We were getting nowhere. If I could not walk about my own house without a dog wetting himself, the time had come to seek more help. I leafed through Why Does My Dog Do That?, a paperback that a friend had been kind enough to give me, but the writer seemed to be talking about a different manner of creature altogether to Ollie, one that might be capable of making a reasoned connection between A and B. So I phoned Snetterton to see if they had any other psychologists on their books. Attila had provided partial assistance, but I would certainly take a second opinion.
There was an attached vet on duty who spoke to me at length. I can’t remember much of the words he said, though the tone I remember with clarity. He talked down to me to such an extent that I took to interjecting (when I could get a word in edgeways) with multi-syllables and stray words from the margins of Cultural Studies – mythologies, paradigmatically, Roland Barthes – just to try to throw him. The main thrust of his lengthy sermon was that the few months I’d had Ollie in my life was a very short time indeed, that surely I ought to be able to find it within myself, as a rational adult, to remain patient. He cited cases he knew of that were far, far worse. I could, he supposed, as a last resort, return the animal, but would this not be a course of action that would cast me into the light of being something of a failure?
For a long while after this ‘conversation’ I lay on the floor in my office – which is covered in rough seagrass and is painful to lie on – trying to relax by once more using those deep-breathing calming techniques that I’d heard of, the ones that didn’t work at the end of our walks. If I wasn’t careful, it would only be a matter of time before Ollie drove me to yoga, or some other dubious Eastern practice that would be even less like me than owning a dog.
It’s only right to say that this particular vet was the sole rogue representative of his profession that I’ve encountered. Ollie’s many visits to veterinarians (in addition to his psyche, and his delicate stomach, he has become an accident waiting to happen) have otherwise been distinguished by great care and professionalism, though there is one obvious caveat. Here is the one concrete tip I can pass on: if you’re going to own a dog, get insurance. Ollie’s medical bills topped five thousand pounds before he was even two years old.
On the day following the helpful talk with the NCDL vet, I pulled up on a small dirt carpark from where we were to begin our walk – one of my lesser used ‘confusion’ start points around the university campus. Ollie leapt out of the back of the car almost before the tailgate was up, as if he’d been planning a breakout. He hurdled a low crush barrier like Steve McQueen launching his Triumph in The Great Escape, and landed in the middle of the road, which at that point is on a blind bend. He slid to the opposite pavement where he came to a halt and stood looking back at me. I didn’t know whether to call him or tell him to stay. Either option would be equally useless as he’d pay no attention anyway. Predictably, he did the worst thing possible. He came halfway back then stopped on the centre line as he considered his next move. Two cars came from opposite directions and as they crossed, for a split second, he disappeared from my view.
They missed him by the distance of the gap between them. I admit that I was so fed up with him at that moment that I would have considered it a relief if either one of the vehicles or the animal himself had taken a slightly different trajectory. The way he was performing, how much longer could he be for the world anyway? The next motorist slowed right down. Now I called his name and to my surprise he returned and allowed himself to be put on the lead without further trouble: a first.
All the same, I had once more been made to take part in a pantomime involving roads, a dog and traffic. Pantomimes fall below musicals in the cultural Order of Merit. In a reversal of our normal routine I began our walk in a foul mood.
***
And so it went on.
I read a story in the paper about the Russian émigré artist Marie Marevna, who worked in Paris. She said in an interview that she would have produced more work during her lifetime, but that her dog was always eating her brushes. That helped me.
I took the slightest comfort wherever I could find it. I frequently encountered one lady who roamed the university calling her golden retriever. People would help her out, saying that it had gone this way or that way, that they’d seen it in some bushes back there. I caught sight of the animal a couple of times; it was portly, which was no surprise as it was a walking dustbin whose main purpose in life was to go off for a rummage around the kitchens of all the campus restaurants, scoffing everything in sight, and not to return to its owner until it was full up. She would often be there as we began our walk and still there when we left an hour and a half later.
