I’ve already taken my son’s dog, Summer, for a walk. She’s a
three-year-old black and white Border Collie, with energy to burn. It’s as if she was on a Lucozade drip. She
isn’t the brightest, wilfully ignoring or misinterpreting every single
instruction I issue. Perhaps she doesn’t
understand English. She’s from Dundee .
Goodness only knows what she would be like rounding up sheep. As like as not, they
would end up demented, being forced to run round and round in a circle until
they fell down.
Summer gallops with
short, purposeful strides like a miniature horse, just as you might imagine
Eohippus to have galloped 50 million years ago.
She is far too quick for me, but then a three-toed sloth would leave me
at the starting-post these days. When out walking, Summer veers from side to
side, like a car whose steering ball-joints have worn out. It’s most disconcerting. She refuses to stroll at my pace, despite my
bellowed instructions, and it’s obvious to me that I’m not walking, I’m being
towed. I have to use a very long lead in
order to give her some head-room, and I am constantly adjusting the length of
it, alternatively coiling it around my wrist, which eventually makes my fingers
turn blue, or holding it in two hands to shorten it, like a fly fisherman.
When out walking, she likes to carry a stick in her mouth.
The older and dirtier the stick, the better.
The trouble is, she frequently drops the stick and I have to pick it up
each time, and throw it a few inches before she’s prepared to pick it up
again. So I return with hands as black
as a sexton’s hat. I usually come back from
these walks with my nerves in shreds. If
I repose thereafter, she takes that to mean I’m prepared to throw a tennis-ball
for her for about twenty-four hours. ‘Put
it there’, I motion to my lap. She drops
it on the floor, just out of my reach, so I have to get out of my armchair and
pick it up. I throw it, she gallops
after it, brings it back, and then invites me to a wrestling match, the
intention being for me to prise the ball from her jaws before throwing it again. She has a grip like a vice and teeth like a
man-trap, so I normally fail. Having won
that little battle, she wags her tail enthusiastically and repeats the cycle,
ensuring each time that I have to leave the safe custody of my chair. By the time we reach the thirteenth cycle, the
ball is dripping wet with her saliva, and picking it up is like shaking hands
with a garden slug. In desperation, I
try to lob the ball to places that she cannot reach, like the top the curtain
rail or behind the television. My aim is
never that good, so the ball always falls into an accessible place, and so we
begin the cycle again. In the end, I am
forced to put the ball behind the cushion of my chair, and wedge my not inconsiderable
bulk against it, and even then she quite often manages to get her nose under
the cushion and prises out the ball with those mole-wrench jaws. Despite all this, she’s as sweet as a fondue
and as affectionate as a child. A man
can only stand so much, however - she’s only been with me a few days and
already I feel like I need a Summer holiday.
