We never had a dog when I was growing up so when I was throwing up a ball I had no worries at all about some dog nicking it or offering my face and some dog licking it full in the chops rolling around play-fighting on the carpet lots or finding my trousers sprouting all over when I lay on the sofa for extended periods it was generally a much less hairy interior or when I was playing hide and seek and hid in the curtains certain not to be found I didn’t have a hound give the game away by sniffing my way tugging back the pleats showing the other kids my oversized feet or after school watching Scooby Doo me pointing saying hey that’s you and the dog sighing contentedly then rolling its eyes & twitching dementedly
Sometimes when I look at Stanley sprawled on the sofa magnificently as relaxed as any dog could reasonably be arrestingly manifesting his destiny doggedly, whole-heartedly well – I’m filled with jealousy
he’s not worried about global warming governments being reliably appalling the cost of living soaring nuclear countries warring viruses swarming
how many likes you’re scoring
or the struggle you have ignoring the insta-perfections of the people you’re following on your phone at breakfast, first thing in the morning
Stanley never loses his grip but keeps a steady paw on the wheel of his dog-basket ship and only looks up if he hears you flip the door to where the dog food’s kept or he hears you zip your dog walking jacket and fill its pockets from the packet of snacks to feed his tripe stick habit
in other words, his life seems pretty damned easy free of the stress that can make you existentially queasy anyway – that’s how the situation seems to me
but then – hold on there! whoa! maybe dogs hide a good deal more than they show (although listening to him snoring pianissimo I don’t know)
At the risk of sounding anthropomorphical Stanley is actually pretty philosophical like Sophocles or Socrates or maybe Plato for example, if I’m peeling a potato to make chips and one of them slips onto the floor he’ll stand there staring a minute or more interrogating the dialectical question: are raw potatoes good for your digestion? but then shake his head sadly and slowly quit the kitchen and the mess I’ve made of it to hop back on to the dog-ruined sofa and fuss awhile with his hairy white toga and look as sad as any seer would that witnessed such tragedies and understood
I suppose you could say Stanley is more or less manly (if by manly you mean a white fur coat & tiara-wearing drama queen)
for example
he sprawls most of the day in his basket snoring like a tractor that’s blown a gasket on half a dozen pillows and throws he’s made into a nest with his paws and his nose and lies as still as a mammoth that froze and was lost in the furniture-scattered permafrost sometime around the palaeolithic (sorry I can’t be more specific) till he jumps up howling, horribly distressed so loud you go into cardiac arrest and wonder what the hell coulda happened to make him suddenly so impassioned
and d’you know what made him leap off the floor? he scratched his ear too hard with his paw
Donald hadn’t sounded enthusiastic on the phone. ‘I’m not well’ he said ‘Come tomorrow’ ‘It’s because you’re not well I should see you right away. That’s what the GP has said. I promise I won’t keep you long, Donald.’ A pause, long and weighty as a freight train at a stop light. ‘Come if you’re coming,’ he said at last. ‘There’s a keysafe. Use it.’
*
As soon as I put a hand to the little black box on the side of the house, a big dog starts barking. The notes had mentioned that Donald had a small, active dog, so either it’s a small dog with a big personality or the person who wrote the warning was a giant. Either way I decide to just go for it. I’m good with dogs. Which’ll make an ironic quote for the gravestone.
The dog goes eerily quiet, but I can tell it’s just on the other side of the door as I put the key in the lock. I imagine it holding its ear to one of the panels, frowning. ‘Good boy,’ I say. ‘Who’s a good boy. Or girl…’ I open the door a crack. Immediately a snuffling nose jams itself out as far as possible. ‘There you are!’ I say, uncertainly.
I remembered reading something about how you must never loom over an aggressive dog. Bring yourself down to their level – a little at a slant, mindful of your throat – and say soothing, non-threatening things. Don’t glare at them and make them worse. And if you must hold your hand out, keep your fingers curled.
I push the door open and assume the position.
A dalmatian. An elderly one. Portly and a bit rickety, like a bad taxidermist knocked it off about twenty years ago, and forgot the wheels. ‘Who’s a good boy? Hey? Who’s a good boy?’
The dog gives me a comprehensive sniffing, followed by a contemptuous kind of sneeze, then turns and hobbles back inside. ‘Up here,’ shouts Donald. ‘And shut the door when you come.’
Donald must be a career smoker because the house is as black and drawn as an old kipper shack. If it were only a little lighter I would probably see clouds of smoke and ash rising up around my feet as I climb the stairs, following the corrupted sound of Donald’s coughing to the little back bedroom where he mostly lives. ‘Hello!’ I say. ‘Nice to see you!’ He glares at me from the depths of his flap-eared hat. ‘It wasn’t my bloody idea,’ he gasps.
