Tea and Dog Biscuits

by Hawkins, Barrie

  He turned to Dorothy and me. ‘He’s full of it. Absolutely full of it. So what he needed was an experienced handler to make the best use of him.’ He straightened up and banged the roof of his van with a fist. ‘So they gave him to a novice, didn’t they? Been on the job ten minutes, worked on a turkey farm all his life before that. That’s probably why the brass let him become a dog handler so soon. Turkeys, dogs, both animals, aren’t they?’

  Charlie was in full flow now. ‘He’s a real country turnip. For his own sake they should have given him a nice easy dog.’ He put his face up close to the mesh so the tip of his nose poked through and he addressed the dog again. ‘And you gave the poor devil the time of his life, didn’t you?’

  He straightened up again, and turned to Dorothy and me. He shook his head again.

  ‘And then they were gonna chuck him off the unit.’

  I looked across at Dorothy. I think neither of us were sure whether it was the new handler or the new dog that was to be thrown off the dog unit.

  ‘I had a hell of fight – but in the end I made them let me take him.’

  Then Charlie did something utterly unexpected.

  He shut the doors of the van.

  He turned and walked towards the house. I stood open-mouthed. I looked across at Dorothy. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Charlie! Aren’t we going to meet him?’ I called out.

  Charlie came to a halt. ‘He’s got one or two problems – I’d rather sort them first.’

  Cecilia took a couple of steps backwards, nearer to the front door.

  I wanted to argue with Charlie. I wanted to say, ‘You said he was a trained police dog, so you must have him under control.’ I think Charlie must have read my thoughts.

  ‘Not all police dogs are Rin Tin Tin, you know,’ he said. He strode across to me. ‘Dickie on our unit, his dog don’t like the dark – don’t want to get out of the van if it isn’t broad daylight. And one sniff of a bitch on heat and our sergeant’s dog is off like a rocket, gone – he can call him till he’s got a blue face to match his blue uniform.’ He paused. ‘They’re dogs,’ he said with emphasis, ‘they’re not robots.’

  We all fell silent for a couple of moments.

  ‘Well we’ll see him another time,’ said Dorothy, in placatory mode.

  ‘No, no. Of course you want to meet him,’ said Charlie. He pulled open the van doors. ‘But he’d rather bite someone than not bite them, that’s all.’

  He paused before sliding the bolt across on the door of the cage. I suspected he wanted to see if that last piece of information had had the necessary effect.

  By the look on Cecilia’s face it had certainly had the necessary effect on her, any inclination she had to meet a police dog having entirely vanished.

  And as for me, I thought that perhaps it would be more sensible if we postponed meeting the dog until Charlie had had time for further training.

  But the look of disappointment on Dorothy’s face was more than Charlie could bear. Slowly he slid the bolt across.

  In the time I had known Charlie he had struck me as one of life’s easy-going individuals, plumpish and placid, usually relaxed. But there was nothing relaxed about him now. His mouth was shut tight, his lips making just a thin line on his face and he was tensed, ready to spring.

  He pulled the door open and stood aside to let the dog leap out. At that point I only had a side view of him but I had the impression for a moment that Charlie closed his eyes.

  The big dog landed on the ground, paused, looked around, first at me, then at Cecilia, then at Dorothy.

  Then he bounded off across the drive and leapt up at Dorothy. He licked her face. Then he dropped down onto all fours, turned sideways and leant against her. Dorothy smiled and patted him two or three times.

  Then he trotted over to me and did it all again. As he leant against me, I stroked him and he looked across at Cecilia but made no movement towards her.

  Charlie, leaning against the van, was shaking his head slowly.

  ‘You all right, Charlie?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, putting his hand to his forehead, ‘never better.’

  ‘You still haven’t told us his name,’ I said.

  ‘Ivor,’ said Charlie. ‘Ivor the Terrible.’

