Category Archives: Dogs
The sun in a puddle
I was out in the general murk this morning with the dog and on the way back I was aware it felt like the sun was trying to make an appearance. I thought I might try and photograph a proliferation of green plant psychedelia on the verge, but when I crossed the road I noticed the sun shining, at my feet.
It hadn’t broken through the clouds, but somehow its reflection in the huge puddles on the road magnified its rays. It faded nearly as abruptly as it had appeared but that didn’t stop the dog and I, dodging the traffic as it barrelled round the blind bend, from trying to catch a few rays to share on here.
It’s like I’m trying to spite Oscar Wilde who said, ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ This is more like, I am in the gutter and I find all kinds of cosmic entities right there, thank you very much….
A break in the clouds
My dog-walking career hit rock-bottom last week. I am now down to walking one dog, my own, so I only call it my career as a joke, since the last canine I walked for money was probably about eight years ago. A lot’s gone on in the intervening period, but in terms of dogs, I have recently lost all confidence in my ability to remain calm and centred, as per canine guru Cesar Millan.
All is fine in the house (apart from occasional growling when surprised – he’s a street rescue – what can you expect?), but when we get outdoors, I find I am a nervous wreck. I have started to avoid other dogs and last week, when we were in the park and approached by a pointer with a glint in its eye, I slipped the lead and sort of… ran off.
This is very bad form. What was worse, was that my escape on foot sans chien was severely hampered because, from fright, my legs went all jelly on me. Utterly ridiculous really, but it was an almost reflexive fear response from me. Now, this is odd because I never used to be this way and, you know what, I blame the dog! After 5 years together and many difficult moments in an attempt to form the owner-dog bond, I am now too empatico with him. I have caught his flight response as if it were a common cold.
Let me explain. When I first got this dog (my third dog as it happened) he was highly nervous and if anything frightened him he would flight off, as far as he could go, in the opposite direction. Many things could frighten him, both inside and out: the lead, a car, a noise, a dog, a person, a stick, anything at all really, so walking was something that he had to be coaxed into over a long period of time. Eventually, we got ‘there’ and he turned into a friendly, if still quite nervy sort of dog. Life is ,however, a journey and no sooner have you got ‘there’ than you end up somewhere else. In our case it turned out to be the dog’s getting in touch with his inner hunter. Now games with other dogs became confused. Firstly, he would invite them to be the hunter and him the prey, which worked out ok, to begin with. If they didn’t go for that offer, he would suggest he chase them. If they declined that he would then attempt to goad them into it, whereupon he would have to be removed from the field of play in disgrace. Him taking on the prey role didn’t always end well either. My dog is very fast, but he lacks stamina, so although another dog couldn’t ‘catch’ him, they could keep going when he wanted to stop, which merely made him feel threatened and as he was too tired to run, he would snap.
He has never hurt another dog, but, like me running away from my own dog, it’s not the done thing in dog-walking circles to say, ‘Oh I know he looks like an utter monster with those snarling teeth and jaw agape, but he’s never hurt anyone…’ I started avoiding other dogs completely, so much so that if, when I spied another walker with dog on the far-off horizon, I would curse them for daring to come within a mile of our vicinity. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I have reflected on this, why I have become this way. Me, who has walked all kinds of dogs in the most interesting parts of East London. Me, who walked Bill Sykes very own English Terrier along Bethnal Green Road. Me, who has saved goats’ legs from the locked jaws of another English Bull Terrier – did I say I am not mad about English Bull Terriers? I have therefore come to the rather ragged conclusion that as this not how I have reacted in the past, and apart from being prone to sudden and unexpected neuroses lately, I am currently experiencing the very real effects of the increasing population in the UK. In short, we have no space. I will have to learn to share the green spaces and beaches of the vicinity with many, many other people, and their dogs. Or I will have to stay in. And probably develop agoraphobia…
I read this week that the government plans to legislate to force all puppies to be microchipped. This is not a bad plan, unfortunately it will do nothing to help those of us with fearful dogs and our own anxieties, who are trying to avoid trouble.
Back to the brief break in the clouds today. This morning I made the most of the 2 days that are left to us in Southend, before the dogs are banned from the beach for 6 months. My dog managed to have a pleasant interaction with two dogs and a game with one of them and my legs didn’t sink into the sand underneath me from fright.
The fact is that when it’s blowing a Force 9 and sheeting down with rain you are only going to meet dogs and their owners of two varieties:
1) genuinely dedicated dog owners, prepared to walk their dogs in all kinds of weather
2) people like me trying to avoid the kind of dog and their owner who doesn’t fall into the group above
In which case, let it wind and rain, because my nerves are all the better for it.
Garboesque: him or me?
Free epamphlet for labrador lovers (and terrapins)
I have a free download this Grand National weekend for my latest bitesize memoir, about walking dogs in the East End of London.
This story includes my close encounter with terrapins in the ‘hood.
Click on the cover to download.
