dogs

full volume

~ jim clayton ~ 4 Comments

Rita is sitting in a high-backed chair watching a veterinary programme on television. A cow is so bloated the vet is driving a cannula big as a marlinspike into its abdomen; the farmer and his wife put their hands over their noses. ‘She’ll be a lot more comfortable now,’ the vet says. They nod, keeping their hands in place.

The television is on so loud Rita hasn’t heard us come in, so as gently as I can I say Good Morning and move into her line of sight.

She screams.

I’ve met Rita before, and I’d told Andreas what to expect. It’s a particularly terrifying scream, though, and he visibly reddens.
‘It’s okay! It’s okay!’ he says. ‘We’re from the hospital. We’ve just come to see how you are and what you might need.’

She screams again – exactly the kind of sound effect you’d want in a horror film if an elderly person was being murdered. Such an open-throated and desperate noise, made worse by the slack cavity of her mouth and the two, blockish teeth, offset top and bottom.

The odd thing is, she’s not screaming because we’ve scared her coming into the flat. She’s screaming because she wants us to do something. And sure enough, when I ask what it is, she points to the kitchen trolley.

‘The remote? You want me to pass you the remote?’
She screams again.
‘There you are, Rita! And please try very hard not to scream like that if you can, because it makes it difficult to understand what you’re after.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, in a normal voice, and stuffs the remote into the cushion beside her on the chair.

My colleague Andreas looks shaken, but I think he’s reassured I’m not freaking out. He adopts a similarly calm, super-moderate tone.
‘Now then, Rita,’ he says, squatting down and resting a hand on hers. ‘I’m the physiotherapist, and you’ve met Jim before, the nursing assistant. Is it okay if we ask you a few questions to find out how we can help you after your stay in hospital? Would that be alright?’
She fishes out the remote control with her free hand again and raps him on the knuckles with it – I guess because he’s in the way of her vet programme.
‘Oh! Sorry!’ he says, rubbing his hand and standing up again. ‘But Rita – would you mind if we turned the television down a little bit? So we wouldn’t have to shout?’
She screams again, and he almost falls over.
‘Now, now!’ I say. ‘Come on, Rita! Remember what we said about the screaming? Try to tell us as calmly as you can what it is you want.’
‘Soup!’ she says. ‘I want soup!’
‘Okay. That’s okay. I’ll make you some soup’ says Andreas, ‘but first let’s get the assessment out of the way, shall we?’
She turns off the TV and grumpily stuffs the remote into the chair cushion again.
Andreas has just turned his back to open his folders when she screams again, so loudly he almost dumps the lot on the floor.
‘What is it now?’ he says.
‘Clean these!’ she shouts, handing him two filthy magnifying lenses. ‘Clean them!’
‘Okay. I’ll rinse them under the tap for you, but then I really must get on with my paperwork. Okay?’
He takes the glasses, shakes his head at me, then goes into the kitchen.
‘Whilst Andreas is doing that, d’you mind if I take your blood pressure and so on?’
She grunts, staring at the television.
A rabbit is being sedated prior to an operation. The vet says he’ll take this opportunity to clip its nails, too.
I approach with my kit, gently wrapping a blood pressure cuff round her arm, and then putting the steth in my ear. Just behind her I notice a yellowing, photocopied picture taped to the wall – a Welsh terrier, sitting with its paws on a table. The dog is wearing pince-nez specs, a red spotted neckerchief and a knitted waistcoat. ‘He’s lovely’ I say, nodding at the picture. What’s his name?’
Rita screams.
It’s completely heart-stopping, like I’ve put the stethoscope into the mouth of a roaring lion. I snatch it clear and take a step back.
‘What?’ I say, shakily.
‘A girl!’ she says, in her normal voice. ‘She was a girl’.
Then she picks up the remote control, points it at the TV, and turns it up, full volume.