  At the sound of Charlie’s voice, Ivor the Terrible wagged his tail. Then he pushed himself harder against my legs, such that he lost his footing and slid down onto the drive. He raised one front leg and one back leg up in the air, exposing his tummy, to be tickled perhaps.

  I looked across at Charlie. He was staring at the ground, still slowly shaking his head.

  ‘What is the matter, Charlie?’ I called out.

  He looked up at me.

  ‘How do they know?’ he said. ‘How do they know?’

  Hard

  I woke early that morning. About six o’clock. It was going to be a special day. It was going to be fulfilling, and make me so happy. It was also going to be hard to get through and leave me feeling hollow.

  That’s what this rescue work is like. You get pulled in two different directions. It’s a real mix of emotions.

  For the dog you have found a home for you’re relieved and happy that he is no longer homeless. And you have a feeling of satisfaction that you’ve done all you can to ensure it will be a caring home. But then you feel the sense of responsibility, the weight of it, afraid that you will make a mistake, put him with people where he will repeat what he has been through before.

  And the worst part? That comes after you’ve put him in their car for the new owners. Often, because they have had a dog before, it’s an estate car. You shut the door on him. His new people get in the car. It’s then you see the first signs of concern on his face: you’re not getting in the car with him.

  Often you get a hug from the new owners, sometimes even a kiss. And usually words of reassurance: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after him.’ They’ll ring in a few days to let us know how he is settling in.

  The turn of the ignition key bringing the engine to life cranks up the anxiety on the dog’s face. Now he’s restless in the back – he knows that car is going to move off. And it’s going to take him with it. But we’re not in the car with him.

  Our drive is on a slight incline. The people’s car goes slowly up the drive, taking what has become our dog away from us. Always, he looks out of the window, staring back at us. What is happening? Who are these people? Where am I going? Why are you sending me away? You are the people who cared for me – why are you now sending me off?

  The car turns out of the gate and travels along the village street, usually a hand or an arm projecting from the window, waving back at us.

  We watch the car disappear out of sight in the distance. Then we stand for a few moments with our thoughts. Then some encouraging comment or other. ‘He was happy to jump in their car, wasn’t he?’ or ‘He was pleased to see them again, wasn’t he?’ or ‘They’re lovely people – their vet spoke highly of them.’

  But usually we’ve met them only two or three times before. Strangers who we had to judge. People we had to trust with one of our homeless dogs. People we had to believe when they said they would look after him.

  ‘You’re the most difficult people in the world to get a dog from,’ we were told by a vet – not our Melissa. He had sent some people to us he thought would provide a good enough home, but we didn’t. He meant it as a criticism – we took it as a compliment. ‘We don’t want to just find a home for the dog,’ we would say to prospective owners at our first meeting. ‘We want to match the home to the dog and the dog to the home: a home that suits the dog and a dog that suits the home.’

  Charlie had been there at one of our meetings. ‘You’re like a dating agency,’ he said.

  That made me smile at the time, but afterwards, when I thought about it, I felt he was right, although Dorothy said that in the type of homes we place the dogs with, they became part of the family, so we were more like an ad
option agency.

  We wanted something for our dogs, a home, but we had to recognise that for the people coming to us we also had something that they wanted: a dog. Young Mr Frank and his live-in girlfriend felt they had room for a big dog as their house had a garden 300 yards long. I decided to drive round there to have a look. Mr Frank was prone to exaggeration in his eagerness to acquire a pedigree German Shepherd dog: his house was on the seventh floor of a block of flats. And Miss Turpin lived alone and wanted a dog as a companion. Her local dog warden said she had four kids under five and their last dog had a ballpoint pen pushed in his ear by one of them.

  Today we were to roll the dice again for one of our dogs and hand him over to his new home. And this time it was to be after all the hours spent sitting with him, after all the bathing of his wounds, after all the visits to the vet, making sure he’d had all his tablets, the agonising slow progress, the gradual covering of the hips and the backbone and the ribs with a thin layer of flesh. This time, after all those months, it was to be Friend we sent away up the drive.

