Tea and Dog Biscuits

by Hawkins, Barrie

  Winter had set in and dark nights with it. It had been misty on those fen roads, and this wasn’t a town I was familiar with. When I had arrived there were no lights on in the community hall, the place in darkness – had I got the wrong night? I parked and sat in the solitary silent dark for several minutes. I was glad to see a man in overalls coming across the car park. He tapped on my window. ‘You can’t park there – that’s for loading.’ He went off to unlock the hall.

  The Honorary Chairwoman concluded an announcement about the arrangements for a forthcoming coach trip to the Hanging Gardens and sat down. Dorothy had suggested that instead of writing out the things I wanted to say I should just write a list of key words on some cards. These would be memory joggers and it would make my talk more natural for the audience than my just reading from a prepared script. She had cut up some sheets of coloured card for me. I picked them up. The Chairwoman stood up again.

  ‘There will be the usual tea and biscuits at the end of Mr Barney Hawkins’ talk and he has kindly agreed to take questions after that.’

  Had I? She sat down and this time stayed down. It must be my turn at last.

  I don’t remember exactly what I said in that first talk I gave. I remember that Dorothy suggested I put in some humorous bits and that those carefully prepared stories raised a small titter. And I remember that quite a lot of the other matters I recounted provoked completely unexpected guffaws of laughter.

  By that stage we were a bit more professional in what we were doing. It wasn’t taking us so long to find homes now, for example. Melissa finding a home with clients for brother and sister Rob and Wilma had given us a boost. Dorothy said she realised now we should be advertising in veterinary surgeries, so we sent a poster to every vet in our local Yellow Pages. That had brought us homes for young Sam, our glamorous Sabrina and Jess, who wasn’t supposed to be still on this earth.

  Sabrina, I was able to tell the audience, had been homed on a farm near the village. Her new owner reported that she liked to play in the muddy farmyard. As a dog with a flowing long coat this necessitated regular and frequent visits to the grooming parlour – where she loved all the admiring attention.

  Sam had gone to live at the seaside and every Christmas while we shivered in the winter cold Mr and Mrs Deering would send us a photo of Sam on the beach, always against a background of blue sky and sun.

  I took along a photograph of our new accommodation arrangements for the audience to see, although as soon as I held up my 6” x 4” photo to the audience I realised I needed a bigger one. And I lost the thread of what I was saying whenever the passing of the photo among the audience for them to see better distracted me, especially when it was dropped on the floor or somebody had to find their spectacles.

  The photo depicted a purpose-built kennel with 30-foot run attached. I knew it would be a surprise to the audience when I told them it was donated to us by an American. It was Bob Kerry’s way of saying thank you for taking his Rob and Wilma and getting the police off his tail.

  ‘I think I know where I can get you a kennel and run,’ he had said. It was something to do with the housing for the security dogs at his base being replaced every so many years. He said he’d get us the best one and he’d talk his mate into reassembling it for us.

  As Bob had bolted it together Dorothy and I had grown more and more amazed. Now we had somewhere roomy, secure and comfortable for a guest. And it was free – and no, he wouldn’t take anything for petrol for delivering it or for his time in putting it up.

  The Honorary Chairwoman clinked her teaspoon against her cup to get the attention of the audience, who were still enjoying tea and biscuits in their break. ‘Can we resume, please, for our usual question and answer session,’ she called out.

  As the audience came back, I noticed that the man I assumed to be the caretaker reappeared with them, although to begin with he was preoccupied with noisily folding up trestle tables, rather than listening in to the question and answer session.

  The Honorary Chairwoman called for the first question and a woman in the front row set the ball rolling. I was pleasantly surprised when soon there must have been five or six hands up.

  I suppose I should have expected to be asked questions. Fortunately, those asked by the members of the Ladies’ Circle were easy enough for me to answer. At one point Dorothy and I had half a dozen dogs and they had wanted to know how we had coped with walking and feeding so many.