lola, baxter, suki & the shadow

~ jim clayton ~ 1 Comment

I’m taking photos of a bricked-up window when a woman calls out to me from higher up the path.
I say! she says, then Hello? You there with the camera. Is your dog alright with puppies?
I turn to look.
It’s a woman in her late middle-age, dressed like a countess, lacquered hair and Alice band, navy-blue twinset, the cardigan draped over the shoulders and fixed by a button, the only concession to the walk being a pair of blindingly white court shoes. Her left arm’s crooked up for balance, presumably, the right extended straight out in front, attached to the lead of a porcine little pug, madly scrabbling its paws in its eagerness to make time. I know that pugs’ eyes bulge, but these seem particularly alarming. I put it down to the effort it’s making pulling the woman along.
‘She’s fine!’ I say, hoping to God it’s true. Lola doesn’t seem bothered, though. The pug makes a bunch of strangled yippy noises, describing a perfect arc in the dirt, but Lola lopes by safely out of reach with barely a glance.
‘What about cats?’ the woman says as she draws nearer.
‘Cats? Well – she lives with one. They get along. Why?’
‘Suki follows me when I go out.’
I can see a large, marmalade cat sitting on its haunches in the middle of the path, such an air of self-possession I wouldn’t be surprised if it produced a pair of field glasses and called in an airstrike by walkie talkie.
‘She’s so cute!’ I say.
‘She isn’t. Sometimes she turns and goes back. Sometimes she disappears. For weeks.’
I nod, like – yes – this is definitely something to bear in mind with cats.
‘She’ll be alright with her, y’think?’
‘I think so.’
In fact, Lola hasn’t even seen the cat. I’m not surprised. Last week she walked right past an adult deer over the woods: didn’t even look up. And once, when an entire herd of black and whites fell into line behind me all the way across the field, Lola walked calmly in front, like she expected exactly this to happen all along, and was actually a little disappointed.
I bend down to offer my hand to the pug, which it takes as an invitation to climb all over me.
‘Don’t encourage him,’ says the woman. ‘He’s already much too excited about these things. C’mon, Baxter…’

It’s certainly a day for meeting posh dog walkers.

Cut to: a tall, stooped figure in a tweed gilet and corduroy trousers, standing at the edge of the woods leaning on a rustic walking stick, one hand draped over the other, watching a stately black labrador sniffing around in the long grass. The man has a wide, thin-lipped mouth that barely moves when he talks, and the slightly fuddled demeanour of someone who’d woken up, dressed and made five miles before he knew what was going on.
‘Nice reprieve from the hot weather,’ he says when I draw level. ‘Not that I’m complaining, of course. One just needs time to aclimatise to these things.’
I agree with him and stand there a moment, catching my breath after the climb. Lola goes over to the labrador. They swap cards.
‘Good boy, Shadow,’ says the man, then raises his chin and stares off across the field.
‘Where are the brown cows, d’you think?’
‘Over that far side. Lying down under the trees.’
‘Ah!’ he says. ‘Good! Not that Shadow is troubled by them overmuch. Or they he’
‘No. He looks pretty solid.’
‘The black and whites are the worst,’ the man says. ‘Have you met those chaps?’
‘Absolutely! On the back field. They’re so inquisitive.’
‘Yes. They fell into line and followed us the other day. I think they thought I was going to milk them.’
He takes off his cap, scratches his head, replaces the cap.
‘I shouldn’t think there’s much to it, though. Do you?’
‘Probably not. You’d just have to watch the legs.’
‘Yes! I think I’d be a little twitchy in the old trouser department if someone started fiddling around with my udders.’

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nevers of steel

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

There’s an extemporary, Mad Max feel to the front of the house, holes in the concrete forecourt filled in with rubble and crap, a derelict caravan green with mould dumped arse-first, blocking the sitting room windows, missing tiles in the path bridged with scraps of plasterboard, chipboard, whatever. It’s like the occupants started scavenging a skip, then gave up, and went back inside.

I knock on the door.
Immediate, furious barking, shouting.

Eventually, from behind the glass: You alright with dogs, yeah?
‘Yep. Fine. It’s okay.’
The door opens and someone throws an old, brindle-coloured footstool at me – that’s what it feels like, at least – a footstool magically and riotously animated, with a tail and teeth.
‘That’s enough, Nipper! Let him alone, now!’
Nipper springs up and down so enthusiastically you’d think he was on a trampoline.
‘Jes’ ignore ‘im’ says Thomas, waving me inside. ‘He’ll wear himself down eventually.’
Thomas takes his seat on a ruined sofa, in front of a TV showing the Formula One. I put my bag down, and Nipper is all over it. If I’m not careful he’ll be running off down the road with my stethoscope trailing behind him, like a cartoon dog with a string of sausages.
‘I can put him outside if you like.’
‘Nah. He’s alright. It’s nice to have an assistant.’
‘Right’ya then’

Thomas turns out to be an easy patient, if by easy you mean someone who doesn’t want any help, and just wants to sit in all day, drinking and smoking himself into oblivion.
‘What’s the use, fella? I appreciate you coming round n’all, but honestly – there are worse people out there. I don’ wanna waste yer time.’
I ask him if he’d like me to make referrals to various people, for equipment and physiotherapy and so on, especially given his recent hospital admission and diagnosis. It all seems a bit pointless, though.
‘Fair enough,’ he says. ‘It might be worth a punt.’

