Tea and Dog Biscuits

by Hawkins, Barrie

  He was probably frightened by the unfamiliar noises in the spooky old barn: the creaking, the loose corrugated panel banging in the wind, the flapping birds in the roof. I know I was. And I’m afraid of the dark, always have been. I clutched my little torch.

  I had chosen to do this work and down in that barn now was a dog I had taken in to help, confined in a pen, needing food and water and to come out for some exercise and to relieve himself.

  I could do it. This time. Because he was there. I had to. But did I really want to put myself through this again with more dogs?

  ‘I’m coming, Claude,’ I said to the night air.

  Helping with Enquiries

  The phone was ringing.

  We were only a few weeks into our rescue work and yet the phone rang already far more than before. And it was incredible how often it rang just as I picked up my knife and fork.

  I sighed, put them down again, went out into the hall and snatched up the phone.

  ‘Hello.’ The tone of annoyance would have been obvious to any caller.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ said a friendly voice. ‘Are you the guy with the sanctuary for dogs?’

  Sanctuary for dogs? I hadn’t thought of it like that. It was my house.

  ‘Erm… well, we do take in dogs, but—’

  ‘I hope you can help me. I’m getting desperate. I got a letter from the local authorities and now I’ve got your police on my tail. And I’ve got the military police onto me as well. I do not want the police on my tail. Sir, I do not.’

  My caller was obviously with the American air-force base in the next county. Some of the personnel lived in houses in our area, rented out to the US authorities. One of the houses in Wilberry had been occupied by a succession of American families over the years; the couple currently living there had often stopped to speak to us, to admire Elsa when we were out walking.

  ‘I’m really hoping you can help me, sir,’ my caller added.

  I sighed. Three weeks and I already had three dogs. But weren’t they adorable. Momentarily I pictured them in my mind: Monty, Pearl and Claude. It brought a smile to my face.

  ‘It’s certainly getting urgent, sir.’

  But where would I put the dog?

  ‘The letter from your local authorities says they’ll bring me up on charges before your court if I don’t control them.’

  Them?

  ‘Did you say “them”?’

  ‘Oh yeah – a boy and a girl. Brother and sister. I think that’s why I’m finding it so hard to get someone to take them on. But you know I’d hate to split them up. They’ve been together since they were little pups.’

  Brother and sister? I paused. ‘Well… if you’d like to give me your phone number, I’ll see what I can do…’

  I told Dorothy about the brother and sister. And that there was a danger of them being split up. But where would we put them? We already had two in the house, Monty and Pearl, and Claude in the barn, in theory at least, as he was spending more and more time in the house. He loved to be with people. He’d been wary that first night I had gone down to the barn but his need for company had won. Now he liked to lie across my feet. I could believe he was a Husky cross: he was thickset and heavy.

  Boarding kennels seemed the only answer for these two siblings. But that would cost hundreds of pounds a month in fees. The night I had gone down to Claude in the old barn for the first time, the safety implications of what we had embarked upon had hit me. Now I was beginning to realise the financial implications. Pearl, the gentle, white female had come to us with a vaccination card, but I noted that the annual booster was due next week. That would be the start of the vet bills.

  ‘And we need to be thinking about how we are going to find new homes for the dogs,’ Dorothy said. Good point. ‘We’re not going to be like the big rescue societies with pens full of dogs, where people can come and have a look round on a Sunday afternoon.’

  I couldn’t help but reflect on how, by just telling a few people what we were going to do, the phone had been ringing with offers of dogs, but it hadn’t been ringing with any offers of a home.

  ‘What do people do who’ve got a litter to find homes for?’ Dorothy pondered. Good point. They advertise them. I had a sudden thought: there was often an advert on the board in the village shop. Not our village shop – that, sadly, had closed many years ago – we had to use the store at a big village nearby. In among the postcard adverts on their board there were often pups for sale.

  I would go and put a card up in Great Fosfen the next day, Friday, so it would be in for the weekend, when the shop was usually at its busiest.

  I was an early customer on the Friday morning. The girl behind the till placed my card on a shelf. I wanted to get our campaign to find homes launched so I offered to pin it up on the board for her. As I left the shop, out of the corner of my eye I saw an elderly woman had stopped to run her eye over the board.

  Back home, as I opened the front door, the phone was ringing.

  ‘Hello,’ I said in an unusually enthusiastic tone, hoping for good news.

  Yes, the caller was replying to our advert!

  So much of what we were doing was new to us and we were having to find our way as we kept coming up against questions we had to answer. One such question had been, Should we advertise that we had a number of dogs for rehoming, or should we advertise just one particular dog?

  Dorothy had said, ‘Let’s concentrate on just one at a time. Let’s rehome that dog as well as we possibly can. We’re lucky, not being one of the big, national animal welfare societies with hundreds of dogs to rehome. We can give the dogs that come to us a Rolls-Royce rehoming service.’

  So this telephone call was the very first call to our Rolls-Royce service, offering a home to one of our orphans.

  ‘Do you still have the dog?’

  ‘We do,’ I replied.

  ‘Does your dog bark?’ the man asked.

