Walking Ollie

by Stephen Foster

  In spite of my appearance, some super-tense owners still mentioned this to me. ‘That animal is out of control,’ they’d say, in the strangulated whine of the suburban reprimand (the south side of the university is set in a middle-class residential area). I developed my stock answer to this observation.

  ‘He’s a rescue, just picked him up, he’s only a pup.’

  I’d say it as though I were a canine-guru who was putting Ollie through an assessment programme before implementing the appropriate course of homeopathic reprogramming. It would have been nice if this were true, because his non-normality was beginning to exhibit itself in an ever more exaggerated Jekyll and Hyde syndrome: while he was the worst-behaved child in the playground, back home he grew more timid and introverted by the day, especially with me.

  Within the walls of our house his plain desire was to become invisible. His body language was getting increasingly poor at any approach I made. Trezza was finding him a strange animal, too, but with her, at least, he was better behaved in public (the notes we compared had me grinding my teeth) and remained marginally more outgoing at home, though context is worth mentioning: as it turned out, he never did wreck any of the furniture – once he’d cased out the scary upstairs, and decided it was out of bounds, he stayed downstairs all day long doing absolutely nothing. He licked the wallpaper off the wall adjacent to his bed, and gnawed at the floorboards around his basket, once in a while he would find a felt pen and make a mess, which could be particularly alarming if it was a red felt pen, giving rise to the momentary thought that he’d done himself in, but that was the worst of it. His indoor routine dictated that he seldom ever actually moved. Movement, in its many guises, was a matter strictly reserved for the outdoors.

  ***

  I started to have difficulty getting Ollie to return to me at the end of walks. As he became familiar with the geography of the university grounds, and as we made our way back towards where the car was parked, he began to recognise this as the signal that the best part of his day was about to end. He would drag behind, shoot off at tangents, reappear at a distance and then stop some way short. I would crouch and make cooing noises while offering a hand containing his favourite treat – cubes of Glastonbury Cheddar. He’d stay put. I’d shuffle forward slightly. He’d stay put. I’d draw closer, so he could smell the food. He’d stay put. ‘Cheese, Ollie, cheese,’ I’d say. He’d dive in while executing advanced Matrix manoeuvres involving diving out at the same time.

  I began to prepare for these moments and sometimes I’d be sharp enough to catch him with a snatch at his collar, but more often not. When a first attempt failed it became a hugely unfair one-sided game as Ollie stood off and danced back at any advance I made. It was infuriating. Even given my new mindset in relation to time, I still had many better things to do with it.

  Sometimes I’d refuse to play, choosing instead to lean against the turnstile at the top of the walk, feeling aggrieved as the other dog-walkers came and went with their obedient animals while Ollie flitted in and out of the trees taunting me. I’d try a few breathing exercises that I’d heard of before my next attempt. The breathing exercises failed: Ollie could sense my tension and would stand even further off.

  Fifteen minutes might elapse. I’d feel the beginnings of rage, which I’d repress. I believe dogs can smell repressed rage: his every movement took him away from me. The only method I had left now was to lay a trail of Cheddar and fool him by stretching out an arm, my hand containing a final wedge of cheese, to one side, while coming in from behind for his collar with the other arm, though this wasn’t foolproof – he could still sense the incoming movement and escape. Then the whole routine began again, only now Ollie would be on emergency red alert, having nearly allowed himself to be captured twice, and I would be out of cheese.

  I could be looking at a half-hour episode before some kind-hearted owner whose dog’s behind he had gone to sniff caught hold of him. It was easier for them; they held the element of surprise which I had so completely lost.

  I began to dread these moments. I took to dragging Trezza or Jack along with me so that they could retrieve him at the end of the walk, which, just to rub it in, either of them could manage with ease. Trezza could even shout at him to make him compliant. I knew from the one single experiment I’d conducted that to raise my voice was to freak him out and spook him even more. I had not anticipated losing five or six hours a week on top of the actual walking itself to be farted about by an animal who was becoming increasingly wary of me all the time, any time, any place, anywhere, in a manner that was inexplicable. And, additionally, it seemed I had no tools to deal with him. The whole scene was depressing.