He stares down at his hands, listlessly prods the heel of his right hand with the thumb of his left.
Nipper – who had retreated exhausted to his basket, suddenly leaps up and starts barking again, trampling straight over me in his eagerness to get to the front door. A second later the door opens, and a guy so huge steps into the room the whole house seems to tilt in his direction.
‘I’m Shaun, Thomas’ son,’ rumbles the guy, leaning down to shake my my hand, making a real effort not to pick me up and shake the whole person by mistake. ‘Everything alright with the ol’ fella?’
‘Yep. All good, considering. There are some things we could do to help – if he’ll let us.’
‘Hear that, da? Don’t keep saying no to everything, would ya now?’
Thomas sneers and bats a hand in the air.
‘Yah!’ he says.

Shaun hesitates in the doorway, like he feels he should do more but can’t think what. It’s astonishing to think that Thomas is his father – not just the difference in size, but in vitality and sheer physical presence. I picture one of Thomas’ sperm, scrub-chinned, spitty roll-up in the corner of its mouth, Stan Laurel twist of hair, idly corkscrewing its tail through the vulval gloom, by sheer blind accident driving its head before the thousands of others through the softly yielding wall of a certain egg.

‘If you want me I’ll be in the van,’ says Shaun.

I can’t believe he means the ruin out front, but it’s true. I see the shadow of it rock alarmingly as he goes inside. How it bears his weight I have no idea. Maybe when they go on holiday, he forces his legs through the floor, his arms through the window, and runs them all there.

‘Do you like the ol’ Formula One then?’ says Thomas, nodding at the screen whilst he fishes his tobacco tin out from behind a cushion.
‘I don’t really follow it,’ I tell him. ‘I’d love to have a go, though.’
‘What – driving one of dem things?’ He grimaces, then attends to the business of rolling himself a fag, holding a paper between a thumb and two fingers, and then shakily losing half the tin of tobacco trying to fill it. ‘Nah!’ he says, giving up, rolling the fag ineffectually, running his tongue along the gummy strip. ‘You gotta have nevers of steel for dem things.’

5 reasons not to be flat

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

1   At the hospital. I’m walking up the slope to the pathology lab when I pass three bricklayers building a wall. I feel sorry for them; it looks such hard work, especially in this hot sun. They’re wearing fluorescent tabards, bare chested underneath, hard hats, filthy trousers, scuffed boots. Their deeply tanned skin is covered in a fine layer of white dust, almost but not quite concealing their tattoos. The first two bricklayers are middle-aged, grizzled, grim-faced. The one higher up the slope is much younger, in his twenties, I’d guess, a silver chain round his neck, his helmet pushed back on his head, his long, sweated hair spilling out all around. Suddenly he stops, straightens, lifts his head and starts to sing:
Young hearts…run freeeee….never be hung up… hung up like my man and meeeee…duh-du-duuuhhhh
Then wiping his forehead with the back of the trowel-holding hand, he bends back down again and carries on working

2    A woman stops me in the corridor approaching the path lab. She’s brisk, focused, in a pressed blue suit with a visitor’s badge pinned to her lapel.
‘Can you tell me how to get to A and E?’ she says. ‘I’m lost’
‘Yeah. It’s not where you think it is. I mean – because the hospital’s built on a hill, A and E is actually below us. So you’ve got to go down. A bit of a warren, I know. But follow this corridor round, you’ll come to some stairs. Go down the stairs a floor and then follow the signs.’
‘Why do these places have to be such bloody labyrinths?’
‘I know! It’s so confusing. But you should be okay. Just follow it round, go down the stairs and eventually you’ll see it.‘
‘What – the minotaur?’
‘Oh? So you’ve met the consultant?’
‘No,’ she says, shaking her head and re-shouldering her bag. ‘But maybe you should call ahead and let him know I’m coming.’

