Tea and Dog Biscuits

by Hawkins, Barrie

  Struggling to hear what the girl was saying, I pressed the phone hard against my ear. In the background I could make out the sound of young children shouting and screaming and adverts on the telly.

  ‘Er… can you tell me a bit about it, please?’

  ‘He’s give it to me as a Christmas present – I don’t want a dog. I’ve got enough to do with two kids.’

  ‘Do you know what breed it is? Do you know how old it is?’

  ‘There ain’t any papers with it but it looks like an Alsatian. It’s only little so it’s not very old. He got it from his mate. I could bring it tonight if you can take it.’

  I sighed. The old boy found tied up in the empty house was on his way to me right now and she wants me to take this one tonight… And it’s Christmas next week – not a good time to be trying to find a home for a dog.

  ‘STOP IT! LEAVE IT ALONE!’

  I nearly dropped the phone.

  ‘Sorry about that – the kids are driving me mad. The dog keeps taking their toys and playing with them! It’s doing my head in!’

  I sighed again. Christmas or no Christmas, perhaps we should take a second dog today.

  The phone was ringing again, minutes later.

  ‘Hello!’ I heard from a voice full of enthusiasm. ‘I hope I’ve got the right number. My friend says you’re the people who rescue pooches.’

  ‘Er… yes.’

  ‘Can I come and see them?’

  ‘Well that’s not actually how we work. If you’d like to tell me what it is you’re looking for—’

  ‘The younger the better! Help me lose some of this weight!’

  The younger the better? Hmmm. ‘Well, we may be able to help you. If I may ask some questions first…’

  I didn’t hear the car on the drive at the front. I was standing at the back door. My ears were fully occupied listening to the barking coming from down at the pens.

  It seemed to me it had been going on for a long, long time though in fact it was probably only twenty minutes. I’ve never complained about other people’s barking dogs but I have every sympathy with anyone who finds it an agitating distraction. Our dog barking – it sounded as if it was Millie – had gone on long enough to have me thinking about taking an extra blood pressure tablet. A complaint to the local dog warden from one of our neighbours and we might end up with our transit camp shut down.

  This prolonged barking happened from time to time and was a recurring source of anxiety for me. I’d have to go down there in the dark and see what was the matter. But I couldn’t go just yet – there was somebody banging at the front door.

  The woman on the phone that morning with the unwanted Christmas present had said she would come this evening. Presumably this was her. I pulled open the front door to find two women standing with their backs to me. Hearing the door open, one turned round.

  ‘Is this Happy Cottage?’

  I nodded and smiled. It always made me smile when I heard other people use the name Dorothy had given our little house.

  The other woman turned round. She wore a furry overcoat and either had an enormous chest or had something stuffed inside her coat. She stepped forward into the porch light and I could see two little eyes looking out at me from inside the coat.

  ‘We was watching the car,’ said the first woman. ‘Your drive’s slopey and the handbrake don’t work on my car.’

  The second woman put her hand inside her coat and pulled out a little furry thing that grunted as it met the December night air. She put her other hand underneath it to support it then turned it round for me to see it. It was all dark fur apart from a small area of pink belly.

  ‘We can’t stop,’ said the second woman. ‘My mate’s got to get back to her kids.’ She held out her arms for me to take the puppy. As I put my hands around it, it grunted again. I held it against my chest trying to cover it from the cold night air with my hands.

  ‘Me boyfriend says he was told she’s about five weeks old.’

  I shook my head. I was about to say that the pup should still be with his mother – but what was the point?

  The woman turned to go.

  ‘Hang on! You haven’t told me her name!’

  She looked round. ‘Sniffy.’

  ‘Sniffy?’

  ‘Cos it sniffs at everything.’ She turned to go again.

  ‘Did you bring anything with you for her? Anything she’s familiar with – has she got a bed? Or her toys?’

  ‘I forgot its blanket. Toys? I didn’t give it any toys.’ She pulled a face indicating surprised disbelief. ‘I’ve never had a dog – do you give ‘em toys?’