  The first dog we were trying to find a home for was of course our Orphan Number One, Monty.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I replied. And I could have added, ‘And he also howls,’ but I didn’t mention that at this stage.

  ‘Do you do part-exchange?’

  I paused.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

  ‘My dog don’t bark. I got him to guard me yard. If yours barks I’ll give you mine and a tenner for it.’

  The phone was ringing again.

  I eyed it warily. The quality of that first call had been a shock. But then I reflected that life was like that: the very first call in response to our advertisement would have to be from a lunatic. Having got him out of the way, the rest of the calls would be from normal people.

  I picked up the phone. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Mr Hawkins?’ It was a formal tone of voice.

  ‘Yes.’ I furrowed my brow. I didn’t put my name in the advert, did I?

  ‘This is PC Morecambe speaking.’

  The police? What do they want?

  My brow furrowed again. I had read at some time that the pulse rate of even completely innocent citizens quickens when they are questioned by the police. I was such a citizen.

  The officer coughed into the phone. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, then coughed several more times. He didn’t sound a very healthy policeman. I wished he would get on with what he had to say.

  ‘I understand you have a German Shepherd dog you want to rehome.’

  Oh, so he has seen the advertisement! But no, he can’t have done because he knows my name and my name wasn’t in it…

  A couple more coughs at the other end of the phone. ‘I’m a police dog handler. I’m looking for a youngster I can train up.’

  Really? Is this how the police get their dogs? I had always assumed police dogs were specially bred for the purpose.

  ‘My vet, Melissa Gee, tells me you’ve recently gone in for rescuing dogs, German Shepherds in particular. That’s a very worthwhile thing to do.’

  So that was how he knew my name. Melissa was
our vet as well. But this phone call immediately threw up yet more questions that Dorothy and I had not contemplated. When we had talked about finding homes we had only thought about homing the dogs as family pets. Would we be happy to home them as working dogs? With organisations? More questions immediately jumped into my brain: How would the dogs be treated? Did they stay with just the one handler? What happened when they were too old to go on working?

  It seemed this dog handler was accustomed to dealing with such concerns raised by current owners. Before I had time to ask any of the questions he set out to put my mind at ease by answering them.

  I listened, both concerned and interested, as he talked at length about how the dog would be trained – if it was suitable for police work – and how it would live with him at home as his family pet as well as his workmate.

  When he finished what sounded like a well-rehearsed piece I felt I had to tell him the truth: that homing a dog as a working dog wasn’t something that had occurred to me. I would have to think about it and discuss it with my wife and then get back to him.

  He understood, he said. But if he came to see us he was sure he would be able to put us at our ease. He could pop round in the morning.

  ‘Erm… OK,’ I said.

  It is hard to say no to a policeman.

  The phone was ringing.

  Just as I got to it in the hall, someone banged on the front door.

  I looked at the phone, then turned my head towards the front door, then back to the phone and then back to the front door: which first?

  Our advert on the board had still produced only the one – astonishing – reply. Perhaps someone else had now seen it. The phone won.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘‘Allo,’ responded my caller. ‘I ‘ope you can understan’ me.’

  It was a woman’s voice. She sounded elderly.

  ‘Yes, I think I can understand you.’

  ‘I’ve got to ‘ome my ‘og.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘‘Is name is ‘am.’

  The name ‘Sam’ seemed to be in fashion – there was a Sam the Labrador and a Sam the Dalmatian in our village – and I guessed this was what the caller was trying to tell me. It sounded as if conversation was not going to be easy but of course I was sympathetic if someone had a speech impediment that made it difficult to talk.

  ‘‘E’s got to go today. Only youngster – into everythin’. ‘E’s driving me mud.’

  This was not going to be a quick phone call. I asked my caller to excuse me for a moment as there was somebody at the front door.

  Opening the door revealed a big, black American MPV parked on the drive. I looked about but couldn’t see anybody. But in the rear of the vehicle, behind the third row of seats, four ears could be seen sticking up. I couldn’t resist taking a peep. I pressed my nose against the window in the tailgate. Two pairs of eyes stared back at me.

  They belonged to two young German Shepherds whose appearance was so striking I was taken aback. Their coats were black and tan, but with hardly any black compared to other Shepherds, and much of the ‘tan’ was more like cream. Even if I hadn’t been told they were brother and sister, their rare colouring meant they had to be related. I wondered if they were American bred.

  A tall, slim man appeared from round the corner of the house.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he said, raising a hand in a gesture of greeting. ‘I went round to try the back door, I hope you don’t mind. I’m looking for Barrie.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’ I hoped I sounded welcoming but I was distracted by the thought that it was nine o’clock and I was sure I had arranged with the American chap to bring the dogs at ten o’clock.

  ‘I’m Bob Kerry. I’ve brought you Wilma and Rob. I’m sorry I’m so early. I just felt I had to get them out – I’d told the police they were gonna go yesterday.’

  ‘I’m on the phone, actually,’ I said. ‘Would you just give me a moment?’

  But Mr Kerry wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at a car coming slowly up the village street, a police car. It stopped at the end of our drive.

