Rain (Again) – Just A Short One – Best Laid Plans – Holiday Memories –  Best Dressed Dog Walker 2020 – First Hazard – And the Second – The Basic Idea Behind Horses – The Disappearance – The Mysterious Thing Up the Tree – Ball Madness – Greece Is Still Much Nicer

It’s raining. Again.

Not the kind of tempest that would get Turner stuffing his shirt tails in his breeches, throwing some brushes in a bag and hurrying out the door.

Not the kind of cataracts that would get Noah tutting in the cabin of his ark while a giraffe gently nudged his arm for toast.

Not the kind of CGI catastrophe that would have the lead actors turn round slowly before they snap out of their funk and fight their way through the disposable crowds up to higher ground, or the library, or the mall, or wherever. The kind of photogenically apocalyptic weather that’s accompanied by drums and brass and buckets of popcorn.

Not that kind of rain.

No – this is that peculiarly British, mediocre, bargain-basement, own-brand kind of rain that makes you shrug and dream about Greece. A miserly drizzle. A so-so soaking. Whatever kind of weather. A non-soon.

The dogs stand at the back door as unenthusiastically as me.

‘Just a short one,’ I tell them.

They stare up at me in silent protest.

If only I’d listened.

*

I figure at least no-one else will be out. They’ll have taken a more balanced view. They’ll have listened to the forecast, for God’s sake, which I think I’m right in saying promised this whole damned thing will have cleared away by midday leading to sunny periods and ‘spits & spots’ of rain (which I hate as a description – it sounds too medical – the meteorological equivalent of ‘moist’). But of course, that wouldn’t fit in with the plans I have for my day off. I’d decided already. One: Walk the dogs. Two: Breakfast. Three: Write. Four: Lunch. Five: Supermarket shop. Six: The rest of the day’s my own (as if everything else hadn’t been). There’s nothing to say I couldn’t do it all in reverse order and stay dry at the same time. But no – a plan’s a plan – which probably proves I’m British more than my bad teeth or my Raynaud’s. A state of mind cold-forged by years of holidays on the North Norfolk coast, shivering in and out of the sea, followed by a rough towelling off, gritty sandwiches huddled behind a windbreak, then out again for a round of French cricket in the middle of a hurricane.

I can’t find the stuff to wear that I want to wear, so I end up in a flat brown cap, green waterproof with a broken zip, too-tight trackie bottoms with a red stripe down the sides, and a pair of ten pound wellies. When I put the little bag of treats over my shoulder, bookended left and right by two glum lurchers, I look like a minor character in a naff suburban sitcom.

Just as I reach the beginning of the alley that leads onto the estate, I see two girls coming towards me with a bow-legged Staffie, like they’re taking an old footstool for a walk. The girls are as crazily dressed as I am, so I don’t feel too bad.

‘Which way are you going?’ I say to them.

They stop and hold their hoods away from their faces to get a better look. Even the Staffie seems confused.

‘Which way are you going – right or left?’

They look uncertain about me, and I really can’t blame them – except, Stanley barks, and then they understand what I mean.

‘Right!’ says the older one in a panic.

I move to the left and distract Stanley with a treat whilst they exit and hurry on.

‘Good start!’ I say to him.

Lola looks at me. She could’ve predicted all of this. I give her a treat, too, which she snaps down with a scornful little snap like a bent cop trousering a bribe.

When we reach the gate into the first field, I see a woman coming towards us with a Border Collie. If Stan has an internal list of dogs he likes to bark at, a Border Collie comes second (below a French Bulldog, his nemesis, still at number one, and just above a Jack Russell, which I think he’s more worried about as a choking hazard).

‘Sorry!’ I say, moving off to the left as soon as I’m through the gate. ‘He barks!’

The woman is dressed in thoroughly sensible, all-weather gear. The kind of gear you’d put on if you were at the North Pole and just stepping out of the hut to drill some ice cores. She waves a Gore-Tex mitten at me. Stanley barks – but she doesn’t react. She’s used to polar bears.

