Tea and Dog Biscuits

by Hawkins, Barrie

  ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’ Dorothy offered.

  Doreen shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but it brings back too many memories. She’s just so like my old dog, Chrissie.’

  She suddenly stood up. ‘I’ve made a mistake – I can’t have another puppy.’ She looked at me and then at Dorothy. ‘I’m so sorry I’ve wasted your time.’

  She took out a handkerchief, blew her nose, and hurried out.

  It must have been a couple of hours later that I heard a tapping on the living room window. I’d had time since Doreen left to walk Lottie, the Lurcher, and feed the others, Larry, the brown Labrador cross, tiny Millie, Thor and Bliss. The nights drawing in so early made it seem later than it really was and it was a surprise to see the clock in the hall tell me it was only eight o’clock. I opened the front door and was about to step out to see who was at the window when I stopped myself just in time, to avoid colliding with a Christmas tree. A Christmas tree that was taller than me.

  Doreen appeared out of the darkness.

  ‘I heard you say you hadn’t got your Christmas tree yet, and you always have a real one, so I’ve brought you this one.’

  Dorothy appeared beside me.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ I said. Her mouth was open in astonishment.

  ‘It’s a wonderful tree,’ she said. ‘I can’t normally afford one as nice as this.’

  ‘No. We normally end up with some straggly thing,’ I said, ‘that we get on Christmas Eve.’

  I leant round the tree. ‘But Doreen, what’s this for – why have you brought us this?’

  ‘My uncle grows them and I sell a few for him as part of my farm-gate sales. I felt so guilty at having wasted your time I wanted to get you something to say sorry.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely!’ said Dorothy. ‘And how kind.’

  ‘We both love having a real Christmas tree,’ I said.

  ‘You must have so much pressure on your time, helping these dogs,’ said Doreen, ‘and I felt awful afterwards at wasting it. I’ll help you carry it in, if you like.’

  I took one side of the pot and Doreen the other. It took some lifting and manoeuvring to get it through the door.

  ‘Dorothy and I needed this to cheer us up,’ I said to Doreen as I shuffled backwards.

  ‘Why is that, my darlings?’ she said.

  Dorothy pushed open the living room door. Through the open door Thor could be seen lying stretched out in front of the fire. Dragging the pot down the hall I paused. ‘We’ll tell you about it over a Christmas drink. It’s that lad, there,’ I said, nodding in the direction of the dog sprawled out on the fireside rug.

  ‘Oh bless him,’ said Doreen. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘What’s right with him?’ I said.

  She left me grappling with the tree, went to Thor and stood gazing down at him. He lifted his head from the rug, looked up at her for several moments, then managed a wag of his tail.

  It was love at first sight for them both.

  Christmases since then always make me think about Doreen and her Thor. There was much to think about.

  This woman had come to us for a young dog yet she had given a home to an old-age pensioner. We can all of us make seemingly rational judgements about what dog would suit us and our home – but in reality our emotions are our boss. In the comparatively short space of time Thor was with Doreen he brought immense pleasure into her life, and when the day came that she had to say goodbye to him she told us, ‘He was the greatest dog I’ve ever known. He was such a character. I loved him dearly.’ And it was her act of kindness, coming back to give us a Christmas tree, that caused Thor to come into her life.

  Perhaps Thor had never before known a loving, caring home, for how else do we explain his rejuvenation? Or perhaps it was the herbal remedy Doreen gave him. Or the friendship he struck up with Lucky, her cat. So for once, just once, Melissa was wrong: it wasn’t just weeks. He made it through the winter, enjoyed the spring and was fortunate to experience one of those glorious English summers we have from time to time, when he could be seen sprawled out under his favourite tree, Lucky beside him, sunbathing.

  He died in his sleep, under that tree, in late autumn.

  He had given Doreen companionship, laughter and even a little exercise throwing his ball for him. She had given him some life.

  And she had given us not only a Christmas tree but the present of a home for Thor. It had been the best Christmas present we could have had.

  A Perfect Match

  The two men opened the back doors of the truck. Along either side of the interior was a row of built-in cages. Two or three of the cages were empty but in each of the others, some seven or eight, a dog looked out at us.