  So now we knew why this baby was playing with the human baby’s toys.

  After a hurried goodbye the pair were gone.

  I closed the front door and stood in the hallway, clutching this little bundle of life to my chest. I shook my head in bewilderment. For me, every dog that comes to us is precious and special – we’ve never had one that was the same as another. I’m left with a sense of wonder that to some people a dog means nothing, that they can discard them without a thought or a look back. They give us something which to them has no worth or use – yet to me is priceless.

  And now a puppy. A baby, with all her life ahead of her. With the promise of all that companionship and love and fun to come. Discarded in a hurry.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the realisation that something was nibbling the end of my finger. I sighed: no puppy food. And of course her owner hadn’t thought to bring any – but then they’ve probably been feeding her on chips. Good job the supermarket stayed open late tonight.

  Dorothy was in the loft looking for the Christmas decorations. I went and stood at the bottom of the loft ladder.

  ‘Dorotheeeeee!’

  ‘I’m up here!’ said a voice. ‘I’m trying to find the crackers we had left from last year. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  I looked down at the soft warm bundle cradled in my arms. Then I looked up into the hole above my head.

  ‘If you saw what I’ve got down here,’ I said, ‘You wouldn’t bother with those old crackers.’

  Dorothy had needed something to cheer her up. Me too.

  The day had brought us two German Shepherd dogs: one at the start of her life and one at the other end.

  We felt we had to change the name of the dog who had been tied to a banister when his owners moved out. With no name tag on his collar, the concerned woman who had brought him to us had called him Pepper. She had taken inspiration from a soft drink can she had found in her husband’s van. Pepper seemed to us perhaps more suitable for a smaller breed of dog, or one livelier than this dog.

  Still fresh in our minds was a story Charlie had told us recently about a police dog he had known. His mate Ginger had arrested a youth in a stolen car. Suddenly there was a knife in the young man’s hand and he ran at the officer. Thor jumped between them and took the full force of the knife. So Pepper became Thor.

  ‘We’ll have to give Charlie a ring,’ I said. ‘Get him to come and do one of his naming ceremonies.’

  Dorothy was watching Thor as he made slow progress round the garden.

  She compressed her lips. ‘I think, my Barrie, we wouldn’t want Charlie to leave it too long before he came.’

  I didn’t reply. A feeling of sadness flowed through me.

  What sort of life had he had with people who could leave him behind with the rubbish? When a dog comes to us whose life is nearly over, and who has had a poor quality of life – that is what I find demoralising. With the younger dog, the wrong could mostly be put right, and he still has time to live the life he should have. We need to put out of our thoughts past lack of care, callousness, brutality, and work for the future, and that’s how you energise and motivate yourself. But how do you motivate yourself with the dog who comes to you at the end of his life?

  Somehow. Because you have to put him right and you have to find him a home. Even if that home is only for a few weeks. Then at least he wil
l end his days with people who care about him and look after him.

  All this was in my thoughts as we watched Thor. I could see why the kindly woman who had brought him to us, Mrs Duxford, had said he could not walk in a straight line. His back right leg pointed inwards, the paw of his left back leg was folded under and dragged along the ground as he walked. The cumulative effect for him was that as he walked forward he would gradually veer off to the left. His body was that which is often seen with the very elderly dog: gaunt. Here and there were sores where we guessed he had spent too many hours lying down.

  We had made it a practice to take a photo of each dog on the day he left to go to his new home so I was surprised when Dorothy said, ‘I should go and get the camera, Barrie, and take his picture now.’

  I framed the photo carefully. It is a picture only of Thor’s head. For whatever time and neglect had done to the rest of him he had still the classic head of the German Shepherd. And not just any German Shepherd: his head was bigger than average and he was still handsome.

  Dorothy was better at guessing ages than I was. ‘How old do you think he is?’ I asked her.