‘Waiting for a Train’
Today’s blog title track can be found here; it’s an old one by Flash and the Pan.
The dog looked like he was waiting for the commuter train from London yesterday evening, so he could race it, probably all the way to the end of the line.
He didn’t get lucky on this occasion.
‘Under the Boardwalk’
Down by the sea…
The dog decided, for reasons best known to himself, to charge up and down in excess of 25 miles per hour. He repeated the feat more than once, for me to capture his top speed antics, but this was the best I could do.
Blink...
and you miss it
A walk on Hackney Marshes
The current dog had never been to my old regular haunt on the Marsh. I rectified that by being accidentally in London today. It’s a long time ago that me and my old dogs used to walk, or run, with me there and a lot’s changed since then. A new car-park and new wooden-clad changing rooms. Over the White House Bridge, access to the East Marsh is now forbidden; it being carved up between Olympic Park needs and the relocation of the travellers’ site. The old travellers’ site closed when it was swallowed up, along with Waterden Lane, underneath the monoprint of one of the Olympic stadia.
In my mind, my dog Rudi was going to open up the throttle across the marsh. In reality, there were still a cacophony of football matches being played cheek-by-jowl. Each game was notable for the lack of spectators; all the noise came from the pitch. The only thing I could make out was an urgent ‘Carry on, carry on!’. The rest, I imagined, was in Turkish. I sent Fabrice Muamba positive thoughts; the London Chest Hospital that is treating him is only a few miles south of the Marshes. My own ancestor (a baker from Grays) died there in the last century. I hope that Fabrice will be alright, although his career will be over, which is a tragedy in itself. Because of the football, we skirted along the banks of the old River Lee. I was hoping to see a familiar sight: a comorant perched on a thick branch drying its wings. In the end, the final twitching list included: magpies, seagull, chaffinch (probably – even with glasses it’s hard to be definitive with my eyesight lately), mallards, ruddy or teal-type ducks (pretty anyway) and one dipping-in-flight green woodpecker. No cormorants.
How things change. Across the marsh the skyline has moved on. Still the Post Office or Telecom Tower and the Gherkin, now joined by the nearly finished Shard, that I photographed at closer quarters last year. It dwarfs the others, soaring well above the apex of its nearest rival, St Mary Axe. What hasn’t changed on the wide expanse of Hackney Marsh is the cold wind. Yet, the water looks dirtier, the industry heavier. Two new multi-coloured towers for private housing sit on the west bank of the canal part of the Lee. I remember the workers clocking on and off when the site housed the old Lesney Matchbox factory.
Opposite the old flat, more travellers have fetched up like a line of driftwood on the far edge of the cinder pitch. Children play outside the caravans. A dog sniffs where my own used to avidly hunt dead chicken bones. Back on the marsh two Orthodox Jewish men cycle by, chatting. It occurs to me that you never see an Orthodox Jewish woman on a bicycle. There is no-one else about. Where the capital city strains against the Olympic Park there is more space than where the hell I came from. I wonder about the wisdom of progress and walk back to the car carrying a piece of wood. No doubt I make a strange sight. I am used to this. This does not change.
The other thing that had not changed was the police helicopter having its regular Sunday whir over E9. How they afford it, I do not know.
Hackney Marsh: downriver towards the Olympic Park
Doghenge
Or a brace of black dogs, one child and l’Espagnol.
Taken by my sister, Wray Barton, down Devon way. I found the composition irresistible.
I will spend the rest of the day playing ‘Spot the Mitchell Bruvvers’…
Three things that this lad will Never Do
Gain a pound
Read the Sun on Sunday
Vote Tory
I like the way his ears are blowing in the wind here.
Pity you have to take a treacherous walk half a mile out into the estuary to achieve The Look…
Moving out, moving in?
I don’t know.
There’s a man who walks some Staffies in the cemetery nearby. He’s often fairly drunk, and often fairly drunk early in the morning after an all-nighter. He supports Arsenal and we used to have a chat but his new younger Staffie and Rudi didn’t really get along so I started to keep a distance.
Now these boots are lined up along the wall outside where he lives. I haven’t seen him for a while, and he always wore trainers as far as I recall, usually with an Arsenal top, so I don’t know what the shoes and boots mean. None of the indiviudal pairs quite have the pathos of Van Gogh’s ‘A Pair of Shoes’ but as a collective they come pretty close
Alcoholism is a sad business. There’s another hard drinking man on the street who also has Staffies. The dogs fling themselves around in a frenzy of barking when you walk past the flat. The tv is always on and even when the windows are closed you can hear the dogs being yelled at to ‘Shut up!’. If the windows are open you can smell the beer. Sometimes the man goes off to prison for assaulting someone. Then he comes back and picks up where he left off. I see him, or his partner who cut off all her long hair like a penance, walking round the corner to the offie to stock up on beer from time to time. In five years, I haven’t once seen them walk a dog.
As yet there hasn’t been a row of shoes in their front garden.