3    Portia’s sunglasses. Round, turtle-green frames, purple-tinted lenses. When she’s wearing them she reminds me of an electron microsopy image of a rapt and fabulous insect.
Happy. Smiling. Scarlet lipstick.

4    I’m chatting to Maude over the fields. She’s telling me all about her labrador Suki’s latest health problems – a flare-up of her arthritic paw. Front left. That’s why she’s on the lead, Maude says. ‘We’re just going for a stretch around the park, then it’s back home for some R&R and Andrew Marr. I’ve booked her in for lazer treatment first thing Monday, physio and massage and the rest of it. Poor thing!’
Suki is sitting at my feet staring up at me with a doleful look. You think you’ve got problems her eyes seem to say. You should try being me for a change. Meanwhile, Lola is racing round and round, showing off, demonstrating the advantages of healthy paws.
An elderly man with a collie approaches. The collie takes off after Lola, whilst the man comes over, looking furious, holding out a handful of sweet wrappers.
‘Look at this!’ he says. ‘They make such a mess!’
‘That’s Saturday for you,’ says Maude.
‘The council should give all the dog walkers grabbers,’ he says. ‘Grabbers! And sacks to put it all in!’
‘And a wage’ I say. The man frowns.
‘What d’you mean, a wage?’ he says. ‘I don’t want money. I just want a clean park.’
‘I was kidding about the money,’ I say. ‘Maybe you should put the grabber idea in the suggestion box.’
‘Hmm,’ he says, turning to go. ‘Or maybe next time I should find someone with some influence to talk to.’

5    At the pub with Kath and a couple of friends for a drink and something to eat. For some reason we all go for the same thing: beetroot burgers, humus, fries, and four pints of beer (okay – three pints of beer and one of cider). For starters, we have two portions of fried tofu in chilli sauce. We skip dessert. We have more beer, then four espressos (okay – three espressos and one cup of earl grey tea).
We get the bill.
‘Why don’t we just split it down the middle?’ I say.
They all look at me with the same expression – meaning (I’m guessing): Well – d’uh!

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angus the demon

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Angus, the focus of all this Scottie dog memorabilia, is lying on his tummy on a Scottie dog patterned rug. I’m relieved that he IS a Scottie dog, otherwise everything surrounding him – the Scottie dog toy in the white plastic alcove hung with fairy lights; the hundreds of Scottie dog pictures hanging on the walls, some as hyper-colourised 3D versions, where the eyes open and the tongue lolls out as you pass; the Scottie dog tea-towels neatly draped on a rail; the Scottie dog biscuit tin, the Scottie dog cushions, the Scottie dog puzzle half-completed on the table, with (ominously) only the eyes to complete – well, if you walked into a flat like this and found a doberman, you’d probably lose your mind.
‘Don’t go near him,’ says Jean. ‘He bites.’
‘He’s so sweet,’ I say.
‘Only when he’s sleeping,’ says Melanie, Jean’s daughter. ‘He bites me, too.’
‘Oh.’
‘I wonder what he dreams about?’ says Jean, yawning.
‘Biting,’ says Melanie.
I go to put my things down. Angus looks up. He’s so old, his fur has a rubbed, slightly greasy look.
‘Fifteen’ says Jean, anticipating my question.
‘Wow! Fifteen! Well!’ I say – then after a pause, where I can’t actually bring myself to say that he looks good for fifteen, I manage instead: ‘We’ve got a dog.’
‘Oh yeah? What sort?’
‘A lurcher.’
‘How old?’
‘I think she’s about ten.’
‘Ah!’ says Jean. ‘Long-legged dogs don’t live nearly so long.’
‘No. I’ve heard that.’
Angus may have lifted his head, but that’s as much as he’s prepared to do.
‘Angus! GET over here!’ says Melanie.
‘Oh – he’s alright’ I say. Too late. Melanie has already pushed herself clear of the sofa. She reaches down to scoop him up, and immediately his eyes spring open, revealing two black buttons of insanity. He bares his teeth, as thin and brown and horribly curved as the teeth on a deep sea angler fish, and he begins paddling furiously with his paws to turn and tear a lump out of her arm. It’s a horrifying spectacle, like watching someone pick up a scatter cushion and finding it transformed into a demon.
‘Oh no you don’t, you little bastard’ says Melanie, expertly wrestling Angus into a non-biteable position, and then sinking back onto the sofa with him, where she smothers the dog into submission. Eventually he taps out with a paw, Melanie cautiously relaxes her hold, and Angus sits there huffing and gasping and catching his breath, all the while watching me with an expression of the purest hatred.
‘Good boy,’ says Jean.

