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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?
The Permanence of Possibilities
It struck me this morning that part of ageing is not the total removal of possibilities for ourselves, but the change in the nature of them: death and decay suddenly appearing on the horizon like travellers looking for a place to rest for the night.
In youth, one’s possibilities are, if not boundless, at least positive in nature – there is always the possibility that something good will happen, specifically, to me. A job, love, children, a shiny new car. It seems to me that middle age is partially about recognising that often bad things will happen, if not to me, then to others. In middle age, possibilities from youth transmogrify into uncertainties and then high unlikelihoods. I think this can affect us in different ways: the resignation of the stoic, the frenetic activity of denial and perhaps a sudden laser-like focus on the one or two possibilities that remain, if not for us, then for our children or family.
It’s heartbreaking then to meet young people who seem, on account of a severe and enduring lack of possibilities in childhood, to have the countenance and disposition of those of in the next generation, or even the next. Perhaps, as we go about our own business, coming to terms with the impermanence of our possibilities, we can pass one on, with hope, to a younger person.
And then there is the dog. As I sat this morning contemplating all this, I asked him what permanent possibility he might dwell upon in his own dear, but tiny, mind. The answer came as a reflex: cats.
‘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
Foreshore Photos II
This is the dog on the foreshore doing his thing.
20 miles per hour from Kent to Essex
If the tide is out I walk towards Kent where the cockle-pickers can sometimes be found working. There was only one out there the other day. Someone else came and stood on the beach and bawled at him, or her, in a different language. Maybe it was something about the tide, or tea time.
In the background of the shot (same time, different colours from Photo I yesterday) you can just make out the industry on the Isle of Grain in Kent and if you look hard enough there is also a ship. I like walking on the shore, with its mix of sand, mud and stones, but it makes me think of the Chinese cocklers who died in Morecambe Bay some years back. The Thames Estuary is not nearly as treacherous, Morecambe Bay has quicksand, but the tide still comes in quick enough to make me cautious and there are reports of people being rescued from the mud in the local paper every year.
One year an Orthodox Jewish woman had to be rescued from her deckchair by the Fire Brigade as the tide came in quicker than expected. She was up near the prom with full view of the incoming water, further out on this strange flatness it would be easy to get caught out.
Rudi causing ripples
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…
I never noticed…
Paglesham Eastend
that the lurcher had crept into the shot, until I put it onto the big screen.
This is my favourite field. I don’t know if it’s his; perhaps they all come alike to a dog.
Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
Well, a lurcher to be more accurate.
Looks like the feckin’ eejit’s put it on back to front.
Dog Breath
It wasn’t a cold day, or even a misty morning. The clouds of hot dog breath were created after a hot-blooded, fast-twitch lurcher had done a few laps of a field in excess of 20 miles per hour. No wonder he’s so skinny. What I wonder is: where does all that energy go once he’s exhaled? I suppose it settles in liquid form on the grass before being absorbed into the ground for a plant to use one day. And then on, who knows where.