  ***

  A friend of Trezza’s came to stay. We went to eat in town. On our return, at about ten thirty, I volunteered myself for the night-time empty out.

  By now this activity was no longer a daily ritual; as the nights began to draw out we’d started experimenting with taking him for a late evening second walk and skipping last-thing since it didn’t seem to be doing any of us any good. I might wake to find a present in the morning, but so what? – picking-up was beginning to slip down my list of Ollie-related problems. Still, on this occasion, I used him as an excuse to be on my own, to clear off out of the way and let the girls’ talk begin.

  For once I was relaxed, not least on account of the bottle of wine I’d consumed. I walked Ollie down to Carrow Road and let him off in the carpark to attend to his toilet. The one extra reason I could claim for these unauthorised freedoms I was allowing him was that I’d learnt he didn’t like relieving himself if you were nearby, and he didn’t like being watched while he was at it either, not for poos, that is – he’d piss anywhere, like all dogs. He’d piss when he didn’t even need a piss. He didn’t cock his leg, he crouched like a girl. Trezza said this was because he’d had his equipment decommissioned too young. Sometimes I had a piss myself, and I’d cock my own leg to try to give him a clue, but he didn’t seem to see any connection between human piss and dog piss, much less did he consider my technique.

  So I pretended to look away and smoked a cigarette while he did his main business. I bagged and binned the turd. He wandered into the darkness at the far end of the carpark. I called him. He backed off. I threw him a bit of chicken. He ate it and backed off again. We continued this game until we were very close to the front of the stadium. I reversed, to lure him back into the safety of the carpark. But he stayed put. I called him. Nothing.

  I whistled him.

  Nothing.

  ‘Chicken, Ollie,’ I said, ‘Chicken!’ I took a step forward and he cantered away round the corner, in the opposite direction, down the service road in front of the main stand, towards the main road proper. This could not be happening because this was the behaviour he reserved for the fields at the university, it was not for here where it had never happened before. I trotted after him, softly calling his name and saying, ‘Chicken.’ He went faster. I came to a halt, hoping he’d follow suit. He carried on. He’d put an unrecoverable distance between us now and was nearing the three-lane highway that runs parallel to the service road. The highway has phosphorescent orange overhead lighting and is edged by industrial units, a petrol station, and supermarkets. It’s not that busy at that time of night, but it’s not that quiet either and is the absolute wrong place for a dog with no road sense to be.

  In a flash, Ollie was making his way along the middle of this tarmac. I gave full chase now, it was my only option, not that there was a rat’s chance of catching him, he could outpace me many times over. He went through a red light, round a bend and towards the railway bridge.

  I began to sprint, but even sprinting couldn’t take me into his slipstream. We made it over the blind summit of the bridge unscathed. On the other side another road merges as it becomes a one-way system. Cars were coming in from both sides and, as they swerved and slowed, some even pulled up, drivers and passengers trying to coochy-coo him out of danger. They must have wondered wha
t sort of creature had escaped, and from where. He was six months now, three times the size he had been when we picked him up. In the dark he could pass for an antelope. He kept going: no scary person in a scary car was going to fool him with some scary coochy-coo routine. I followed, uphill, round the top of the one-way system. Here it turns into another main road. A few hundred yards on the right is our house. First there’s one side road, then a second. Our house is on the corner of the second side road and has an entrance round the back with a hard standing, a space Ollie is familiar with because that’s where he jumps in and out of the car four times a day at either end of his walks.

  Given that the chase we were having was happening on the opposite side of the one-way system to the route we take on the walk down to Carrow Road – and was therefore new to him – I felt certain he had no idea where he was and that he would miss the turn. This would put us on the road to Great Yarmouth. The fiasco would become a marathon which would end with one, or both, of us spread across the road under the wheels of a truck. Instead, Ollie cornered on the second right, and cornered again, to enter the back of our house through the open door of the conservatory lean-to. I caught up with him as he stood cowering against the French door in the side passage yard where he’d met his dead-end.