The Dalmatian wanders in, collapses in its basket, then looks up at me with the saddest eyes, like it wasn’t so long ago it would’ve torn me to shreds, and isn’t ageing a terrible thing? ‘Good girl, Ange,’ says Donald. They stare at me with the same expression.
At first Donald won’t allow me to do anything. I can see he’s struggling, but either through fear or cussedness, he bats away any attempt to win him round. I decide to get to him via the dog. ‘I love Dalmatians, ‘ I say. ‘Have you got one?’ ‘No, but…’ ‘So there you are.’
I try again.
‘What’s that thing about Dalmatians?’ ‘What thing?’ ‘Don’t they suffer with their eyes? Colour blind…?’ ‘Deaf,’ he shouts. ‘They tend to go deaf. It’s genetical.’ ‘That’s it! Deafness!’ I bend down and stroke Ange’s head, which she allows with a very gracious bow. ‘They’re beautiful dogs. Didn’t they used to run alongside mail coaches as well? Something like that?’ Donald leans toward me out of his chair. ‘It carried over to America,’ he says. ‘Back in the eighteen hundreds every yankee firehouse had a Dalmatian or two. Yeah. They used to run alongside the horse and distract any street dogs what might come out and bother ‘em.’ ‘Wow!’ ‘Yeah. And they used to keep the place clean of rats, too.’ ‘That’s a handy dog to have around.’ He settles back in the chair. ‘That’s why you’ll often see Dalmatians in American firehouses. It’s a tradition.’ ‘I never knew that,’ ‘Yeah? Well you do now.’ I stand up again. Ange gives a grumpy sigh and curls up. ‘So – Donald. How about I run a few tests, then?’ He pushes his cap up a little, and sucks his teeth. ‘Go on, then,’ he says, bunching up his sleeve and stretching out his arm. ‘But for God’s sake be quick!’ ‘Why? Where are you off to?’ ‘Sleep, with any luck,’ he says. ‘Jesus H…’
Stanley’s truly a remarkable animal half scent hound half dromedary camel with really quite an extraordinary facility for marking everything in the vicinity
his bladder must be a five gallon keg the number of times he lifts his leg or maybe he draws from some other place defying the laws of time and space his urethra employing some weird extension to a reservoir in another dimension
but I digress I guess he just tops up whenever talk of a nice walk pops up
and if you’re sitting there wondering exactly where he’s wandering and squandering the contents of his urinary tract I’ll write it all down so you can read it back:
a fine pot of blue hydrangeas a sign that tells you where the fire hydrant is a graffitied garage shutter a heavy duty drain cover a temporary sign with the number of a plumber an electricity substation fence a noticeboard with local events a lamppost (rapturously) a waste bin (naturally) every size and variety of shrub the wall outside the after school club a hill made by a mole an unfilled hole temporarily filled with trash all prayerfully sniffed and blessed with a slash
every street name on the usual route including Stanley Avenue (cute) every phone booth (okay – I lied about them since mobile phones you never see ‘em) a telegraph pole whose sole purpose seems to be to serve us both as a means of cable control but also to hold signs that advertise more lost cats scratch Messiahs, stuff like that (and recently a poster from the anti-vaxxers which Stanley addressed with some well-aimed splashes)
so all in all what with every wall tree trunk big and rose bush small every junction box a roadside flowerbed of snapdragons and phlox and a line of hefty granite rocks to discourage parking every chainsaw carving every charging point for the on-street charging of bougie electrical vehicles every traffic stop and crossing signal every structure man made or natural vertical, horizontal or diagonal like I say, he’s phenomenal his capacity plentiful his diligence incredible Stanley is truly exceptional an absolute master of the art of micturition like a long-legged, shaggy-haired renal magician with a never-ending bladder that just keeps filling or a distillery that mysteriously keeps distilling even when the water’s turned off but that’s enough I won’t go on he’s a premier league piss artist, and so on
no ifs, no buts
it’s just all the constant stopping drives me nuts
Five hundred and fifty five million years ago (which really is one helluva long time ago you know) lived a worm the size of a grain of rice the first of its kind with a mouth that bites and a butt that squeezed out all the waste from the endless snacks it ate with its mates its name? Ikaria wariootia (which may or may not be new to ya)
my point is this cute little joint is our earliest common ancestor (according to scientists at the research centre) and from this worryingly wormy beginning you get Attenborough and a plethora of fauna swimming and flying running and diving leaving and arriving jumping or humping or just slumping in front of the TV like me and Stanley stretched out in a food coma on the sitting room sofa two distinct species but arguably one loafer as sedentary as any fossil you’d knock from a sedimentary Australian rock
Stanley’s posture on the sofa is that of the highly qualified loafer head on the arm rest nose due West while the rest of him points East because this particular beast will never knowingly be misaligned no matter how many times he naps and snoozes somehow he never loses his sense of direction his nose to the West without exception holding his dreamy attitude maintaining cruising altitude
jim clayton 