Further on, and the Hole-in-the-Hedge gang are gathered around the furthest gate. There’s a big oak there, giving shelter from the rain. I suspect they don’t mind the rain all that much, though. It’s just an excuse to loiter round the gate and intimidate the passing trade.

Lola trots towards them obliviously, but Stanley bridles. I don’t think he understands the basic idea behind horses, and I have to say I’m with him on that. I think he thinks horses are just oversized French Bulldogs. To get him past I have to feed him a whole tripe stick – the treat equivalent of a stat dose of mirtazapine. It works. We make it through the gate into the next field. I start to feel more optimistic about the walk. I let Stanley off and the two of them chase each other around through the wet grass. We move on to the next field.

Stanley disappears through a fence into a private area of scrubby woodland.

‘He’ll be back,’ I say to Lola.

She’s not convinced.

Stanley is gone for ten minutes or more. Just as I wonder whether I should go look for him, I hear him barking. Not the usual thing – a worrying combo of distressed howl and urgent woofing. It sounds as if he’s in pain. I picture him hung up in barbed wire, or maybe his foot jammed in a hole or something. So I crawl under the fence and head that way. Finally I see him, standing under a tree, staring up. He’s so rapt, he doesn’t even glance back as I approach. I put the lead on and try to tempt him away with a tripe stick. But whatever it is up the tree (I don’t know, a deer probably, because I’m sure even an elephant would find some climbing capability if they heard Stanley barking), it has a hold on him that totally trumps tripe. I’m forced to drag him away inelegantly, all the time imagining what Adina the dog trainer would say. Probably nothing. She’d just shake her head slowly from side to side, a single tear sliding down her cheek.

I can’t risk letting him off the lead yet, so I have to negotiate the fence the best I can – which, as it turns out, is not very well. I manage it, though, sliding out the other side muddied and soaking wet, but still with Stanley safely in custody.

I straighten my hat. We carry on with the walk.

I find a tennis ball. I let the dogs off and throw the ball. Lola scoops it up mid-run, but Stanley overestimates and blows past her in a chaotic mess of legs. Then he scrambles upright again and starts chasing her round the field, making up in noise what he lacks in coordination. After a while I put him back on the lead. Lola waits until we’re at a safe distance before she drops the ball in a place she’ll remember for next time, then comes panting after us.

The horses have moved on, so that’s something. Now that the rain is coming down harder and with more conviction, it looks like we’re the only things out on the field. Probably the world.

‘Good dogs!’ I say to them. ‘Let’s get home for a nice, rough towelling off.’

And with the three of us standing there, muddy and wet-through, it feels like we’re home already.

Why we walk where we walk – The Mysterious Pit – The Wonderful Miss Cox – A Dead Tree kind of Philosophy – Nuts n’Isles – Stanley as Ophelia

Sometimes you need Shakespeare to explain yourself with any weight.

For example. We tend to walk Stanley in the same place every day. The reason is that the fields over the back of the estate are all well fenced off. There are horses in the first field – the Hole in the Hedge gang – but they tend to keep themselves to themselves, playing cards, drinkin’ and cussin’ over the far side – so we’re okay if we take a circuitous route to the two fields beyond them. There aren’t any sheep or cattle in the neighboring fields, and if you pick your time you can avoid seeing too many other dog walkers, so all in all it’s a good place to let Stanley off the lead. He’s getting better at being around other dogs, and I don’t think it’ll be long before he’s completely reliable. Until we’re sure, though, it’s safer and easier to fill our pockets with treats and head that way.

We mix it up a little, for variety. I mean – sometimes we’ll reverse the order. Sometimes we’ll go up rather than down, clockwise rather than anti-clockwise. And anyway, there are plenty of distractions. There’s a mysterious pit in the far corner, completely wooded and overgrown. Stanley often disappears down there for a root-around, and always comes back with a wilder look in his eye.