  To this day I’m convinced the manoeuvre that took him home was accidental. No doubt I should have gone up to him and patted him and told him what a clever boy he was for finding his way back.

  However, I did not feel too good after being forced to run a mile, in a panic, through traffic, in the middle of main roads, in the dark, on the back of a warm-up that had consisted of a few fags and a bottle of wine. I smacked Ollie on his nose and I shouted at him. It wasn’t that hard a smack, but it wasn’t that gentle a smack either. The shouting spoke volumes for all the unshouted words I’d bottled up on the fields of the university.

  Trezza appeared, alerted by the commotion. I explained what had happened. This precipitated a stand-up row because, notwithstanding the smack, which was unforgivable, what on earth was I doing letting him off his lead down there in the first place?

  ‘I’ve been doing it for ages,’ I said.

  ‘Then you’re an idiot,’ she replied.

  ***

  The following morning when I came downstairs Ollie went into a corner with his back up, his coat Mohawked along his spine, and his tail so far between his back legs it was out through his front legs. He looked prehistoric, and he put me in a filthy mood. Suit yourself, I thought. It was you that started it by running away in the first place. I’d had enough. He was only a dog, and he was not going to ruin my life.

  Trezza noted my reaction and asked if that was how I was going to deal with the situation, then – by sulking. Did I think a dog would understand sulking?

  ‘What can I do?’ I said.

  I wished I hadn’t hit him but, for crying out loud, was it such an abnormal response? It’s only what any person would be driven to. Trezza advised me that he was a poor, sensitive, defenceless creature and asked how I’d feel if I were whacked on the nose by a vicious giant.

  ‘I did it for his own sake,’ I said.

  ‘Well he wouldn’t really be able to work that out, would he? she replied.

  This was exactly what I needed, to be made to feel like a criminal. When a jockey whips a horse towards the finishing post, the commentator calls it a ‘reminder’. Does the horse bear the jockey a grudge for this? Not as far as I can tell. I’d seen other owners give their dog a reminder too, on a few occasions. I’d had an old lady clear her cantankerous Jack Russell out of Ollie’s way with the toe of her boot. And I’d seen more than a few owners flip out and attempt to control their animal by swinging one at its backside. While it may be unedifying, like seeing a child smacked in a supermarket, I’d noted that, without exception, the dogs had carried on just as before, if not the more so.

  But now Ollie remained where he was, trembling in the corner. I could have kicked him for it. After all, what had I done to deserve his general attitude, his taunting, his running away, his suspicion? Hand-fed him chicken, steak, liver, Glastonbury Cheddar and biscuits, and in between times taken him out to play, that’s what.

  ‘Do you ever hit Jack?’ Trezza asked, knowing the answer to this was a negative.

  ‘I slapped his hand when he kept trying to put it into the fire when he was two years old,’ I said: for his own protection. ‘For fuck’s sake, dogs do have to be disciplined, you know.’

  ‘Not like that,’ she said.

  I went to offer Ollie a conciliatory stroke. He pissed himself on the spot.

  ***

  Though he didn’t make a habit of the on-the-spot pissing, and though I simmered down and acted nice in the days that followed, his response to me just got worse and worse. I could sense him flinching before I even entered the house. Once I was in his space he’d slink along the wall, creep into the next room to be out of my way. I’d call him for his walk and, like the man I’d met in the pine forest with the runaway dog, he wouldn’t come. Trezza had to fetch him to the door for me.