wheaton mess

~ jim clayton ~ 1 Comment

I hear her
long before I see her
striding along the woodland path
blowing her whistle
over and over
like a furious referee
Have you seen him?
she says, breathlessly.
Wheaton terrier?
Toffee-coloured?
So high?
No, I say, but there’s
a golden retriever
over by the badgers
Badgers? she said.
What badgers? Where?
I turn to point
just as a toffee-coloured dog
comes trotting towards us
Isn’t it? I say
I’m not an expert
Golden retriever? she says
I’m not wearing my glasses, I say.
No? she says. Well. Never mind.
Meanwhile, the wheaton retriever
or whatever the hell it is
cuts straight past us
moving like some wanton wheaton machine
in the direction of a nearby stream
Oh for goodness sake! she says
hurrying after it
blowing her whistle
I half expect to see her
pull out a red card
and wave it in the air, too
and who knows? maybe she does
I couldn’t really say, because, well –
I’m not wearing my glasses

lucky, buddy & me

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Lucky’s a hard man.

You can tell immediately – not so much from the ruin of his body, his arms and shoulders the texture of old stilton, veined and nicked and scabbed from years of drug abuse; not from his ill-fitting false teeth, his gold chains or his blurry tattoos – hula hula girl, flaming skull, Ace of Spades; nor from the casually terrible things he says, stories of violence, vendettas, feuds, armed robberies and the like. And it’s not something you’d simply extrapolate from the block-cap note in the front of his folder: DOUBLE-UP VISITS IN THE PRESENCE OF SUPPORT WORKERS ONLY. No. Without any of these things you’d still be able to tell. He carries it deep in his eyes – an unsettling, milky blue, as if the poison of all that hostility rose up over the years and tainted the purer colour. I can imagine him turning those eyes on the face of enemy, warden or wall with the same languorously hostile expression. For now, though, he seems to have accepted my role in this particular scenario, and offers out his paw for the SATS probe with the weighty insouciance of a tiger, claws retracted.

‘The doctor? Nah mate! They don’t send doctors out to me no more. The last one, he said Your old man’s very ill. Oh yes? I said. What the fack’s wrong with the ol’ cant now? I’m afraid he’s got cancer he said. He’s not got long to live much longer. Is that right? I said. So I knocked him out…’

‘The hardest thing about doing time’s the first week. Once you done that it’s easy. Piece of piss. You get in the routine, know what I mean? I’ve done plenty. Most of my life I’ve been one place or the other. You name it, I’ll tell you the crack. I could write a book. Anyway, where I come from, half of us end up inside. Walking round the block was like walking round the old manor…’

‘I think the worst thing they ever did was cut down on the heroin. They jes’ went an made a whole lot of work for themselves. No-one’s going to make any trouble smacked out of their heads, are they? Now they got all this other gear going in, fake stuff that winds you up and makes you punchy. You don’t want that when you’re all banged up, d’you? Stands to reason. But they don’t think like that, do they?’

‘I been in trouble since I was a kid. I got sent to borstal for stabbing-up me eldest brother. I was ready to go and stab him up good n’proper when I got out, ‘cept I was on a bank job and got sent down for a stretch before I got the chance. I haven’t forgotten him though. Once these legs are better I’ll be payin’ the cant a little visit…’

– o O o –

Back in the support workers’ office for the debrief, a mad looking labradoodle is wandering round with a green and yellow plastic turtle. He goes from person to person, squeaking the toy a couple of times, dropping it at our feet, and then backing away with his mouth open and his tail wagging, looking up at our faces and then back down at the toy , as if he can’t believe we’re not as mad for it as he is.

Buddy! Don’t be such a pain!’ says one of the support workers, but she throws the toy for him anyway, and he races after it. After a while he brings it over to me, watching me with an insane expression as I pick it up and turn it over and over in my hands.

I have an image of Buddy behind bars, lights out, squeaking the turtle mournfully, like a harmonica.

I’m glad he’s here, though. Buddy’s like me. I don’t think he’d cope all that well in prison, turtle or otherwise.

‘There you go, Buddy!’ I say, lobbing his toy back over the other side of the office.