There was another dog called Linus (named after the Saint, not the character in the Peanuts) who had the habit of going truffle hunting for hours on end, for imaginary truffles. He has very patient owners. Though I have seen them standing about calling his name, to no effect, sometimes in dreadful weather, in winter, when it is dark, and cold, I have never seem them cross or even mildly ruffled. He is a lucky dog.
And there was Max. Max is a border terrier. Border terriers are a breed that were completely under my radar before Ollie. They are comical dogs, as it turns out. Short, ginger, scruffy and tenacious, with a tufty finish like a welcome mat. Border terriers come with endless stamina and attitude, they’re the type who both start things and finish them too; if they don’t win a scrap outright, they win it on points. And they never give up on a chase – at the outset they may look to have no chance against, say, two greyhounds and a whippet, but, by wearing the other dogs into the ground, they triumph in the end.
Max was a typical example of his breed. His habit in greeting Ollie was to bounce in on his hind legs. By this means his front paws were raised to the ideal height to box Ollie about the face. Like Ali shielding himself from Foreman, Ollie’s technique for dealing with this onslaught involved a largely defensive, rope-a-dope repertoire of leaning, fainting and holding-off. He achieved the holding-off by pulling Max from side to side using his ears as levers. This was a game that could go on for twenty minutes.
Meanwhile, Max’s owner and I exchanged small talk, content in the knowledge that the wearing-each-other-out that we were watching would be good news for us both in the end. Max was one of the few that could make Ollie submit. This was not good enough for Max, it was not what he wanted, and one way or another he would always provoke Ollie into a second wind, by body-slamming him from a standing start, or by head-butting him from behind. After the second wind was done, with much whistling, offering of treats, and walking away in opposite directions, Max could eventually be persuaded to cease, and we would go our separate ways. And then, having thought about what he was missing, Max would wonder if Ollie had a third wind, and would reappear for more. His owner would show up a few minutes behind and shout while his pet paid him no heed. In a reversal of my normal role, in this sole specific instance, it was me who would capture a dog for another owner, an accomplishment which made me love Max, and which enabled me to feel that, even if Ollie wasn’t, at least I was coming on a bit.
In the pattern of these things, Max and Ollie saw a lot of each other during one passage of time, and then we got onto different walking shifts and didn’t bump into each other for ages. And then, like buses, we met same time, same place, three days in a row. As we extended our small talk, Max’s owner told me that since we’d last crossed paths there had been a day when he’d lost his dog completely; Max had shot into the walkways of the accommodation blocks, chasing a rabbit or something, and could not be found. His owner had walked all over the campus calling him for more than two hours before admitting defeat and making his way back to his car. When he got there, Max was sitting waiting by the passenger door as if to say, ‘About time, too. Where do you think you’ve been?’
While Max’s disciplinary record gave me no particular hope about how the future might play out, he did supply a crumb of comfort in the moment: he was no better behaved
than Ollie; in fact, given that he was a five-year-old who should know better, you could argue that he was worse. In short, I knew of one or two dogs who might possibly have been as exasperating as my own, though it seemed quite clear to me that none of these were actually afraid of their owners. (To double check this, I asked: they weren’t.)
WALKING HOME
Ollie’s first summer was of the type we get only once in a while in England, the kind in which a heatwave arrives which blisters the tarmac and buckles the rail tracks.
On one of the hottest of all these exceptional days I took him for a walk just before Sunday lunchtime. Why I mistimed this so badly, I don’t know; the thermometer was heading up to 100° F, and there I was out with a mad dog in the midday sun. The only slight intelligence I’d brought to bear was that we set off in the shade, using a river path overhung by trees. The river ultimately meets the broad at the university (by now I knew every single approach to the campus, in addition to different complex internal patterns that you could make within the walk itself).