  I was able to tell them I had soon learnt a lesson that might be worth bearing in mind if ever they were thinking of having more than one dog: that two dogs are more than twice the work, three dogs are more than three times the work, and so on.

  ‘Take feeding time, for example,’ I said. ‘If you have two dogs it’s not simply a question of putting down two bowls of food. You may have to feed them in separate rooms.’ This is in case one is a faster eater than the other and having finished first then wants to go and raid his companion’s bowl. I could have added, but didn’t, that had happened to me a few times in the early days. The fast eater then developed their waistline – until I introduced the two rooms solution.

  Some dogs were what could be fairly termed ‘messy eaters’. They liked to take the food out of the bowl and spread it around the floor, seemingly prioritising which parts of the meal they would consume first. When I complained about the mess and the additional cleaning up, Dorothy pointed out that it was only what I often did with my dinner, eating the chips first and leaving my greens to the end.

  And then, of course, many of these dogs for rehoming had a history that affected their everyday actions, such as their table manners. Orphan Number One, for example, Monty, who had come to us with his ribs showing, was obviously a dog who loved his food but was also a dog who had an insufficient amount to eat in the past. The consequence of this was that bringing his food bowl out of the cupboard caused an eruption of whining, barking and leaping into the air. The process of getting the food into the food bowl and then mixing it up was fraught with danger. While other dogs frequently managed to knock the bowl out of my hand, sending the contents scattering across the floor, Monty preferred me to wear the contents of the food bowl. I had soon learned to raise my arm above my head and hold the bowl up as high as I could. But this had the effect of exciting Monty even more. One day he sprang off his back feet and head-butted the bottom of the bowl like a footballer heading the ball. The big metal bowl shot up into the air, hit the ceiling with force and dropped down to crash-land on my head, emptying most of the contents across my hair, the remainder coming to rest on my shoulders and neck. It was a bowl of tinned tripe and Dorothy says she can still smell it on me.

  I had two questions that night about the complications involved in walking a group of dogs. The first questioner seemed to assume that we walked all the dogs together and I had this vision of me attempting to hold four or five dog leads all at once, each with a large – or very large – dog at the end of the lead.

  But even off-lead Dorothy and I could each only take two dogs in case it became necessary during the walk to put the leads on. Experience taught us that with a big dog straining at the end of the lead, we could only hold one lead in each hand. And it was surprising how often we had to call the dogs and put the lead on, to prevent them running up to other people we met on a walk and frightening them, or frightening their little dog, or frightening their little child. And it was astonishing, if you had a big dog with you who did like to rush up to strangers, how many people you could suddenly encounter in an isolated field in the depths of the country: ramblers, people with metal detectors, game-keepers, people out shooting, farmers, farm workers, photographers, birdwatchers, people with buckets out blackberrying, horse riders and picnic parties. I have had walks in the country where by the time I got home I was convinced I would have met fewer people at the January sales.

  There were still a couple of arms going up when the Chairwoman announced that the clock was against us and we would have to stop.

>   ‘Well I must say,’ she said turning to me, ‘how nice it is to have had so many questions. There’s probably time for just one more.’

  The man I thought must be the caretaker was standing at the back. ‘I’ve a question,’ he called across the room.

  The Honorary Chairwoman looked taken aback for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘If you’ve got all this time to give to doing things for animals, why don’t you spend your time doing things for people instead? They’re more important than animals.’

  Suddenly it was as if the audience had all been turned into wax figures. Nobody moved. They were all looking at me. And the only sound was the second hand of the clock on the wall moving round.

  Out at the front, I stared ahead of me, numb.

  For months afterwards that question would come back to trouble my mind. It was to be someone else who eventually answered it.

  I didn’t disclose to the audience where we had homed Jess.

  I’d had a phone call from Luke, the young vet in London to whom Jess had been taken to be euthanised. I’d had by now quite a few nights when I found it difficult to get to sleep, still churning over in my mind the legal implications of what I and the young vet had done. One night I dreamt I had been sent to prison and on my first day was told they didn’t cater for vegetarians and the lunch that day was pancreas.