  We hadn’t seen Charlie for weeks and then he turned up two days running.

  Although from time to time I would see on the roads other white vans bearing the words POLICE DOG UNIT, there was no mistaking Charlie’s van. Winter in our locality saw tractors and huge trailers carting potatoes and sugar beet off the fields, the massive tractor wheels scattering mud on the rural roads for cars to spray on to one another. It wasn’t somewhere to live if you liked your car to be always clean and shiny. Dorothy and I thought a muddy look suited our old Volvo estate, and Charlie obviously felt the same about his dog van. When he pulled up on the drive today, the lawyer in me noticed that his rear number plate was obscured with mud, contrary to the road traffic regulations. But then Charlie never struck me as the sort of policeman who was hot on motoring offences. In any case, when he got out of his van he didn’t look to be in his bonniest mood, so I decided not to wind him up about the offence he was committing. His frowning face prompted me to ask immediately if I should put the kettle on.

  ‘They dragged me all the way over to some place I’d never heard of – 30 miles when it’s chucking it down with rain – and it’s a total waste of time.’ He slammed the door of his van. ‘It’s a break-in – the lad had run off and they want Ivor to follow his trail. How can he follow his trail when they’ve put their big boots all over it?’ He coughed a couple of times then took out his packet of Golden Virginia.

  ‘Got Ivor with you?’ I asked.

  He ignored the question. ‘You was gonna tell me yesterday where Digby had gone.’

  ‘I forgot, didn’t I, in the excitement of meeting Ivor.’

  It had been remiss of me not to make the effort to keep him in the picture about Digby. Not only had Charlie willingly presided at our first naming ceremony but our ex-guard dog from a car breakers’ yard had been named in memory of a particular police dog.

  I made up for the omission with tea and chocolate digestives, seated round the fire.

  ‘He went to someone not too far removed from your line of work. In fact, he takes over where you and Ivor leave off.’

  ‘Works in hospital, does he?’

  The joke made me smile. It also brought back to mind what Charlie had said yesterday about Ivor preferring to bite someone rather than not biting them.

  ‘Do you want that last biscuit?’ Charlie asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I was on tenterhooks yesterday about getting him out because the brass is afraid all the time of getting sued, you see,’ said Charlie. ‘Although what’s putting the wind up them most about my lad is when he runs after and catches a villain who’s legged it. Once I set him on after some bloke, that’s it.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘Yes, but once he’s got hold of ‘em when I call him off he goes stone deaf. He will not let go. Don’t worry me, but it worries my Inspector.’

  I could see that would worry his Inspector.

  ‘And he likes to chew ‘em up a bit.’

  I could see that that would worry his Inspector even more.

  ‘And today, of course, any excuse and they’ll sue. Anyway…’ Charlie paused to suck the end of a finger and use it to pick up biscuit crumbs which had dropped onto his tunic. ‘… Digby?’

  ‘Digby was adopted by a guy who works in a prison. He’s rung me loads of times since. He idolises the dog, he absolutely idolises the dog.’

  ‘So he should,’ said Charlie. ‘Terrific dog.’

  ‘He starts work at six o’clock in the morning and he gets up at half-four to give Digby a walk before he goes to work.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘Of course at weekends Digby still expects to go for a walk at half past four in the morning.’ ‘Well he would.’

  ‘Yes, but he pulls the bedclothes off the bloke.’

  ‘I knew that was a bright dog,’ said Charlie. He stood up.

  ‘You off?’

  ‘That was Dorothy’s motor I just heard on the drive, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t have to run off because—’

  ‘No! I’ve got something to show you – I’ve been waiting for her to come home. Out in the van. That van’s got two dog compartments, remember?’

  And that was how Millie came to us.