At a convenient point, Ollie leant forward as far as he could to take a drink, and fell into the river. He refuses to swim – lurchers tend not to (because, I discovered, they don’t have webbed feet, like water-loving breeds) – but he can save himself from drowning and can clamber out well enough. Otherwise this part of our walk was incident-free, albeit sweaty and mosquito-heavy. And then we reached the broad.
Sundays were a difficult day for me at the best of times. In addition to the weekend Labrador stiffs, you encounter the whole compendium of other weekend peril: skateboarders; toddlers who are as skittles to a moving dog; fascist all-terrain pram-pushers competing for lane space with the fascist cyclists; family groups with elderly people in the pastel uniform – magnetic in their attraction to a dirty dog’s dirty paw or a wet dog’s shake; BMXers; kite flyers (multiple tangling opportunities); skateboards being pulled along by parachutes (multiple tangling opportunities squared); games of football, cricket and rounders; picnickers with a rug laid out, and a surplus of joggers. You name it, it’s there. And then there are many more dogs than usual too, dogs who are not even Labradors, out for their once-a-week stretch and dump. Nation of dog lovers my arse, nation of fat idle bastards more like. This is the mood Sundays put me in.
On this particular Sunday, we arrived at the broad to find quite a few fishermen as well. I’m not generally keen on fishermen, who all too often seem to have a touch of the mass murder about them: loners obsessed with hooks and knives and twine. In turn, they are not generally keen on Ollie, who has a penchant for raiding their maggots. Fishermen are often aggressive in their attitude, territorial. They own the place, don’t they? No one must lark about, or swim, or row a boat, no one must disturb the water – it is their crucial activity that takes precedence over all else. Fishermen tend to see Ollie off in short order, without any intervention required from his Master. They are stationed lower than I am, down by the water’s edge, and typically hidden behind umbrellas – I hear their oaths, sometimes I catch their dirty looks, but I am already off on my way, quick, in order to avoid any discussions about dog control, discussions in which I would not have a leg to stand on.
Ollie went down to annoy the first of the fishermen. I called him and he turned the deaf ear. He stayed in there and, even by his own poor standards he was overly persistent. An unacceptably long time elapsed while he remained, leaping from one side to the other of the small inlet in which the fisherman was stationed. This forced me to intervene, to field him out of the way. As I attempted to act he flew into the fisherman’s equipment, scattering it. The fisherman cursed and I did not blame him. It was beyond the pale for me not to pretend some sort of authority, so I overturned a ground rule and I shouted at Ollie. This did have the effect of clearing him. I apologised to the first fisherman. Ollie repeated his performance with the second fisherman. I tried to get hold of him, to more hopeless avail. He shot on to the third fisherman.
I surveyed the area for a moment. There are low decking platforms at frequent intervals around the lake, platforms which are built for the purpose of fishing from; every single one was occupied, as well as much of the intervening bank. There must have been a hundred rods. I had never seen this taking place before, but it was apparent that what we had here was a fishing contest. I may not care for fishermen, I may find the idea of a fishing challenge in an artificially stocked lake faintly absurd, but all the same I fully appreciated that these men were engaged in the serious business of sporting competition.
Sporting competition is an activity in which I partake – as participant, spectator and punter – many times a week; sporting competition is a human endeavour of which I am wholly in favour; sporting competition is the antithesis of pantomime. It was my clear responsibility to protect the fishermen’s rights not to have a stupid animal jeopardising their chances. Ollie returned to the first fisherman. The first fisherman had had enough and asked me if I couldn’t control my fucking dog, for fuck’s sake. It was over 100 degrees now, I had been put into three embarrassing positions in a row, I’d been chasing the stupid animal, I was perspiring profusely, and the answer to this question was a negative, though I did not give it. I shouted at Ollie again, even though I couldn’t actually see him. He emerged being chased by another fisherman who was brandishing a keep-net at him.