  ‘Barrie, I know how you’ve been fretting over the legal rights and wrongs of what we did, so I’m the man with good news.’

  ‘Really?’ I wondered whatever the good news could be in the circumstances.

  ‘I’ve got to tell you, Luke,’ I said, ‘the more I think about it the more convinced I become that we stole that dog from the guy who brought it to you.’

  ‘We didn’t, Barrie.’

  ‘Luke,’ I said, ‘you may be a brilliant young vet but you’re not a lawyer.’

  ‘We can’t have stolen it from the guy, Barrie – because it didn’t belong to him.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘It wasn’t his dog, Barrie. He lied to me. It was his girlfriend’s dog.’

  My head was beginning to spin.

  ‘Remember, Barrie, he brought the dog to us to put it down to get back at his girlfriend who he’d fallen out with. I’ve found out now that he told her the dog had run off. It’s all come out because the girlfriend came to us with a puppy she’d bought.’

  I was beginning to get hold of this. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘How do you know she’s not lying?’

  ‘I’m learning, Barrie, that when you become a vet it’s not your animal patients that are a problem – it’s the owners.’

  I understood that completely.

  ‘I wanted proof – she’s got the receipt from when she bought the dog and it’s made out in her name. She convinced me, Barrie. I have no doubt Jess is her dog.’

  I felt the need to sit down. I never dreamt when I decided to help homeless dogs I would face situations like this.

  ‘Who would have thought it, Barrie! It’s really brilliant, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Yes, I could feel my anxieties beginning to ebb away. We can’t be guilty of stealing a dog from someone it doesn’t belong to.

  ‘She burst into tears, Barrie, when I told her.’

  ‘You told her?!’

  ‘I don’t think she believed me at first. She thought after all this time that the dog must be dead, that he’d got run over or something. She’s a very genuine person, Barrie. She really loves Jess. She can’t wait to get him back.’

  Get him back? My eyes widened.

  ‘Are you still there, Barrie?’

  ‘Luke, are you telling me she wants us to give the dog back?’

  I gripped the phone. I had just been hit by a thunderbolt.

  ‘Luke – listen to me – I’ve just homed the dog!’

  There were several moments’ silence at the other end of the phone.

  ‘Oh… I. I didn’t know.’

  I had been meaning to ring Luke and tell him the good news that Jess had settled in to his new home with a Detective Chief Superintendent Bulmore and his wife.

  I told him now.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Luke. ‘You’ve homed him with a policeman? You’re pulling my leg.’ I wish.

  It hadn’t been until their second visit to see Jess that the question of Mr Bulmore’s job had come up. We need to know about the new owners’ work arrangements to be assured the dog won’t be left alone for too long but there are so many other things to talk about as well and it hadn’t come up on day one. Then I could hardly say to Mr Bulmore he couldn’t have the dog because he was a senior police officer and I thought the dog was nicked. And it was a really good home. The couple suited Jess, and he had really taken to them both.

  Dorothy had once said to me, ‘I’ve come to realise that when you do welfare work with animals you come face to face with the worst and the best. The worst side of human nature: the dreadful things people do to animals. But we also meet lovely people, those who take them from us and want to put right the wrong that has been done, to cancel it out.’

  And Mr and Mrs Bulmore were like that. They didn’t know the circumstances in which Jess had come to us but they knew that he needed a home and needed caring for, and they could and would do that.

  I closed my eyes at the thought of knocking on their door and telling them it had all been a terrible mistake and they had now to give him up. Because some vengeful young man had created this ghastly situation for us all.

  Luke rang again the next morning. Jess’s real former owner was going to come and see us. She would come on Monday evening. I did not have a good weekend.

  Dorothy and I told her the whole story, except the names and address of where Jess had gone, although I did attempt to draw for her the cottage and its garden to give her some idea of what it was like.

