurred while she was being driven home from a shoot. Crowded into a small 4x4 vehicle were two men and their dogs, plus guns, game bags, cartridges, coats and, at the bottom of the heap, a brace of pheasants. Half a mile from home, a half-muffled cracking sound from the back alerted the passenger to trouble, and he was just in time to snatch the cock pheasant from Jemima’s jaws – minus a leg.

  Minutes later they drove into the farmyard, laughing and chatting, only to find as they sorted out their equipment that the hen pheasant had completely vanished. Feathers, beak, wings, legs – Jemima had gulped down the lot.

  It was all a considerable nuisance but, on the plus side, her coat was glossy and thick again, and the flapping and scratching had stopped. It was a fine balance, but we reckoned the steroids were worth continuing – just.

  Come August, our ram lambs went off to the local abattoir as usual, and were returned ten days later neatly packaged for the deep freeze, each with its bag of bones. After simmering some of these in the bottom oven, I skimmed the fat off the resulting stock, and put it in a plastic bucket – which it half-filled – meaning to bury it in the muckheap where Jemima could not get at it. At the time, I knew she was out for a walk so, when I took the opportunity to deviate into the tackroom as I passed, it seemed safe enough to put the bucket just momentarily on top of the old stone milkstand.

  Big mistake. We had converted the milk-stand into a mounting block by building steps up one side, and when I emerged I saw with horror that Jemima had run back ahead of Duff, and had her head deep in the bucket, gulping down mutton fat in great mouthfuls as fast as she could.

  If only, if only I had realised how dangerous this would prove. If only I had immediately pushed Epsom salts or bicarb, or even washing-soda down her throat to make her vomit up the fat!

  As it was, I snatched the bucket away, thinking it might upset her digestion but nothing worse, and forgot the incident until, two evenings later, Jemima jumped off the sofa looking very hangdog, passed a horrible grey mess in the garden, then went unusually soberly to her bed in the kennel. By morning she was clearly uncomfortable and running a temperature, so I whisked her to the animal hospital.

  We still didn’t realise how serious it was, and after she had examined Jemima, I told the vet almost jokingly about the stolen mutton fat. To my surprise and alarm, she immediately proposed a scan, and said they would have to keep her at the hospital in case she needed an emergency operation.

  Operation? I could hardly believe what I was hearing. After all, labradors are famous for their powers of digestion. Jemima’s own mother had once eaten half a Stilton cheese without ill-effect, and on another occasion 5lbs of granulated sugar destined for marmalade-making. And what about that pheasant with its beak, feathers and claws?

  ‘It looks like pancreatitis,’ said the vet sombrely. ‘There may be nothing we can do.’

  Those are words you very seldom hear. I certainly hadn’t. The veterinary profession is infinitely resourceful, infinitely inventive. There is always one more possible treatment, one more operation that will undoubtedly cost several thousand pounds and involve months of nursing, but will eventually put everything right. This sounded horribly like a death sentence, and so it proved.

  ‘Her whole inside is blocked,’ reported the vet a few hours later. ‘Even if we operate there is no likelihood that she would recover.’

  So Duff had to make the painful decision to put down the best dog he had ever owned and bring her home for burial, all because of a moment’s inattention and my ignorance of canine First Aid.

  People say that when a hitherto all-female college decides to admit men, a lot of rebuilding and reorganisation are necessary. New showers. Urinals. Locks on this and that. New rules. Playing fields have to be upgraded and sporting equipment bought to keep them happy, whereas girls can be added to a mens’ college with minimal fuss or disruption.

  In the same way when you add a dog to your household, you have to make all sorts of adjustments to your domestic arrangements. Where will it sleep? How can you protect the car-seats? What will it eat and drink out of? Who will care for it when you want to jet off to the sun? Then there is the question of fitting your life around the walks, the training, the regular lettings out of doors and enticing back in. Taking on a dog is, in short, a life-changing commitment, a major upheaval.

  Cats, on the other hand, slip into a new home with scarcely a ripple to disturb the smooth surface of everyday life. It takes no more than a few hours to establish the essential taboos – no jumping on the kitchen table, no sitting on the nice warm PC keyboard – after that they carve out their own place in the household and fit it as neatly as conkers in their shell.

  Acquiring a cat is so simple you can’t help thinking: What’s the catch? But in truth there is no catch. No need to study pedigrees or hip-scores. No need to splurge on polystyrene-filled cushions or dinky tunnels lined with fake sheepskin, because like as not the cats will scorn what you provide, preferring to make their own arrangements. As Roger McGough puts it: Cats sleep anywhere/ Any table, any chair, / Top of cupboard, window ledge,/ In the middle, on the edge./ Anywhere, they don’t care./ Cats sleep anywhere.

  When we first moved out of London, I didn’t know any of this. I had never owned a cat and didn’t want any pet capable of jumping on work-surfaces to lick the butter, killing birds and sicking up the remains in the linen cupboard, or any of the countless other felonies of which such an agile, athletic animal is capable. Although there was clear evidence of vermin about the barns and buildings, pest control was the province of the farm manager and his merry men, who set traps and put down poison as circumstance dictated.

  So in the bleak midwinter when Nannie complained of mice and said
we needed a cat to deal with them, I was less than keen. The truth was that I felt harassed and over-stretched, in no mood to add to my responsibilities, and was becoming ever more aware of the good sense behind Mr Jorrocks’s famous dictum, ‘Damn all presents wot eats.’ After four years at Bromsden Farm, in addition to the basic house-party of dogs and humans both adult and juvenile who required daily feeding, I had amassed too many four-legged dependents on too small a patch to sustain them year-round.

  It was all very well to keep horses, hens and a couple of calves on three unthrifty acres in summer, when they could more or less feed themselves, but from November until April when there was no goodness in what grass there was, I was spending a large part of each day carting fodder from barn to field, filling haynets, mucking out.

  Besides, there was a pheasant shoot on the estate and, having seen at first hand the mortality rate among his mother’s cats when he was a boy and knowing that a catskin weskit is considered the peak of sartorial elegance by many gamekeepers, Duff warned against adding felines to the strength.

  ‘Much better not. They don’t last five minutes here.’

  Undeterred, Nannie kept lobbying. Four-year-old Alice had recently come out in red spots all over her legs and on investigation a cosy mouse-nest had been uncovered in the blankets at the end of her bed.

  ‘Flea-bites! That would never have happened if we’d had a cat,’ said Nannie, ‘and look at all those rabbits in the garden. You’ll never grow a lettuce with them nibbling at the seedlings.’

  The rabbits in the vegetable patch were indeed a pest. Reluctantly I gave in. ‘But it will have to live outdoors. None of this lolling about on silken cushions,’ I said, remembering my grandmother’s pampered Siamese who had never caught a mouse in his life. ‘We’ll feed it outside, like a proper farmyard cat.’