The Things Dogs Don't Tell You - Part 1
I was around four years old the first time my dog started talking to me. He didn’t say anything particularly profound, probably because he realised I wouldn’t understand complex sentence structures, but at the same time he obviously considered the time was right to begin proper communication. Maybe he was a bit sick of me tugging on his tail and using his silky fan-like ears as peg hangers. Or perhaps, like me, he was bored with flopping around on the back step, examining ants.
As I recollect, he touched me ever so gently with a large paw and whispered “let’s go walk.” As a four year old of course I found nothing odd in a canine companion who wanted to chat. I already held long baby-talk conversations with my doll Kevin (long story) and sometimes hugged our gnarled old apple tree and told it stories. Dog – that was his name – therefore was just an extension of my other friends. The great thing about Dog though, was that I wasn’t talking to myself.
He raised one furry eyebrow quizzically, waiting to see if I was going to tell on him to mum, like I did when the boy over the road threw a brick at dad’s car. He seemed really overjoyed however, when I flung my fat little arms round his neck and ran with him down the path and through into the orchard. I’d like to say in retrospect that we spent a profoundly enlightening afternoon exchanging ideas about the universe, the merits of Pedigree Chum and whether or not fur balls could be recycled, but all I remember is the sunlight making patterns under dad’s fruit trees, the smell of fermenting apples and the warm comforting miasma of Dog enveloping me as we lay side by side against a tree trunk.
It turned out that Dog – all dogs, apparently – was able to speak. Well, I say speak; most dog owners will know that there’s a distinct and subtle language dogs use. The whine of anxiety, the frantic bark when the door bell rings or a stranger approaches, the yip-yip of excitement at the sight of a treat and the awful keening when they’re in pain. I was about ten by the time I fully understood about “real” speech, however. During the intervening years we were almost inseparable. Dog would sleep on my bed (strictly against house rules, but, well) … and wake me at the precise moment my alarm was about to trill with a soft “come on poppet, time for school.” He’d be there at the front gate waiting for me to turn the corner, staggering under the weight of my fluorescent shoulder bag, sports kit and lunch box. Weekends we’d sit together, weather dependent, either under one of dad’s trees heavy with blossom or bent towards the peaty earth with its burden of apple, or else curled up on the easy chair by the fire. Sometimes we’d prop ourselves up at a window and watch the rain sending silver javelins of rain across the garden and tracing patterns on the glass.