  I looked down the rows.

  ‘Yours isn’t in those,’ said one of the men. ‘We’d have to let him out if he was.’ He clambered into the truck and went to the back where I could make out in the gloomy interior a free-standing cage on the floor. As he dragged it forward I could see the Shepherd inside. At the doors of the truck the man paused for us to get a look at the dog in daylight. He sat on his hindquarters, his head lowered, taking no interest in us, his eyes glazed, staring vacantly ahead of him. He made the effort to stand on all fours but his back legs wouldn’t support him and he slipped down.

  Some of the other dogs were barking, some whining, some silent.

  ‘Where are all these others going?’ I asked the man in the wagon. He was the older of the two and I surmised the younger man with him was his assistant.

  ‘A bloke at Yarborough,’ said the older man. ‘When he can, he takes some of the seven-dayers.’ He jumped down out of the wagon.

  ‘Seven-dayers?’

  ‘Under our contract with the council, at the end of the seven days we can dispose of them. If it’s an old one, or it’s sick, we’re not likely to home them. Usually we only destroy the others if we’re full.’

  ‘But we’re nearly always full,’ said the young man.

  The older man tapped the cage with his finger. ‘This one would have had to go, as he’s a biter. He would have gone weeks ago if it wasn’t that they were hoping to prosecute.’ He ran his fingers backwards and forwards across the bars of the cage. The dog tilted his head a little to one side in an effort to see what the man was doing. ‘I think he’s starting to come out of this – we need to get him out of the cage and into wherever you want him quick. I assume you’ve got somewhere nice and secure for him.’

  ‘We’ve been told he can be a bit aggressive,’ I said.

  ‘He’ll have you,’ said the man. He looked at his young assistant. ‘That reminds me – don’t let me go, Lee, without giving him the paperwork.’ He looked at me. ‘You’ll have to sign our lawyer stuff that absolves us from all legal liability for what the dog does to you.’

  Dorothy had been at work when the two men brought our latest arrival, so naturally as soon as she got home she had hurried off down to the pen to see him. I explained that the dog pound had given him some stuff to sedate him.

  ‘Presumably he doesn’t travel well, then, if they’ve had to sedate him for the journey,’ said Dorothy.

  Hmm. I doubted whether it was for the journey that the men had sedated him. They had carried the cage into the pen, upended it to tip the dog out, and were then in such a hurry to get out of the pen that they collided at the door. Not that the dog looked to be any sort of a threat. He stood in the middle of the pen, a dreamy look on his face, swaying slightly – how I looked after two glasses of wine. I’d decided to leave him for a few hours to recover and acclimatise himself to his new surroundings.

  As we approached the pen now we could see him lying close to the door, curled up.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Dorothy.

  ‘They called him Growler at the dog pound,’ I said.

  Dorothy pulled a face. ‘We can’t call him that.’

  I’d been watching the telly when Dorothy got home – a repeat of one of my favourite sh
ows of all time, The Dukes of Hazzard. I usually found it hard to come up with names for the dogs but today I had a source of inspiration.

  ‘What about Bo?’ I suggested, thinking of one of the lead characters in the show.

  Dorothy’s expression indicated that she was not impressed. We were at the pen now and the dog remained curled up but looking at us, eyeing us suspiciously I thought.

  ‘What about Denver?’ I said after the actor who played my favourite character.

  Dorothy knelt down to talk to the dog. ‘I think,’ she said to him through the wire mesh, ‘that we ought to get to know you a bit better so we can find something suitable.’

  ‘Or what about Rosco?’ I said. ‘He’s the Sheriff.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Dorothy said.

  I dropped down on my knees beside her. The dog leapt to his feet so suddenly and with such alacrity it made me jump and I toppled over backwards. He erupted into a frenzy of furious barking, his lips turned back as far as he could manage, to show his teeth, his jaws snapping shut, his eyes wide. Even Dorothy was momentarily taken aback.

  I scrambled up. The dog flung himself at the wire mesh, tilted his head and grabbed the wire with his teeth, tugging it to get at me. Despite the strong wire between me and the dog I took two or three steps backwards.