  I took a photo of Millie that day she came in, standing in the middle of the lawn. When I showed the photo to people what they saw was a classic German Shepherd female: black and tan, pointed ears, alert expression. And Millie liked to pose. For the photo she had adopted the ‘Shepherd stand’. Owners and breeders who compete with German Shepherds at shows hope their dog will impress the judge by standing with one back leg extended beyond the other. So any devotee of German Shepherds who viewed the photo was full of admiration for the beautiful female depicted.

  But really the photo revealed what a failed photographer I was. It didn’t show Millie’s most striking – and astonishing – characteristic: her size. Nothing in the photo indicated that Millie was the tiniest German Shepherd I or anybody I knew had ever seen. The perfect German Shepherd in every way, with all the personality traits of the breed: intelligence, eagerness to learn, wanting to be with you, and a guard. But a very, very small guard.

  ‘Some people rang into the office and offered us a German Shepherd they didn’t want any more. The sergeant sent me along to have a look and I nearly threw up. Barrie, the place – it stunk. It absolutely stunk.’

  ‘Do you think she’s a runt of the litter?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t like that word,’ said Dorothy. ‘She’s small but perfectly formed. And Millie’s got an advantage over other German Shepherds.’ She squatted down, wrapped her arms around Millie and scooped her up. She stood up smiling broadly. ‘You can pick her up and cuddle her!’

  Charlie opened the door of his van. ‘Couldn’t leave her there, could I? So I told ‘em we’d take her. They were as thick as I don’t know what. Fed her on table scraps.’ He pointed at her. ‘No wonder she’s so thin. She was eating tomato skins when I got there.’ He got into his van.

  ‘Charlie, do I take it that you’re leaving her with us?’

  ‘Yeah, but of course they don’t know that. They think she’s gonna be a police dog. They want me to send a photo of her at the Passing Out Parade. If I took her back to the Unit and said I was gonna spend £10,000 training her as a police dog it would be my Inspector who passed out.’

  I went into the utility room, closed the door behind me and sat down on the floor.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you, Friend. That really nice young woman you met the other day… you’re going to go with her today. And you’re going to live with her for the rest of your life.

  ‘You and I have spent a lot of hours together in this utility room, haven’t we? I’ve come to quite like sitting on the floor.

  ‘Because I love you so much I can’t be here when you leave. I don’t want to see you go up that drive, giving me that look that says, Wh
y are you sending me away? Hannah will care for you and love you like I do. And she’ll be able to give you the time I can’t.

  ‘This is your big day. It’s the start of your new life.

  ‘God bless you. I’m going to go now.’

  The Christmas Present

  ‘Hello, I do hope you can help. My husband’s a self-employed builder. He went into a house to do some repairs and there was a dog there.’

  I already had enough experience of such phone calls to speculate on what this morning’s caller had done next. The people said they didn’t want it any more and gave it to him? Or the dog was neglected and her husband took it away from them?

  ‘I think it’s an Alsatian – but you don’t call them that now, do you? Neither of us know much about dogs – we haven’t got one, but I think it’s an old dog.’

  I took a deep breath. I had learnt by now that the problem with taking a dog from people to whom it didn’t belong was that they would know hardly anything about the dog or, more likely, nothing at all.

  ‘He seems ever so friendly but, bless him, he doesn’t walk right. He doesn’t go in a straight line, if you know what I mean. But of course we didn’t know this until we’d untied him.’

  ‘You untied him?’

  ‘Yes, he was tied up. I don’t recognise the code for your number and I think you must be a long way away but we’re hoping you’ll take him from us. We can’t possibly keep him, although I’ve already started to get attached to him and we’ve only had him two days.’

  ‘Did the people you got him from tell you anything about him?’

  There were several seconds of silence at the other end of the phone.

  ‘I’ve just realised I’ve explained this badly. There was nobody there. The people had moved out three days before.’

  ‘Is that the place that takes in dogs?’ began my second caller of the day.

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘My boyfriend give me a dog and I don’t want it – will you take it?’