So where does Shakespeare figure in this?  

Well, to begin with, sometimes when I’m walking I find myself raking through the scraps of memorised lines I know of WS, mostly from my time at Secondary school, and a VERY Pre-Raphaelite teacher with long red hair and a pale expression, who wandered round the margins of our English class like a tragic princess doomed to repeat endless circuits of a pit of ravenous wolves. I had a VERY big crush on this teacher, Miss Cox, who I would risk any humiliation to impress. I even gave her a book of poems I’d written, mostly about animals – moths and spiders and things – basically being a closet goth, before the term goth or closet existed. And when I say book, I mean an exercise book, where the poems only took up the first half, so I ripped out the other pages to make it look as if I’d written more, on the same logic that if you had a bag of crisps and smashed them up before you opened the packet, you got more crisps. Anyway, Miss Cox, with a bravery in the face of ridicule that was basically martyrdom, insisted we all learned poetry by heart, especially the emotionally stormy stuff. I’m guessing she must have drawn some wry satisfaction from seeing eleven year old rugby players scrape back their chairs, stand up, punch the guy next to them, then recite: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day… or Milton: Blind among enemies, O worse than chains, dungeon or beggary, or decrepit age.

The point of this is, the other day I was thinking about the repetitive quality of the walks. I was thinking that actually, the walk is never the same – like the old saying: you can’t step in the same river twice, because it won’t be the same river, and you won’t be the same person (or something like that). There are an infinite number of changes that happen, and in some ways it’s good to do things over and over, because your relationship to them is as fluid as the thing itself. You see that in the quality of the light. How a dead tree looks against a bright blue sky, or low cloud, or through mist. With crows or without. And when you see it with one of its limbs fallen after a storm, the shock that gives you.

Anyway – it reminded me of that Shakespeare quote from Hamlet:  I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space. Which sums up nicely (in the way that Shakespeare can absolutely be relied on to sum things up nicely), the fact that you can always find new things to look at, and new ways of looking at them, if you relax and stop worrying about the pursuit of novelty.

As a side note, there’s a whole range of Shakespeare quotes whose meaning changes if you don’t quote the whole thing. Like the nut one. The whole quote is: I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. Which definitely makes the whole nut gaff a little less cozy. The other one that often get quoted out of context is the ‘sceptred isle’ speech from Richard II. You often hear it as a patriotic thing, an expression of the glorious Britannia mindset… This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle … a long, gaudy shopping list of all the wonderful things about Britain. Except, they always miss the point of it. The payoff of all that hyperbole is to express how much disgust John of Gaunt feels at the way the country was being f*d over: …Is now leased out… Like to a tenement or pelting farm. So nothing new there, then.

Thinking of that elegant, goosey, Pre-Raphaelite look, I’m sure Stanley would’ve made one of those Victorian painters a wonderful muse. I can totally imagine Stanley in a big embroidered frock, lying on his back in the studio with a posey of flowers in his paws. There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . then he catches scent of a rabbit, leaps out of the bath and runs off.

Photoshop for Beginners – Into the Woods & Into the Zone – Guard Duty – Jenny & Cecil – Rain & How Animals React to it – An Alarming Picture of One Man & His Labrador – Fake Horses – Crows & Cameras

If Lola seems to have disappeared from this journal for a while, it’s because we’ve been tending to walk her separately. The thing is, before Stanley (B.C.E, or Before Considering Extra-lurcher) she’d been used to long walks over the woods. Off the lead, free to follow her nose from the moment we push through the kissing gate back of the rec. Lola’s completely reliable – dogs, people, cows, dinosaurs (no doubt, if there were any). So all in all, it’s an easy time. The kind of idyllic, carefree country walk you see in adverts for dog food or laxatives. Not only does it mean she gets plenty of exercise, it gives me time to wander off in my own head, a meditative, semi-vegetative state, like a dozy shaolin monk, but in a kagool, not a robe, an iPhone instead of a flute, squinting up at the dazzling patterns of the leaves against the sun, whilst Lola looks back at me from way along the path, wondering what the hell’s holding me up.