  Dorothy got slowly to her feet and also stepped back from the wire.

  ‘Goodness,’ I said, ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’ I could feel my heart beating from the unpleasant jolt.

  The dog let go of the wire, spun round in a circle, then grabbed it again.

  ‘Let’s move away,’ said Dorothy. ‘He’s getting himself in a frenzy.’

  We walked off a few yards to watch him at a distance. But neither the barking nor the pulling at the wire subsided.

  ‘We’ll have to leave him for now,’ said Dorothy. She turned and set off back to the house.

  I stayed for a few moments, watching the spectacle of this dog snarling and barking and frantically clawing at the wire.

  I followed after Dorothy. ‘Whatever are we going to do with him?’ I said.

  ‘For now, all we can do is leave him to calm down,’ said Dorothy. ‘Tell me more about what we know of him.’

  What we knew of him had come via Cecilia, who knew somebody who did rescue work, who knew somebody who did rescue work, who knew about this dog. Taking a dog that came through Cecilia always had an element of uncertainty: you couldn’t know what you were getting until it arrived. But it was so difficult to say no to Cecilia, plus she had found us an A-starred home for Bliss the pup with a retired RAF police dog handler.

  The manager of the pound had told us that a man, tall and heavily built, had been seen by some people to pick the dog up and throw him into the road in front of a bus as it moved off. Mercifully, the bus driver had swerved and somehow missed the dog. The man was never identified and the dog had no name tag.

  Dorothy was unusually quiet for the next couple of hours. She was immersed in a book for much of the time, which wasn’t unusual, but every now and then she would look up and gaze at the fire.

  I watched as she closed her book, went to the cupboard where we kept the clean food dishes and filled one with a couple of mugfuls of the dry dog food that we used. I guessed who it was for and that we would be off shortly down to that pen, and that she had, by now, formulated a plan of action for us and the dog.

  She put on her dog-walking jacket, and picked up the food bowl, then went back into the living room and picked up her book. Bowl in one hand and book in the other, she went to the back door. She paused. My puzzlement must have clearly shown on my face.

  ‘I’m going to go and sit with him,’ she said.

  My puzzled expression must have turned into a surprised one.

  ‘If I just sit there, he’ll get used to me. I’ll go and sit with him every day for a few hours. They’re an intelligent breed – he’ll soon realise I’m no threat.’

  ‘Dorothy, you’re not going in there with him!’

  ‘No, for today and tomorrow I’ll just sit outside. I’ll have to go in at some point tomorrow to clean him out—’

  ‘Dorothy, you can’t.’

  She must have heard the concern in my voice for she put down book and bowl, came to me, put her arms around me and gave me a hug. Then she pointed with her finger at the unseen operation scar under her clothes. ‘We had a near-miss with my illness,’ she said, ‘so I’m not taking any risks – don’t worry.’

  ‘But Dorothy you saw what he was like.’

  ‘It was fear, Barrie. He was frightened. I looked into his eyes.’

  ‘Well I can’t sit down there for hours but I’ll come with you and stay for a bit,’ I said.

  ‘I reckon we’ll make faster progress if I go on my own,’ she said.

  ‘You are joking!’

  ‘He didn’t set off barking and snarling until you bobbed down close to him – up to then he’d been all right with me.’

  ‘I hadn’t done—’

  ‘It was a man who threw him in front of the bus. And if that was his owner, can you imagine what else he’s been through with him?’ She went back to the door. ‘It’s no good arguing, Barrie. I tell you what, if you let me do this my way, I’ll agree to call him Bo.’

  She picked up her book and bowl and set off down the garden.

  After a couple of minutes I followed her and watched from a distance behind a shrub, armed with a broom for self-defence. But it wasn’t needed.

  The phone was ringing.

  ‘Oh, hello… Are you the gentleman that takes in dogs that need a home?’

  Gentleman? ‘Yes, we do take in dogs.’

  ‘Um… this might be a waste of your time…’

  I hope not.

  ‘I’m thinking of adopting a dog… but I’m not sure about it…’

  I was about to say what a huge responsibility it was to take a dog into your family and that you need to be very sure about it.

