Handbags and Poobags: Tales of a Soho Boxer Dog (3 page)

Chapter 4: THE POWER OF A NAME

Our new pup had been with us for about four days before we managed to settle on a name for him.  It was a difficult and drawn out process and very similar to, and as important as, naming a child. After dismissing my original suggestion of TIGER (on account of his fetching red and black stripe effect) for sounding too much like something Jamie Oliver would name a kid, we bought a Baby Names book to look for ideas. 

As the book contained around 4,000 names I suggested our choice should begin with the letter B, as he was a Boxer, to help narrow the field.  I favoured BARCLAY and BUSTER both dismissed by Patrick, (who had no suggestions of his own to offer). Giving it up as a hopeless task I was relieved to come home from work on the fourth day to find that the pup finally had a name and there was no argument to be had about it.

“
He’s called BASIL
” offered Patrick as soon as I walked through the door. So why was this a fait accompli?

“
He told me that was his name…”

OK then. And that was that. Basil it was!

Trainers and dog lovers cannot stress the importance enough of your dog learning its name. This is so they can respond to commands and come back to you when you call. We took this very seriously and can confirm that, to date, Basil has been called by only about 20 or so names. The list includes – but is not exclusive to – the below:

• Pup Pup
  
• Puppetty
  
• Officer Nibble  (for obvious reasons)
  
• Poo Bear
  
• Bassie Booboos
  
• Boobeus Dogrid (a nod to Harry Potter)
  
• Whoopit
  
• Bizness Bazness
  
• Doggie Dudes
  
• Billy Bollocks
  
• Basil W. Barksworth (the W stands for a very rude word)
  
• Puglyig
  
• Charlie Cairoli (because he acts like a clown)
  
• Baby Bas
  
• Sir Stinksalot (after a fart)
  
• Dumpling Dog
  
• Doctor Bas (he takes a lot of interest in the putting on of plasters and the cutting of toenails) 
  

My friends call him ‘the Brown Lamb’ for some reason.

His plethora of names started to lend themselves to little jingles and tunes. Many sing to their babies but we soon found ourselves singing to our dog! In fact we now have a bit of a repertoire of songs or
Odes to Basil
. We take variations of his name and incorporate them into different musical numbers such as
The Sand Dance,  Xanadu, Agadoo
or the
EastEnders
theme tune.

Sometimes when I am away from Basil I sing one of his little songs to make myself feel closer to him. I remember the night before my wedding I was having dinner in Knightsbridge with my two best friends – a kind of last glamorous, girly night out before the first one of us got hitched. We had dropped Basil off that morning at his ‘dog hotel’ to look after him while we were on our honeymoon and as I was feeling a bit emotional I unconsciously started humming a Basil tune.  When I explained what I was doing my friends were delighted. Screaming with mirth they made me take them through some of our favourite songs and fuelled by rather a lot of wine, I obliged. Even now when we are out it comes up and I am asked to do a rendition of the latest Basil song!

Patrick and I began to call ourselves Mummy and Daddy, which I know sounds ridiculous and is usually only the premise of long married couples with a huge brood of children but we liked it. (Obviously we only did it within the safety of our own home).

Chapter 5: THE NINE TO FIVE

It was always agreed that in order to have a dog I would have to take him into my office on days I was working so that he wasn’t left alone for any length of time, especially when he was a young pup. So armed with a huge bag of puppy essentials and a new bed Basil got ready for his first day in the office.  I was even planning on him having his own email address and a spot on the Company website.  He also had a calendar of visits planned from new friends desperate to come up and pay him a visit and bring little ‘Welcome to Soho’ gifts. But it wasn’t all fun and games, certainly not at first.

I found the emotional responsibility of having Basil with me every moment of the day, unable to let him out of my sight and having to pick him up even to go out of the door, while trying to continue my day to day work rather wearing.  I was used to popping out for a coffee with colleagues, enjoying long boozy lunches or arranging impromptu drinks after work whenever I felt like it.  I lost count of the times I texted or called friends to meet them as usual before suddenly remembering I couldn’t and cancelling. I would then spend the evening imagining all sorts of high jinks happening around Soho without me and feel miserable.

I was a member of a very expensive and exclusive Soho gym that I loved. I usually only went to use the steam room and have a cold shower when I was very hungover but I still missed it. Not being able to use it made me want to go more. You’d have thought I was a dedicated gym bunny the way I complained about not being able to go every lunchtime.