It’s a different kind of walk with Stanley, I’m afraid. More like walking a maximum-security criminal round an exercise yard, Stanley in an orange boiler suit, grinning up at the watchtower guards, chewing grass, gauging distances / response times.

I’m over-selling it, of course. He’s not that bad. And if he is, he has good reason. He had nine years of not being walked before we adopted him, so it’s not surprising he has a few issues. The only thing is, you do have to watch him, and it’s not what you might call relaxing. I seem to spend my time continually passing Stanley treats, or scanning the horizon with field binoculars. With Lola, if we see another dog walker, and our paths happen to cross – great! We chat, we talk about this and that. I miss catching up with the people I’ve come to know over the last few years.

Take Jenny, for example.

Jenny’s a middle-aged woman with – from top to bottom – wild white hair, Onassis sunglasses, Barbour jacket, tight blue jeans, hacking boots, and a pug called Cecil. Except for a couple of days midsummer, Cecil is always in a fleecy wraparound, much like a babygro except tighter and with a hole for his stubby tail (although, thinking about it, you have poppered holes for nappy access, so maybe it would make a cheaper alternative, and you could buy them in packs of three). Cecil’s fleece always looks a bit too tight, because he walks with the kind of stiff-legged roll you’d imagine an occasional table would walk with if it could, and his eyes bug-out alarmingly. But that’s a feature of the breed, I suppose, and something you might go for if you had a kink about dyspeptic bank managers. They have a fraught relationship, Jenny and Cecil. You can hear them coming from a long way off, Jenny snapping out his name constantly, driven mad by his latest infraction, like Cecil stopping to sniff a flower, or snacking on rabbit droppings.
‘At least it’s organic,’ I say.
‘Highly toxic!’ says Jenny, clapping him away. ‘We’ll suffer for that later.’

Jenny is worried about everything. Her anxiety is a force of nature, all-encompassing, a low-lying cloud of generalised concern, covering everything from Brexit and the pandemic to the kids who hang around the recreation ground. Trying to stay positive when you’re talking to Jenny is a bit like when you mix all the colours in your paintbox: you start off with yellows and reds but despite your best efforts you end up with puce. It’s exhausting talking to her, like blundering into quicksand and trying to whistle for help. But she often says such strange things I like it. And Cecil is always good value.
‘I was thinking of helping them out over Brexit,’ she says, frowning at Cecil by way of illustration.
‘Oh? In what way?’
‘Fruit picking. I hear they’re a bit short. I think I’d quite like a bit of fruit picking, in East Anglia or wherever it is they do that kind of thing. Lincolnshire, is it? Somewhere flat. But then again, you see, I don’t want to end up in a dormitory. If they give me one of those sweet little painted caravans, well, then – fine – I can cope with that. But a dormitory… Cecil! Don’t eat that! You’ll blow up and die!’