  In the evening, eating my dinner in front of the television, I looked at him as he turned his face away, and I wished he wasn’t there. Could we send him back? No, not least because I’d discovered that Trezza forms a bond with her dog that you wouldn’t want to see broken. When she and her ex separated she kept Mingus for the first six months. But Mingus spent all his time waiting by her new front door for his Master to come home. In the end she complied with Mingus’s clear wishes and full-time custody was transferred. I noted the sub-plot here: this episode at least illustrated that a dog can form a stronger attachment to one human carer than to another, even when it has a comfortable relationship with both. But the situation we were in was different. I didn’t want to use the word, with its whiff of California psychobabble, but all the same it seemed to me that Ollie and I had got ourselves locked into a dysfunctional relationship. He was refusing my love, that was the way I saw it.

  The Incident of the Smack had been coming. His demeanour had been deteriorating in the weeks that led up to it: the backing off, the turning his face, the flinching, the fannying about at the end of the walk. And, to make it worse, as far as I could remember, there was no specific point of origination for it. I couldn’t even identify how this had all started, apart from those night-time empty outs in the beginning. Was that really enough to bring us to this: Trezza’s equilibrium thoroughly disturbed, me in a black mood as a dog ever so gingerly conceded to take sirloin steak from my hand? What sort of animal remains undelighted to be fed organic beef by his Master? Would I have sent him back if I lived on my own?

  I think I would. I think I’d have justified it by saying that dogs and I are not cut out for each other, that I had done my best but that it hadn’t worked out. It would have been no surprise. One or two of my friends hadn’t bothered to disguise their honest reaction to the news of his arrival.

  ‘You? A dog!?’

  The way it was said, it flagged something else. The idea that Ollie was a child substitute wasn’t even worth arguing with – Trezza has no children, we’ve been together a few years, it’s amateur psychology successfully applied. But there was more to it than that. I’m urban (Norwich has a received image, but I do live on the Eastside), I have urban interests. I play football, and after that I go out for a drink wearing my nice clothes that do not get messed up and are not host to dog hairs and residual dog drool. Ollie was a signal of a personality change, an indicator of the mid-life crisis: ‘You’ll be moving to the country next.’ This was the implication. Someone sneeringly mentioned a barn conversion. So, even as an idea, Ollie jarred. And the reality, as it turned out, was not that I had acquired an incongruous pet (noun: a domesticated or tamed animal or bird kept for companionship or pleasure and treated with care and affection), rather that I had acquired a massive problem that pissed and shat in the house and which I could not deal with. So maybe the friends had been right. But on the other hand
, Trezza’s bond aside, I have the usual male complaint: I don’t like to be beaten. The sort of writer I am is the kind Thomas Mann identified: somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. And so it follows that the variety of not-being-beaten I go in for tends to involve activities that I struggle with in the first place.

  I scanned the Yellow Pages and found a classification called ‘Dog Training’ (yes, we still needed to get round to that) which had a re-direction to a section called ‘Animal Behaviourists’.

  Trezza made the call. She described Ollie’s primary symptom: takes fright upon sight of Master. An arrangement was made for the man from ‘Happy Pets’ to come and observe us. Observe was not a word I liked the sound of. The man was called Attila. I shook my head. It was becoming a farce. If there’s one cultural device I hate more than a musical it’s a farce – a forced construction of ludicrously improbable events that are supposed to be funny, but aren’t.

  Still, I entered into the spirit of the wretched thing. I walked around whistling the theme from The Dambusters and trying to remember not to mention the war. Attila was a man’s name, at least there was that: very few males who visited the house received anything in the way of a welcome from Ollie. Plumbers, paper boys, meter readers, friends: all more or less scary, all to be shied away from. At least Attila would see it like it was. It would have skewed the observation if the observer had been a woman. Ollie prefers women, sometimes he even startles us all by wagging his tail at one. The rescue centre staff had all been female, and aside from their sympathetic dispositions each of them had pockets full of treats, which I noticed they handed out freely. Ollie’s first contact with friendly humans had been gender-biased, no question. His experiences at Snetterton were key, I was sure of it. Add to this his early painful separation from his mother, and the complexity of his Oedipal crisis becomes clear.