Even taking into account my normal problems in respect of returning him to the lead, there would be absolutely no chance of catching him now since he had been provoked into a state of panic by a combination of brandishing and shouting. So I chased him off down the path, which I knew would do no long-term good, quite the reverse, but I had to do something to restrict his chances of infuriating all the other competitors. Even in mid-pursuit, he still had a go at a couple more, though by now they were prepared, and were waving tripods and poles at him, practically walkie-talking each other and putting out an APB.
I rounded Ollie into the clearing at the end of the broad. I paused, collected myself, mopped my face with my shirt, and began to offer him the cubes of cheddar that were oozing in my pocket. He backed off, his spine arched, his tail between his legs touching his chest, his ears flat to his head.
To all the assembled Sunday Labrador walkers et al, I must have looked like the local dog-batterer. I offered him the cheese again. He ran away over the footbridge. On the other side of the bridge lay the pitches, where further sporting contests were taking place. I’d had enough. I mentally declined the prospect of chasing him across a cricket wicket. I was steaming.
‘I’ll abandon the little shit,’ I thought. ‘Why not? I’ll tell Trezza he ran away and I couldn’t find him.’
I doused my face in water from the river and turned. I pulled down my shades so I could pass by all the fishermen incognito, and I retraced my steps on my way back to a normal life. I felt like lighting a cigar. Halfway down the broad I took a right into the shady path beside the river. I never looked back.
Some way along the path, about three-quarters of a mile from where I’d last seen Ollie, a stretch of decking had been laid down to compensate for a patch of swampy ground. As I walked across it I heard the scratch of claws behind me. I turned. His body language was unimproved since I’d last seen him, to the extent that he was actually managing to walk with his back up and his tail between his legs. He took two more steps, then stopped and trembled.
I looked him in the eyes. I made an interpretation of the expression I saw there. It was a complex message which said, ‘Listen, we can’t go on like this. I want us to be friends, but I don’t know how we can do that because I am petrified of you.’
I paused, then I crouched. He sat, continued to tremble, but didn’t move. We stayed there like that for a long time until eventually I put him onto the lead.
There were many more vastly irritating days ahead, but as we faced each other while we melted under the midday sun, on the decking over the swampy ground, we had turned some sort of corner.
***
Ta
le-of-woe rescuers aside, there were frequent occasions when other dog owners, who’d had a rescue in the past, whose minds may have been clouded by time, would offer their thoughts. ‘From the home, you say? They’re the best, they’re so true and faithful; they never forget what you’ve done for them.’
These words were another way of saying the old truism: Man’s best friend.
In making the effort to find me after I had abandoned him, Ollie had demonstrated how this sentimental tosh actually works. Discovering himself alone, he’d marshalled the crude and admirable urge for survival. He has the saving grace of beauty, talent in abundance, but like all too many humans, he has no strategy to go alongside any of this. If he is autistic, then this is its manifestation: he relies only on instinct. Act first, think later. It’s a common complaint, a common autism, and one that I share. I came to writing the long way round, through many rash misjudgements that bypassed anything you might call a thought process. And even my instinct is dodgy – as I’ve already said, I am Mann’s sort of writer, the kind who finds writing more difficult than other people (it normally takes me five drafts before I’ll even send a postcard). I thought about this syndrome in terms of Ollie and I came to a conclusion. Ollie, I think, is the sort of dog who finds being a pet more difficult than other dogs.
There was never a worse day than the day of the fishing competition. As we worked our way forward I thought about the famous Groucho Marx one-liner, a take on the old truism: ‘Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend; inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.’ I came to think of this less as a joke and more of a perceptive comment about the canine soul.
It was still many months before we settled into anything like a normal relationship. How we negotiated our path in the weeks that followed the fishing competition, the methods we used, I really can’t relate, because I don’t know what they were. Patience is the only technique I can pass on. The moment we spent crouching and looking at each other by the river stood as a watershed for all of our time together up until that point; it had been harrowing, and the immediate aftermath was post-traumatic for us both. As a matter of self preservation, as a method of healing, your mind often goes fallow in these periods, and I guess that’s what happened to us.
Walking Ollie Page 9