She has bracing views on most things. The pandemic gives her plenty of scope to sound off about the state of the health service, the government and so on. I offer the usual line, which is that they want to dampen the spread of the infection so the health service doesn’t get overwhelmed.
‘We just need a vaccine,’ I say. ‘Once we’ve got that we can start getting back to normal.’
‘Well you know what I think about that,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Well it’s obvious!’ she says. ‘What did we do before all this medicine? We built up immunity! That’s what we did! Some people would die, of course, but they would have anyway…Cecil! Put that down, darling!’
I mention diphtheria and smallpox, the fact that vaccines had eradicated them in the community. Without vaccination we’d still have a ton of young people dying before they reached adulthood.
‘Maybe,’ she says, unconvinced that’s such a bad idea. ‘I’m not a scientist. All I can say is how I see it.’
She suddenly seems sad.
‘I don’t know,’ she says, with a sigh. ‘Everything’s changing and not for the better. You know – I completed on my mother’s house the other day.’
I’m not sure whether to congratulate her or offer my condolences, so in the end I just raise my eyebrows and nod.
‘I celebrated with champagne and strawberries, but they gave me indigestion. I thought I was having a heart attack. And then I couldn’t sleep, because I kept on having the same thought. If I died here now, who would find me? And what would they think?’
She looks at Cecil again, as if to imagine what he’d have done. But shockingly, Cecil has blundered down onto the shallow bed of a nearby stream, where he snuffles happily and noisily amongst the rocks.
‘Cecil! Cecil!’ she cries, sliding down to grab hold of his collar, then dragging him back up again.
‘I’ve already had to take him to the vets with a chest infection,’ she says. ‘Last time he went after a ball and got water on the lung. He thinks he can get away with these things but he can’t, you see. He can’t. Just because your face is flat, doesn’t mean you can breathe underwater.’
‘No. I suppose not.’

*

Today, though, I decide to take Lola out with Stanley. It’s pouring with rain, and forecast to stay that way, so I figure it’s better they go together for a short walk over the fields and get the thing over and done with. Neither dog is enthusiastic. Stanley pushes his head out of the dog flap, holds it there a second, then slowly withdraws and looks up at me with the kind of expression you might see on a stunt man who’s just been asked to throw himself off Niagara Falls.
‘You’ll like it when you’re out,’ I tell him, pulling on a hat and a waterproof (and feeling a little guilty about that).

The walk doesn’t start well.

As soon as we’re through the back gate, Stan sees a man and a Labrador trudging past the front of the house, so he lets out one of his horrendous, howitzer-grade barks. And although I know I’m prone to exaggeration now and again, and won’t stand up in court about this particular detail, I think I’m right in saying that the dog did the splits in mid-air and the man’s hat blew off. I wave an apology as they hurry on. Lola looks up at me, already drenched, with a tragic look on her face, as if to say: You see? You see what happens?

We carry on with the walk.

And actually, it’s okay. Bad weather always looks worse when you’re snug and warm indoors. The rain takes pity on us and eases a little. The dogs give a couple of shakes, magically transforming their fur into primitive anoraks, and they trot along happily enough. One benefit of the bad weather is that there aren’t too many other people out, so it’s a clear run through the housing estate to the fields out back. All the horses of The Hole in the Hedge gang are out, standing as motionless and menacing and dripping as life-size model horses in the rain, so it’s easy to pick a route that’s equidistant from each and make it through to the fenced field the far side. I let the dogs off, and they tear around after each other through the saturated grass. I even have time to take a photograph – or try to. There are two crows perched on the top branch of a tall, dead tree. I figure it’ll be a moody shot to catch them as they fly off, so I wait at the bottom of the tree with my phone held up over my head. And wait. And wait.

And I might be wrong – and I definitely can’t promise to stand up in court and testify about this – but I think I’m right in saying, one of them slips a little black phone out from under its wing, and takes a photo of me.

Better at Not Barking – St Adina – A Nightmare Scenario – Foley Suggestion – Shakespearean Caution – Love and The MOD – Love means never having to come back till you’re lassoed

Stanley’s getting better at not barking.

There. I’ve said it. It’s out there. I’ve had the t-shirt printed and everything.

There is a slight rider, though. He’s getting better at not barking but he’s no angel.

‘He barks when he feels afraid. When he’s uncomfortable in situation,’ Adina says, gently circling her fingers in the crazy wig of hair between his ears. Stanley’s eyes spiral in ecstasy. ‘The important thing is to show he can trust you to take care of situation for him. Then he can relax, and not worry about it. So. If you find yourself in situation, make sure you take Stanley a little further off. Yes? Put distance between you and whatever it is. And if that’s not possible, simply walk away in the other direction. Isn’t that right, Stanley? Hmm?’

