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?

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’…

A Dog’s Life?

Rudi’s Weekend Walk – one’s enough…

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Came home, the walls closed in and the dog crashed out stinking of salt marsh mud.

It really is a dog’s life.

A sort of singing in the car

Ran the dog today as per every morning. I am no longer running myself on account of the winter chest that has returned in the excuse for summer, perhaps next month…

It is grey and chilly but the children still wanted to go to the playground – Dogs Not Allowed – so after a drink Rudi went into the backseat of the car with the windows opened, for air.

As we walked away I heard the most ear-splitting and soulful howling; unmistakeably Rudi protesting about being left behind. I know how he feels.

This song was on the radio whilst I was typing. I had this album in my teens, it was always unfashionable, but I’ll make no apologies for that.

Lucian Freud: The Landscapes

Lucian Freud, The Painter Surprised by a Naked Admirer 2004-05 oil on canvas

I know Freud will be described as the leading exponent of realist portraiture as the media pay tribute to his work in the light of his death, but if you look at his output, and some don’t really like to because much of his work requires bravery and honesty in the viewer, you may see what I do.

I see folds and shadows, valleys and mountains of flesh. I see rivers of veins in moonlight, bands of coloured estuarine sands in the sun giving way to dark deltas. And I have glimpses of the subjects’ inner landscapes as the eye is challenged to look, yes look, at demanding mounds of unruly skin eons away from the bland aesthetic of current consumer culture and I am forced to feel something, and to think.

Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, and brother of Clement, shared with his grandfather the ability to offer a representation of people’s minds, and with his brother he shared a love of The Lowlife: dogs, horses and gamblings. His life was unconventional, hardly surprisingly.

To paint people in all their uncompromising truth and beauty, as he did, it is unlikely you would live as a satisfactorily domesticated subject with another for any great length of time.

Lucian Freud, Eli and David 2005-06 oil on canvas

Winter Sun

I took this the other day, on the day there was an outbreak of dalmatians.

Today the dog walk was two labs, a poodle and a growly lurcher. The old warrior Billy was confined to barracks with a bandaged paw. We managed to get round without him but it was not quite the same. His old lab mate Max has gone, and has been replaced with Jasper.

No wonder “the sky was on the floor” as my friend put it.

Another dog

I am holding onto today’s thoughts about the news that about 9% of children (the majority being boys) start secondary school with the reading age of an 7 year old. Don’t worry, I’ll let go of that particular volley in due course…

The reason for this is uncharacteristic circumspection is that there is a blog queue.

First up, and following on from the escaped Brazilian dog at the airport, this is a picture produced by the 6 year old for her esteemed and rather fun aunt, a recent visitor. We understand the masterpiece now decorates the walls of world domination at the epicentre of the universe that is Wray Barton.

A Holding Pattern Post

I have this post in the pipeline that is taking ages to do, it’s not even that long, but it’s causing me problems. I thought I might finally have cracked it this morning but actually I haven’t.

So rather than leave a blank space on a Saturday morning I thought I would share this.

The kids wanted pancakes for breakfast, a reasonably regular request. The thing is, since the kitchen got plastered, everything has been in a state of flux. Half the kitchenalia is hiding in the dining room and things are commuting between the two rooms on the misery line. In fact, I have given up trying to keep track; the kitchen is like the enemy within at the moment. So the pancake batter is made, but we can’t locate the frying pan. In complete harmony with my defeatist outlook, I sat down and the kids went off to investigate. They came back initially and reported that it should be by the toolbox: it was not. Then after some time had elapsed they came back and said it had turned up and could I go and get on with making a breakfast stack.

Where was it? I said.

Under the dog’s bed! they replied.

How, how is this possible? I wonder.

Just don’t go there… what is left of my rational mind whimpers.

I love my pets but… (title shamelessly plagiarised from Old Stokie)

I have spent the night with the dog pinning my legs down and the cat perched on me as if I were the shed roof on a sunny day.

Then there is my one wish about pets: to be free of their hair. Actually, that’s my one wish. If a fairy ever visited me and offered me wishes I wouldn’t want money or endless wishes, I would just want to be an anti-magnetic device for animal hair. When I had dogs to begin with in my mid 20s I went through rolls of sticky tape weekly. I could not tolerate a single hair on my clothes. My mother is the same now. She has two dogs, but you wouldn’t catch a stray pet hair on her. Not in a million years. I think she does a lot of hoovering.

Now my “standards” have slipped terribly. My two measures are to tell the girls not to roll round on the floor (hairs in their hair) and I usually give the settees a quick bash with a hair-covered cushion before I sit down. Then the dog comes and leans all over me anyway, leaving my left arm covered in cream hairs. The cat hair is worse, it can sort of float around in the ether before coming to rest where you don’t want it.

Once I bought some magic US scraping device in New York that was meant to easily get hairs off upholstery and so forth. It did not. So this is my mother’s top tip for pet hair removal: scrape affected areas whilst wearing a rubber glove. I have modified that slightly and find that a quick scrape with a Havaianas flip-flop does an excellent job too and you don’t even have to bend down. Except I can’t use the method on the cashmere cardies.

The Dog Days (and the delirium of long distance driving)

I think I’ve spent about 15 hours in the tin can from Japan in the last few days. I’ve driven through thick, thick fog (Dorset), torrential motorway rain (Kent), moor mizzle in Devon and sultry grey cloud in every other county south of the M4 you care to mention.

I’ve been accompanied in these travails by at least one child (sometimes two) who have been remarkably sanguine partly due to the fact that they still don’t seem to have the passage of time nailed in the brain and remain blissfully unaware that if I chose to attack the blue roads in a monster vehicle we could have cut the journey times by about 25%. I wonder how much longer I can get away with it?

Each journey has been punctuated by hysterical laughter when it all gets too much. Yesterday’s was occasioned by the eldest’s observation that went so:

What you mean when some people have babies they haven’t got a clue what they are called?

Raucous laughter in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty ensued.

She also spent a lot of time nicking a line from the latest Nanny Mcphee film:

We are in the land of poo. Cow poo, pig poo, duck poo, chicken poo…

That was amusing until the thousandth time and then I thought I was a bit delirious myself. The police decided to follow me for miles all the way to Reigate, after I had cut them up at a roundabout in Dorking, which meant I had to religiously obey the constantly changing 30/40 mile an hour speed limits. What’s 10mph between friends I would normally think, but with rozzers on your minty tail the effort of concentration to drive legal is huge. No sooner had they slipped off to their station than an old fat bloke on motorbike pulled out in front of me and an intermittent noise of the clanking of tin cans ensued. Is it my car or his bike? Is someone recently married? I demanded of the motor mechanic aged 8 to my left. In the end, to save my sanity, I had to pull over to let him go on and rule out the possibility of my car falling to pieces, or being recently married without noticing.

Oh, the places I’ve been, the things that I’ve seen. The product of all these motoring hours is that I have assembled my 2010 Top Ten of motoring dislikes.

10. Caravans
9. Hills (1.4 cc need I say more)
8. Fog
7. Lukewarm coffee
6. The Stonehenge bottleneck
5. Being charged £1.50 to queue for the Dartford Crossing
4. Queing for the Dartford Crossing
3. The Kent bit of the M25 which is always slow and where it always rains
2. Always being in the front of a procession of cars on single carriageways (various reasons for that see above)
1. Motorways

Anyway, my Swinton car insurance runs out today and I’ve not renewed it and my car tax runs out next week, so perhaps from today I shall hang up my driving flip-flops.