  I hurried back to the phone and snatched it up. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  ‘Oh, hello,’ I heard clearly from a voice that spoke without hesitation. I furrowed my brow. It sounded as if my caller had had a miraculous recovery.

  ‘I thought it would be easier if I spoke to you instead of my mother,’ said the new voice.

  I was beginning to feel I was having a confusing morning.

  ‘My mother needs to rehome her dog. He’s only four months old and I’m afraid she can’t cope with him. Matters came to a head last night. Mother had taken her teeth out, just for a minute or two, when she suddenly heard the sound of crunching. Mother would like another word.’

  ‘It’s me again,’ said the original voice. ‘Ooh, what has he got now, I thought. And there they were – in bits all over the ‘arpet. Cost me three ‘undred pounds. “Oh you naughty boy,” I said to him.’

  His owner went on to recap further exploits, some of which I could follow, and she was clearly at the end of her tether. Dorothy was feeling well enough to drive now and I arranged for her to collect the youngster that afternoon.

  Having agreed to take ‘am, I could now give my attention to Mr Kerry and I went out to join him. I found him staring open-mouthed. An officer had left the police car and was proceeding down the drive.

  He stopped when he got to Mr Kerry’s MPV and ran his eye over it. Then he spotted me and called out, ‘Mr Hawkins!’ I nodded in acknowledgement. He came across to me, hand extended. ‘Charlie Morecambe.’

  We shook hands and he turned to Mr Kerry, who had a worried expression.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Kerry,’ I said. ‘PC Morecambe’s come to see a dog – he’s not been trailing you!’

  Mr Kerry rested a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘He had me worried there… I thought, Have the British police got time to follow me around to see if I’ve given up my dogs?’

  I smiled in commiseration. I wasn’t the only one having a confusing morning.

  Dorothy had been out walking Pearl when our callers had arrived. As a dog handler, on a scale of one to ten I probably rated two at that time whereas Dorothy probably rated 50, so when she came back I left her to deal with the pair of new arrivals while I dealt with PC Morecambe.

  Before I introduced our first ever orphan to the policeman I wanted to know rather more than I had been told on the phone about the life of a police dog. I invited him in for a coffee.

  As we sat talking, a realisation struck me. For the first time I appreciated the full enormity of what I had undertaken. That in my hands lay the future of this dog. What happened to him for the rest of his life depended on me and my making the right decision. As PC Morecambe spoke in detail and at length about what was involved with the training, I was gazing at the floor, finding it hard to pay attention, struck by the weight of the responsibility I had – so lightly – undertaken. Then suddenly I thought, Pay attention to what he is saying. Now you’ve realised what you’ve taken on, you have to weigh up this man. I looked up and concentrated on the man and what he was saying.

  ‘… and for the right dog it’s a marvellous life,’ I heard.

  Then he fell silent. My penetrating look must have thrown him off track.

  I ran my eye over him; which was ironic, because that must be what a policeman does to a suspect.

  He had a button missing off his shirt, his hair stuck up at the back of his head as if he had only bothered to comb the front, and his serge trousers showed no signs of a crease, but did show what looked like grass stains on the knees.

  I had a sudden thought: When we parted with the dogs we rehomed, would we ever see them again? This prompted me to ask him if he lived locally.

  Yes, he lived in Fox Fen, near the reservoir, which was handy, he said, for walking his dog in summer: the lad could have a swim to cool down. He went on to explain that he didn’t work for the local force,
however; he was with a different dog unit.

  I asked him about training methods. I asked him what would happen if the dog didn’t complete the training course. I asked him about veterinary care. I asked him about a typical working day for the dog. I asked him how much time the dog would expect to spend in the dog van. I still had a lot more questions to ask and was about to put the next one when he pulled out a wallet, opened it and took out a photograph. He held it out to me.

  ‘That’s my last boy,’ he said. ‘Digby.’

  I took the photo and looked at a head and shoulders portrait of a classic, handsome, black and tan German Shepherd. His eyes shone, as did his coat, his ears were erect and his black nose glistened.

  ‘That was him when he was only three,’ said PC Morecambe. ‘And this was us on holiday in the Lake District.’

  He held out another photo. This one was of a man and his dog, out in the countryside, the man smiling broadly as his dog splashed about in water.

  And a third photo. This was of a younger, slimmer PC Morecambe, smartly turned out in tunic, pressed trousers and cap, stiffly posing for the camera, a German Shepherd sitting to attention by his side.

  ‘That was when he passed out from training school. He looked fantastic.’

  What he looked was happy: bright-eyed, alert and eager.

  ‘Lost him with bloody cancer. He was only six.’

  PC Morecambe sat back in his chair, his thoughts now elsewhere. We sat together in silence for several moments.

  I no longer had the will to question him as I had done. Not a man who carried with him in his wallet photos of the dog he had lost.

  Yes, I would want to have lots more information, but I had the feeling that I knew what I really needed to know: that this was a man into whose hands I could entrust a homeless dog.

  We went off to meet Monty.

  Goodbye

  The phone was ringing.

  I was expecting a call. Mrs Burton had said she would ring at nine o’clock on Saturday morning, but it wasn’t nine o’clock yet. Or was it? I was still half asleep.