And my memory might be a little hazy, but I’m pretty sure he nodded once, emphatically, before meekly accepting the tripe stick she passes down to him like a novice priest receiving the sacrament.

Quite why Stanley is afraid of the Golden Retriever that comes running towards him over the field is a mystery. Even from here you can tell it’s no danger to anyone. It couldn’t look more obviously friendly if it had huge, squeaky paws and a flashing bow tie (although, having written that, I’ll probably have nightmares). I think the issue isn’t the thing itself – a buffoonish dog running towards us straight out of clown dog school, the light entertainment between the Afghans on Horseback and the French Bulldogs on the flying trapeze – but the way in which he appears, which is suddenly, from a thicket of trees just to the right of the path. It’s like being ambushed by a giant tongue.

Luckily, Stan was on the lead at that point – only because there was a hole in the hedge that he’d run through after some rabbits the other day, and it was a job to get him back. As soon as he sees the Retriever he rears up on the lead and barks his bark. It’s such a rich and devastating sound. I’m sure they could use it as a sound effect in the next Jurassic Park movie. The scene where the velociraptor gets croup.

But here’s the thing. If I was a dog running happily over to meet another dog, and that other dog made a noise like that, I’d take it as a sign maybe I should exercise caution, and hang back a little, at least until someone wearing a bomb disposal suit went over first and made sure the scene was safe. But this particular dog is so filled with love for all things, so totally and open-heartedly devoted to finding pleasure in the world, and lapping it up, like a giant, golden bee rushing from moment to moment siphoning up the nectar (and there’s another nightmare I’ll be having later), it takes absolutely no notice, but rushes up to us regardless. I’m tempted to let Stanley off the lead, because I know that by hauling on the lead like this it’s only making him worse – but I think of that Shakespeare quote: Let slip the dogs of war. So I don’t. I look around for the owner. I see a woman in the distance, waving a lead in the air and calling Maisy or Daisy or something, without the least effect. I try walking off purposefully in the other direction. Which would be fine, if Maisy or Daisy (I’ll call her MOD for short) stayed put and didn’t follow. But of course she follows, because whereas Stanley has a darkly nuanced vocabulary of emotions, influenced by his nine long years of abuse, MOD has one mood setting, which is LOVE. Dialled up to eleven.

I feel bad for everyone, particularly MOD. Looking at her, though, I’m not sure it’ll set her back all that much. She is the epitome of Golden Retriever, the essential article, stuffed full of golden things, Affection and Love and Goodness and Forgiveness and I don’t know what, hurrying about the world, retrieving wonders.

I give up trying to walk away, because apparently it doesn’t matter that Stanley has transformed into a huffing and puffing troll swinging a spiky club and threatening bloody vengeance, MOD trails happily in our wake like a hippy at a festival strewing flowers left and right and sticking a few in her hair.

‘I’m so sorry about that!’ says MODs owner, catching up at last and lassoing the Retriever. ‘She’s not the best dog in the world at coming back, especially when she’s having such a lovely time.’

‘That’s okay!’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about Stanley. He’s a good dog, really, but he still has a bit of a barking problem.’

‘Oh dear!’ says the woman, smiling down at Stanley – although her smile doesn’t seem quite as unconditional as the Retriever’s.

‘He’s getting better though,’ I tell her.

Dog Heaven – Too Many James Bond Films – What Dogs Do on the Beach (other than that) – Tide Brutality – A Useful List of Cross-Breeds – What the N in RNLI Really Stands For – An Idea for Curing Arachnophobia (you’re welcome) – Two Guys & an Essex Port – Wall of Fame – Collies Getting Smaller – Food Order Getting Cold

A stop off – Meeting Amelia – A Good Long Stretch – Groomers’ Perks & Quirks – Gender Identity – Queen Victoria vs. Gladstone – Mean Bones and How to Spot Them – Rescues take Patience

En route to the coast for a short break we take a detour to see my mum. The whole visit gets quite a build up. Mum’s keen to meet Stan, but she’s a little anxious, too. She’s been reading the blog and knows he can be a handful. She’s worried he won’t get along with her dog, Amelia, a miniature Schnauzer with a big personality, a dog who’s taken on such mythic proportions since mum got her a few years ago, I wouldn’t be surprised to be met at the door by a particularly hairy woman in a peaked cap, holding out a paw, demanding to see our papers.