  ‘… because I’ve never had a dog before.’

  Oh. I could see why that would make somebody unsure.

  ‘Well, we all start somewhere,’ I said. ‘We all have to have our very first dog.’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t thought of it that way. Who am I speaking to, please?’

  ‘My name’s Barrie.’

  ‘My name is Thomas.’

  ‘Well, Thomas, how we normally operate is—’

  ‘It’s Mr Thomas.’

  ‘Oh, sorry! I misunderstood.’

  ‘I should mention that I’m not looking for a big dog.’

  I was about to say that is all we ever have when I checked myself. After all, down in the pen in the old barn was Lottie, the Lurcher cross. I wouldn’t call her a big dog. And indoors was our Labrador cross, Larry, and most people wouldn’t call him a big dog. And then there was Millie, who Charlie had brought to us, the World’s Smallest German Shepherd.

  ‘Would you like to tell me a little more about yourself, Mr Thomas…?’ I said.

  Dorothy felt it would be useful for the future if we kept a note of how we handled troubled dogs, the approach we took with different problems and what worked and what didn’t work.

  With Bo she wrote this in the form of a diary.

  DAY ONE: Brought to us heavily sedated. Barking, snarling in pen – fear aggression? Sat outside pen reading book two hours. Ferocious barking at first for some fifteen minutes, tailing off to occasional outbursts if I moved.

  DAY TWO: Short burst aggressive barking at first. Sat and read for three hours. After one hour, moved chair close to pen so he could sniff my hand through wire if he wanted to – short outbreak of barking. Look of fear in eyes gone – now tilting head with puzzlement. I think curiosity is going to get the better of him. Had to go in the pen to clear it out. Slowly opened pen door – he backed away, tail between legs. Talked to him every so often in a calm voice – he clearly always listens. Can’t say the same about husband!

  DAY THREE: Bit of barking as I approached �
� partly because I think he was dozing and my sudden appearance startled him. Just half an hour sitting reading this time before going into pen. Came back later for second sit with book – very brief wag of the tail when he first spotted me then abruptly stopped, almost as if he checked himself because he shouldn’t be wagging his tail. While reading this time I kept my hand up against the mesh. He sniffed it a couple of times then nudged it later. I pulled out my lead and held it up. I am sure I read in his face a mixture of expressions: some eagerness mixed with uncertainty. Opened door of pen: backed off two or three steps, paused, came forward two or three steps. Bobbed down holding out closed hand a little way. He sniffed it to discover a hidden bit of cheese. Took this, then in a minute another, then in a minute another. He is getting used to my hand. Can I now clip the lead on his collar? Yes!

  DAY FOUR: Twenty minutes walk this morning, only five minutes yesterday on his first walk as he was looking apprehensive at being away from his now familiar surroundings.

  DAY FIVE: Let him off lead? Garden securely fenced, can’t get out – but will he come back to me if I call him? No, not yet. I had to go to him. Backed off – a surprise, as didn’t back off in pen this morning. He’s still not confident.

  DAY SIX: Threw ball – looked at me as if I’m demented. Never been played with. Startled by sudden loud motorbike going by. Ran to gate, tried to clamber over – I didn’t want to grab him. Talked quietly and tried to distract him by pretending to find something in grass. Calmed down, but he gave me a fright.

  DAY SEVEN: Saw me coming and jumped up at wire, tail wagging. Can’t help but think how a week ago this dog was to be euthanised because he was aggressive. If I’d been thrown under a bus, I would be aggressive. He has kind eyes.

  I liked Mr Thomas – which was just as well because I would see a lot of him over the next few weeks.

  Mr Thomas was a cautious man, which is a commendable quality in a person undertaking the task of identifying, from the thousands of homeless dogs available, one who would be suitable.

  ‘No doubt you have many questions you want to ask me,’ said Mr Thomas on our first meeting, crossing his hands in his lap, shoulders back, ready for the cross-examination. And I liked it when he took his reading glasses out of their case and produced from a pocket of his suit jacket a list of questions he wished to put to me. ‘As I haven’t undertaken dog ownership before,’ he explained.