  ‘It’s not easy to say, really,’ she said. ‘As with people, neglect hastens the ageing process. But I would guess he’s around twelve. He must have been a terrific dog in his prime. Even now, look how tall his shoulders stand from the ground. And that broad chest.’

  My photo shows a handsome male German Shepherd looking up at the camera, alert and bright-eyed, ears erect. The picture captured in his face the essence of him – you didn’t need to see the rest.

  At our usually busy vet’s Dorothy, Thor and I had the waiting room to ourselves. Only another couple of days and it would be Christmas Eve. It was Saturday afternoon and everybody was probably shopping or busy with their Christmas preparations.

  We were glad we had the waiting room to ourselves, for it was a restless German Shepherd dog we had brought to see the vet. Up and down the waiting room he struggled at the end of his lead, panting, coming back at short intervals to nudge one of us for a reassuring stroke of the head.

  I hadn’t got my eyes on him when he fell to the floor. So I didn’t see what had happened. We jumped up from our chairs but before we could kneel down to help him up he was scrambling and slithering to his feet. And I hadn’t seen Melissa standing at the open door of the consulting room.

  ‘I’ve been watching him,’ she said.

  I could see the concern in her face.

  ‘How often does he fall?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s the first time we’ve seen it,’ said Dorothy, ‘but he only came to us this afternoon and we haven’t walked him any distance, just a little way round the garden and from the car to here.’

  ‘Come through,’ said Melissa.

  We were back in the waiting room. We must have been with Melissa for nearly an hour. Thor had submitted without complaint to pulling, rubbing, pushing, prodding by this stranger. Now Melissa had gone off with some blood samples to test.

  ‘Did you see the dog before you agreed to take him?’ she had asked us.

  We had both shaken our heads.

  While I sat on the hard waiting room chair her question came back into my mind. I had time to think about why she asked it. If we had seen him would we still have taken him?

  Melissa reappeared, forced a smile, and sat down beside me. His visit to the vet had tired him and Thor was sitting on his haunches, slumped against me. Sitting down was for him a slow process, his back end going down gingerly to the floor. Melissa gazed admiringly at that big Shepherd head.

  ‘He must have been a magnificent specimen in his prime,’ she said. Then she leant forward and tickled his ear. ‘Weren’t you, Thor?’ she said to him.

  ‘So where do we stand, Melissa?’ said Dorothy.

  Melissa ceased to tickle the boy’s ear. ‘Really hard to say,’ said Melissa. ‘A few weeks, perhaps.’

  Several seconds of silence followed.

  Then, outside, in the street, a group of carol singers began to sing ‘Silent night’. I turned and through the window could see the group, two of their number shaking buckets at passers-by in the pub car park opposite.

  Christmas. It wasn’t so long after Christmas that it would be our wedding anniversary. And that meant it would be one year that we had been doing this work, taking in homeless dogs. I suppose it was inevitable that one day we would take in the dog we could not home.

  I turned away from gazing out at the carol singers and the Christmas shoppers jostling on the pavement. My eyes met Dorothy’s. Was this going to be the dog that ended his days not with a family of his own but in a dog sanctuary? The dog that was discarded, that did not have his own person? For him, no home of his own? The carol singers upped their volume and ‘Silent night, holy night’ swirled round the waiting room.

  ‘It’s a beautiful carol, isn’t it,’ said Melissa. She stood up. ‘If a prospective owner wants to speak to me about his condition I’d be happy to do so, of course.’

  Dorothy looked up at her. ‘Thanks. But we’ve got to be realistic… somebody taking on a dog with only a few weeks to…? And there would be the vet bills.’

  Melissa nodded. Her brow furrowed, the concern she shared with us plain to see.

  I sensed she wanted to speak, but was hesitating.

  ‘Did you want me to—’ she said after several moments.

  ‘Not unless he’s in pain,’ Dorothy said quickly and firmly.

  ‘No, I’m sure with the injection and painkillers he’ll be quite comfortable. Except if he falls he could injure himself, of course.’