We make it to mum’s in good time. The girls have made brownies and cinnamon biscuits, so we take them out into the garden to have them with mugs of tea, sitting under the porch awning when it starts to rain a little. Stanley stretches out on the grass, sighing theatrically, extending his legs like his paws are on invisible strings and there’s about another three feet of leg in there somewhere. He’s been cooped up in the car for hours, apart from a brief stop for coffee and a comfort break. Somehow we’d ended up in a dodgy tributary of the motorway services, the car park of an abandoned motel, pulling up next to a pile of soft toys fly-tipped on the verge, like some other family were forced to off-load all sentiment to have any hope of completing their trip. But I don’t believe in omens. Just coffee.

Amelia keeps a close watch on him from behind mum’s recliner.

‘The woman who grooms Amelia is so good,’ says mum. ‘She’s won competitions. Even taught grooming. But she only charges twenty five quid, which I have to say is pretty reasonable. Don’t you?’
‘Sounds about right.’
‘Stanley would cost more because he’s bigger. Does he shed?’
‘Yeah – he does. Especially in the summer.’
‘Amelia doesn’t shed. I couldn’t have a dog that sheds. Because of the asthma. Is she a lurcher?’
‘He. Stanley’s a male lurcher.’
‘But she’s got such long legs.’
‘He. He’s a he. Yeah – a lot of them do. Depends what he’s crossed with. Maybe a gantry crane.’
‘More like a labrador.’
‘Yeah. Probably.’

Between you and me, though, I have to say, despite the groomer having won the Nobel prize for grooming or something, Amelia looks a little bottom heavy, a thick frill running all the way around the middle. When she walks it kicks up like a Victorian crinoline skirt. With that grumpy and beetling frown on her face, she even looks a bit like Queen Victoria, hurrying across the croquet lawn to take a swing at Gladstone with a mallet.

‘Amelia is so friendly with other dogs,’ says mum. ‘She’s a bit put out she can’t just go up to Stanley and be friends.’
‘It’s not Amelia, though, mum – it’s Stan. He’s had nine years of neglect, don’t forget. His legs were so deconditioned he could barely walk for fifteen minutes at a stretch. Who knows what he’s been through? It’s not surprising he’s got a few issues.’
‘I don’t understand why people mistreat dogs like that,’ she says, taking a swallow of tea. Then after a pause – ‘But I did think they might get on. I thought they could be friends. Amelia seems very wary of Stanley. Do you think he’d hurt her?’
‘It’s best to be on the safe side,’ I say. ‘He’s had a long drive in the car, he’s on another dog’s patch. There’s a chance he might get a bit scratchy.’
‘Well I don’t understand it,’ says mum. ‘Amelia is so good with other dogs.’
‘It’s like I say – it’s not her, it’s him.’
‘I mean – she does bark a lot, but she hasn’t got a mean bone in her body. They can see she doesn’t mean any harm.’
‘Best be safe, though.’
‘How old is she?’
‘He. Stanley’s a he.’
‘Sorry. All dogs are bitches to me. How old is he?’
‘Nine.’
‘Nine!’ she says. ‘Ah.’ Then after staring out across the garden awhile, says: ‘Shame, though. I did hope they might get along.’

How Stanley sleeps – Adina’s Advice – Anger Management for Therapists – Three Reasons – Biscuit being one of them – Sigmund Stanley

Stanley needs counselling.