We laugh as he crashes after it.

portraits of people & their pets

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

1. Rita, 88. Leaky heart valve. Anemia of uncertain origin, possibly Heyde’s syndrome. Too frail for the op.

Sitting in the window with a heavy marmalade cat called Moo Moo on the arm of the chair. The cat makes no movement at all when I unpack my kit, resting its blue and level eyes on me.

‘Moo Moo appeared from nowhere,’ says Rita. ‘She was completely feral. I really don’t think she’s frightened of anything.’

2. Sally, 91. History of unexplained weaknesses, falls, labile blood pressure, poorly controlled diabetes.

Sally is sitting on the sofa with one white Westie sprawled on the backrest, and one in a dog crate in the alcove. Sally bunches up her sleeve and then stretches out her arm for me to take blood, propping it up one of the dog’s teddy bears. The Westie sprawled on the backrest appears to be asleep, but the one in the crate growls.

‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ says Sally. ‘He doesn’t like me using his bear.’

3. Katherine, 76. Recovering from a chest infection, general debilitation. Poor E&D.

Katherine is sitting on a two-seater sofa, bathed in a sudden wash of sunlight from the bay window. Either side of the sofa are two tall, dark wood jardinieres, each one topped with a giant palm and supported on tripod of carved lions’ feet. A Sphynx cat appears from nowhere and lands so lightly on the folder in my lap it’s hardly like an animal of substance at all, but some ethereal creature conjured from the papers and letters on Katherine’s writing desk, with half a dozen strands of fuse wire for whiskers, and two thimble-sized drops of rainwater for eyes.

‘She likes you,’ says Katherine.

 

dogs vs. aliens

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I don’t understand dogs.

I mean, we’ve had them for years. You’d think by now I’d be some kind of expert. And to be fair, there are plenty of things I do know. I’m pretty much the world expert on picking-up, any time of year. Leaves, snow, baked mud, deep grass, roadside – no worries. If Lola dumps five hundred yards ahead of me on the rec, I can fix the place by walking in a line using trees and molehills as orientation points, and come exactly to the spot, bag-handed and ready. I’d as soon go for a dog walk without my trousers as a good supply of poo bags (and I’d only realise I didn’t have my trousers when I went to pull out a poo bag).

So it’s not all bad news. I’m pretty good at cleaning dogs, too. Me and Lola, we’ve got it all worked out. You should see us when we get back from our walks, Lola with her legs black up to the elbow just exactly as if she’s wearing four velvet evening gloves. The whole thing’s as choreographed as Swan Lake (where the lake is a bucket of soapy water, and the swan is a nine year old lurcher): Bucket to the left; and front left paw into first position; and dip; and hold; and up; and a rub to the chest; and then bucket to the right – and so on, all the way round, finishing with a vigorous towelling and a sprint for the food bowl (Lola, not me).

It’s not that I don’t get the day-to-day stuff about dogs. It’s more the psychology of the beast, what makes a dog tick (and scratch, and twitch, and sprawl the way they do sometimes). I know a little bit about the theories behind all these things. C’mon! I know who Cesar Millan is. But the truth is, I still don’t get why they do what they do.

For example. I took Lola over the woods the other day. The moment she ran ahead she was surrounded by a pack of dogs, all of them barking, whipped on by a particularly mad beagle, running circles round the mob like a teenager doing doughnuts on a moped. I thought Lola would lose her shit and there’d be one hell of a scrap. Instead, and against all odds, she kept her cool. She was poised and statesman-like, Abraham Lincoln on the stump, letting all the fuss and excitement whirl harmlessly around her whilst she smiled benignly at the centre, radiating humanity and intelligence. I’m so, so sorry said the embarrassed woman who owned the pack, striding across to call them off. That’s quite alright, my good woman Lola seemed to say, right paw hooked in her waistcoat. No harm done. Vote Lola.

Fast forward a week. We’re just approaching the park when we see George and Ann with their golden retriever, Barney.

Let me introduce you to Barney.

Barney’s as big and woolly as a cut & shut llama without the neck.

Barney’s slow. I’ve never seen him run, or even trot, particularly. He’s happy to pad along at an even pace, sniffing his way through life, occasionally looking up with those deeply sad, llama-brown eyes, and saying: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, (because if Barney could speak, I’m convinced it would be in a soft, French accent)

Anyway – the most important thing to take from this is that Monsieur Barné is without any question at all a nice dog. In fact, I’d go as far as saying he’s essentially benign. You could send him off into a colony of monstrous, predatory aliens and even they would end up roffling his hair, hugging his neck and posing for selfies (then annihilating the marines and keeping a couple for incubation purposes, because hey! they’ve got an image to maintain).