  ‘That’s the only time we’ve seen him fall over,’ I said. ‘And it is a slippery floor in here, with the tiles.’

  Melissa nodded. ‘I’ll just go and see to that prescription,’ she said.

  The carol singers had moved away and we found ourselves sitting again in silence.

  I broke the silence by saying, ‘One of us could adopt him.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ said Dorothy. ‘In reality it would just be a gesture. We would be doing it because he hadn’t really got someone of his own. It’s a nice thought, Barrie, but it isn’t actually the answer.’

  I counted the boxes of tablets as Melissa put them on the counter: one, two, three, four, five.

  We wished Melissa a merry Christmas and trudged off with our old boy who could not walk in a straight line, having to make our way to our car through the bustling crowds of Christmas shoppers.

  Driving home, I made the effort to sound cheerful, to talk of the things I knew Dorothy liked about Christmas.

  ‘We could go and get a tree and decorate it tonight,’ I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘Thor could help us.’

  Dorothy managed a smile.

  ‘And we’ve got those new lights we bought last year – they’re so pretty.’

  ‘There’s somebody standing in our porch,’ said Dorothy as we pulled onto the drive. We had been so long at the vet’s I had forgotten about the prospective owner that had rung that morning.

  ‘It might be the lady who’s come to see the puppy – but she’s very early.’ That wasn’t a complaint – we both liked it when prospective owners arrived early. We thought it showed their enthusiasm. We had had the puppy only a couple of days but at just five weeks old and too young to have left her mother, she needed lots of care. The sooner we found a home that could give her all the attention and time she needed, the better.

  ‘This is a bright dog,’ had been Dorothy’s assessment of her. ‘She learns quickly.’

  And she was very inquisitive, wanting to inspect everything, also a sign of her German Shepherd intelligence. When she saw Thor for the first time she ran away and hid behind Dorothy’s leg, but even then her sense of curiosity overcame her and she kept peeping out to look at this huge creature.

  The figure left the porch and came across to greet us. ‘Hello, I’m Doreen. I’ve come to see the pup. Oh, and to be vetted, of course.’

&nb
sp; Dorothy and I introduced ourselves, Doreen shaking each of our hands vigorously.

  ‘I’m so pleased to meet you and I’m so excited.’

  I said I was pleased to meet her – and I was, too. Her cheerful enthusiasm was medicine for our depleted spirits.

  ‘Oh I do love a real fire,’ she exclaimed when we went through into the living room. ‘I’m sorry if I’m early. I sat at home with my hat and coat on for a while but then I just couldn’t contain myself any longer.’

  Over tea and chocolate digestives Doreen told us her life story. We didn’t have to go through the usual question and answer session. It was over a year since her last dog had died and it had taken her until now before she felt she could have another.

  ‘I know some people can go and get another dog the next day, but I just couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I needed time to grieve – I don’t know if that sounds silly.’

  Not to us it didn’t.

  She ran her own smallholding, mostly growing fruit and vegetables, with a few free-range chickens.

  ‘So she’ll have plenty of room to run about for exercise – there’s eight acres – although of course I’ll take her out for walks every day. Because I’ve got land for her to run about, that’s one reason why I want a young one.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ve certainly got a young one…’

  Doreen towered above Dorothy and me, and was heavily built; I guessed that her smallholding work had helped to develop her big arms. Cradled in those arms, the puppy looked even smaller than before.

  ‘Oh, she’s utterly gorgeous. What’s her name?’

  Like Thor, she had undergone a name change. Sniffy had now become Bliss.

  Dorothy had of course bought from the pet shop an assortment of toys and we watched as Doreen lay on the floor, immersed in the joys of playing with a puppy.

  I was thinking that time was getting on and we had dogs to walk when Doreen said, ‘I’m taking up so much of your time. But it’s a long while since I did this. My last girl was ten when she died – and ten weeks when I got her.’

  She left Bliss and sat down on the settee, gazing at the fire. Dorothy and I looked at one another. The bounce seemed to have gone out of Doreen.