Especially if it’s old school psychotherapy, in a studious, book-stuffed room, with a palm in a jardiniere and a great big leather ottoman. Stan would look amazing, sprawled out on the ottoman, his paws dangling over the sides in that dejected way he has, his goatish head pointing straight down at the parquet flooring. He sleeps like that in his basket and it can’t be comfortable. He reminds me of that painting, The Death of Chatterton, the poor poet hanging half in, half out of his bed after an overdose of laudanum. Although in Stanley’s case, it’d be tripe sticks.

The fact is, not only do I not understand Stanley, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand himself.

‘Don’t worry. It will take time,’ Adina said, circling her fingers hypnotically through his crazy white fur. ‘Stanley has been through very bad situation. It will come out slowly. You must be patient with him.’ And my memory might be wrong about this, but I think he raised his eyebrows to look straight at me, making sure I was getting it all down.

I can totally imagine Adina as a psychotherapist, in a tweed jacket and monocle, one leg crooked over the other, a notepad on her lap, nodding gently and empathetically. Although – before you say anything – I do realise this is ridiculously out of date re. psychotherapy, and goes some way to explaining why I’m not working in mental health. Or in the movies as a casting director, come to that.

If Stanley DID go to see a psychotherapist, it’d be interesting to see how long they kept their temper. I suppose it would depend if they put a throw on the ottoman first, to protect the fine leather from his scuffing great paws. No sooner had they done that, Stanley would leap up and start fussing, dredging and worrying at it, so intently you’d think he was digging for water rather than rearranging soft furnishings. The psychotherapist would be waiting in their armchair, making a note maybe, sighing, cleaning their monocle or whatever. Sighing some more. Then eventually they’d slam the pad down on the floor, jump up, and after saying : ‘Oh for goodness sake!’ or worse, stride over, straighten the throw again, stroke his head and help him settle (which he’d accept with a heart-melting look from his big black eyes). ‘There, Stanley! Now perhaps we can begin the session!’ And by the time the psychotherapist had made it back to their armchair, Stanley would have produced his squeaky chipmunk from who knows where, and the therapist would curse and throw their pad down again.

Here are three reasons I think Stanley could benefit from psychotherapy:

1. Sometimes he acts as if his paws don’t belong to him, or they’re being worked by someone remotely, someone with a grudge. He’ll make himself jump doing the simplest things, like scratching his ears, or walking. The dog shelter didn’t tell us much about where he came from, other than the fact he shared the house with a psychotic little terrier called Biscuit, who – judging by the way he looked us up and down through the bars – was a cross between a Garibaldi and a ginger nut. Who knows how far Biscuit got into Stanley’s head in those early days. It’s unthinkable. The dog needed exorcising, not exercising.

2. Stanley sleeps with his paws over his ears. Now and again he’ll give a disappointed sigh, the sort of noise you might make if you’d applied for annual leave but got turned down because there were too many people off that week. Administrative annoyance, in other words. Nothing too bad. He’d probably tut if he could.

3. Stanley lies down in the worst possible places, stretching his long legs out in front of him, then resting his head on his legs and flicking his eyes about as if he’s just waiting for someone to tread on his tail or fall backwards over him with a tray of ice cream and spoons. Maybe it’s his way of proving to himself – and to anyone who cares enough to witness – that yes, here’s another terrible household, with people who don’t give a damn about causing significant injury to a poor old lurcher, and hadn’t he been expecting just exactly this sort of thing all along? (But maybe that’s not his motivation. Maybe it’s just that he wants to get as close as possible to the food – but hey, I’m not a therapist).

Of course, another reading of the whole scenario is that I’m the one who needs the counselling. And I’m fully prepared to admit that may be the case. Who wouldn’t benefit from six months, once a week? Only – it’d be just my luck to be lying on that ottoman, reaching some kind of epiphany, then glancing over to the armchair only to see Stanley sitting there, in a tweed jacket, monocle, with a pad on his hairy knee, nodding sadly and smiling with his two good teeth.

‘Well!’ he’d say. ‘I think we’re making excellent progress!’ Then he’d scratch his ear with his pen, and yelp.