  She cried.

  She had had Jess from when he was eight weeks old. As he grew she realised she had made a terrible mistake. A walk in the city park wasn’t enough for such a big dog. For months she had worried herself over the quality of his life, and whether she should try to find a better home for him. But he was a dog who followed her about everywhere – would that be too upsetting for him?

  Of course she was devastated when he had disappeared, but it would be selfish to take him away from his new home where he was happy. A home in the country. And she had learned her lesson and taken a tiny terrier pup from the pound.

  Goodness knows what she had seen in the young man who wanted to wreak revenge on her by killing her dog, but he had been a very lucky young man indeed to have had Lisa as his girlfriend.

  When she left she thanked us for what we had done for Jess. She gave me a kiss, gave Dorothy a gift set of hand cream, and for our orphans gave us six sacks of dog food too expensive for us to buy. We gave her a photo we had taken while Jess had been with us.

  And on the Seventh Day…

  The lady had seen our poster at her vet’s and rang. By now I was learning to ask a series of fundamental questions, the answers to which could save the time of a wasted meeting with the caller. Finding a home for Roxy, who had been pushed out of her young owner’s car, wasn’t going to be easy. At nine she was showing signs of stiffness and prospective owners always wonder how long the older dog will be with them. Mrs Duvalier’s answers ticked the boxes and, yes, she would consider an older dog.

  Her appearance gave me a surprise when I opened the front door.

  Dorothy and I talked with Mrs Duvalier over a cup of tea for nearly an hour. Yes, she had had a German Shepherd before; in fact, she had had them all her life and was very familiar with the breed. Yes, she realised it might not be possible to insure Roxy at her age for vet fees, but paying the fees herself would not be a problem.

  She and her late husband had lived for many years in South America. Her husband’s family had land interests out there. The clothes, the demeanour and the Daimler parked outside on the road all spoke of an el
egant lifestyle, such that Mrs Duvalier felt it necessary to mention that she was accustomed to dog hairs on the carpets and rugs.

  Yes, she would be delighted to take Roxy to training class; she had always taken her previous Shepherds, it was an evening out for both of them. Yes, she would make sure Roxy’s inoculations were kept up to date – she had seen the sad alternative every day in South America. Yes, she would keep an eye on that slight stiffness – probably the best thing was regular and not too strenuous exercise, rather than occasional tiring bouts of activity. Every question was answered fully and to our satisfaction.

  Mrs Duvalier commented on how reassuring she found it that we took such care in vetting prospective homes. Then she paused before saying, ‘I know what you’ve been waiting to ask me.’ I smiled. ‘Go on then, ask it,’ she said.

  I reflected for a moment or two. Did I need to know? What would that tell me? My eyes and ears told me most of what I really needed to know.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of asking a lady her age, Mrs Duvalier,’ I said, ‘if that is what you are referring to.’

  ‘You know it is,’ she said. And I thought she looked disappointed. Perhaps she had wanted to surprise me. ‘What about the other, related question? Or shall I ask it for you?’ she said.

  We gazed at one another. I realised then the extent of the covering make-up she wore.

  ‘What happens to the dog if the Good Lord decides to take me before Roxy? That was your next question, wasn’t it, Mr Hawkins?’

  I nodded.

  ‘My son lives with me. He moved back in after his divorce. It was ridiculous in any case my rattling around on my own inside The Hall. He would of course continue to care for Roxy.’

  I got to my feet. ‘No more questions,’ I said.

  ‘Is this where I finally get to meet her?’

  ‘It is indeed.’ I went on to explain how by this time a sort of system had been created. There were two main stages to the homing process. The first question was whether this person was someone to whom we felt we could entrust a homeless dog. If the answer to that was yes then the next question was whether this particular dog suited this particular home. Of course, if the prospective home fell at the first fence then it would be a cruel waste of time for both the dog and the prospective owner to meet. A glance at Dorothy told me that Mrs Duvalier had passed the first test.