So here we have a dog who may as well be wearing one of those t-shirts that says Hi! How can I help?

So what does Lola do? She curls her lip.

Why?

I have no idea. I mean, I can’t imagine it’s just a lead thing, although that’s the excuse I use when I apologise to George and Ann.

‘It’s just a lead thing. I think she’s just looking forward to her walk and she wants to get on with it.’
‘Don’t worry! Barney’s the same with a Jack Russell,’ says George. ‘Sometimes dogs just don’t get along.’

It’s such an unpleasant look, though, that lip curl. An expression of profound animosity, a hundred shades darker than simply not getting along. It’s the kind of lip curl I imagine those aliens using when they see another ship of marines coming in to land.

(NOTE TO SELF: I should totally watch Aliens tonight)

I was told once that a dog’s lead is like an aerial, a direct line between you and their brain. If you tense up, they’ll feel it immediately and go on alert, scanning the environment, trying to figure out where and what the danger is. So it’s vital to keep the lead slack, and not precipitate the very thing you hope not to happen, whether it’s lip curl, lunge, snap, bark or any other mortifying evidence of social incivility.

Dogs are incredibly sensitive, though. When they’re on the lead they’re like spiders, super-reading the tiniest vibration coming down the signal line. And I’m absolutely convinced they’ll feel those signals even if the line is slack, and even if the signal is merely a thought.

So I’m sorry, Barney.

Pas de tout! Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. (Sorry – I just love hearing him say that).

But I’m trying, Barné. Okay? After all, it’s only been nine years…

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mae and the mirror

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Ralph the Jack Russell trots round and round the room like a robotic dog gone haywire, his furry brown ears bouncing up and down.
‘Once he’s got his harness on, that’s it’ says Gina, Mae’s granddaughter. ‘We’ll just go for a quick one round the block. See you in a minute.’
Mae settles back in the sofa.
‘What a to-do!’ she says.

It all started three days ago when Mae fell in the kitchen.
‘My knees just gave out,’ she says. ‘I landed on my derriere. Got a real shocker of a bruise there, but nothing broken, the doctor reckons.’
‘So you didn’t go to hospital for an x-ray?’
‘They all wanted to cart me off but really – what’s the point? If I’d broken one of my sitting bones they’re hardly likely to put it all in a cast down there, are they?’
‘You’ve got a point.’
‘So I thought I’d brazen it out at home. Where it’s warm and I’m surrounded by all my things.’

Mae is ninety-six but looks twenty years younger.
‘What’s your secret?’ I ask her.
‘I made it a rule a long time ago. Only look in the mirror long enough to straighten your hat.’
‘I love it!’
‘Everything else might be packing up, but so long as I’m forty-eight up here,’ she says, tapping the side of her head, ‘I’ll be alright.’

I carry on with the assessment. Really, all things considered, Mae is doing remarkably well. Her family lives nearby, which helps, of course. A domestic comes in to clean the house once a week. Healthwise, she takes an aspirin a day, and that’s it.

‘I like the name Mae,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t see it that often. Where’s it from? Is it Welsh?’
‘There’s a story behind it,’ she says. My father was in the marines. He became good pals with a French colonel whose wife was Japanese. They had a daughter called Mai, which I think means brightness in Japanese. So when I was born they named me after her, although they changed the i to an e, because they thought there might be some confusion in the registry office.’
‘It suits you.’
‘Do you think? I’ve often thought what an odd business it is, naming people. I suppose you can grow into a name. Although sometimes you don’t. Everyone knew my husband as Stanley, but his real name was Jim.’
‘Same as me!’
‘Yes, but you look like a Jim. He was more of a Stanley. Although quite what the difference is, I couldn’t say.’

The back door opens and a second later Ralph trots back in, doing a lap of honour round the sitting room in his scarlet harness. Gina follows behind, bringing with her a swirl of freezing air.
‘How are you getting on?’ she says, tugging off her gloves and throwing them onto the radiator.
Ralph jumps up onto my lap and starts licking my face.
‘Ralph! No!’ shouts Gina, coming to haul him off.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘I needed a wash.’