Patrick and I found ourselves arguing quite a lot during this period and I was desperate for the days he could get off work so I could go into the office on my own knowing Basil was being looked after at home.  Those days I had ‘off duty’ I really let my hair down and furiously arranged various social engagements, which wasn’t perhaps the best response to having a new, needy charge who depended on me at home. But the adjustment to the responsibility of owning a dog was a big one and I really needed to let go now and again to remember what my life was like BB (Before Basil).  Funnily enough the rare occasions I did manage to get out I would spend a huge amount of time talking about the little pup and missing him dreadfully.

These days seemed to drag on interminably and it seemed that we would be chained together forever. Patrick and I took to eating gorgeous meals and drinking champagne at home to try and recreate our previous glamorous lives without leaving the flat, and I found that for the first time in years I had to have a relatively clear diary.  If we went out in the evening it had to be without the other, which was another test for our relationship. It wasn’t until he was a few months older that we felt we could leave him alone in the flat and soon instigated a regular Saturday night ‘date-night’ just to try and bring some romance back into our relationship.  We would give ourselves a couple of hours out of the house to discover a local bar or restaurant without having to check if they allowed dogs in first. Like any other nervous parents we would usually spend the evening talking about Basil or fretting about him but without a babysitter to ring up and check in with. 

But most evenings the three of us would sit on the sofa, Basil between Patrick and I with both of us holding a paw each, watching TV or chatting.  We became very affectionate and tactile with each other and still are, Basil absolutely adores a cuddle.  So when I am too busy for a stroke and push Basil away Patrick will now remark
“You weren’t like that when we were playing tiddlywinks earlier”
, a reference from Basil’s namesake, Basil Brush. Tiddlywinks is now a euphemism for a having a cuddle in our house, or the delicious occasions when Basil tries to nibble your ears.

A dog in a family home can be a terrible ‘affection Hoover’ - sucking up all of the attention and cuddles on offer leaving very little for anyone else. But they are also a fantastic ‘row diffuser’, it is very hard to carry on being angry with your partner when you have a beloved pet in common.

While I was bemoaning the change in my lifestyle I was also secretly relishing how Basil had set about charming everyone in the office.  On his first day it took quite a while for everyone to realise he was actually there – he had curled up on me and was sleeping when the team started arriving. He was so small he could fit under the desk while on my lap! I soon started beckoning people over to get a look at the tiny puppy that could fit in one of my hands and that was soon to become part of their working lives.

Everyone was delighted at how absolutely gorgeous he was (something I tried to remind them all about later when he started weeing in their handbags, jumping up at their fragile, diaphanous skirts and eating their sandwiches).  Mobile phones were out, photos or videos were taken and texted around London – ‘
our new team member’
.

Because he was too young to be toilet trained outdoors I attempted to coach him in using training pads in the office – large squares of nappy like material that absorb doggy dos and wees – and a couple of these were religiously laid out in the same spots in the office every morning. And every day the young Basil ignored them and did his business wherever he could get into, usually under a table or desk, or hidden behind a cupboard, meaning I had to hunt around for them. Because he was so small he had a tiny capacity to hold anything in and usually weed and pooed every hour, I was forever jumping up and down with poobags, sprays and wipes instead of getting on with my work.

In order to train your young pup you are meant to keep an eye on their behaviour so you can recognise the signs they are about to go to the loo and direct them to a more appropriate spot, hoping they would go there naturally the next time. Sadly I couldn’t keep an eye on Basil all the time while I was working and usually the first I knew that he had gone again was when a cry would go up somewhere in the office of ‘
Oh Basil’.
  He took to hiding in tiny areas and often a smell would alert us to the fact a poo was hidden behind a door or in a cupboard. Thankfully the office had a wooden floor.

Sometimes - just by chance - his little deposits or puddles would be on or near the training mats, which would prompt me to show them to the office and exclaim:
‘Look! He’s learning. He’s really close to it. Oh well done Basil
!’  Regrettably sometimes an unsuspecting team member would tread in a Basil poo, and I would feel terrible as I saw the soft package squelch up between Havaianas clad toes.  As I say it was a difficult time, and obviously not just for me.

One time he bought us perilously close to a serious brush with the law! Basil had his dog bowls of food and water next to my desk. In the evening I would throw that day’s water out of the window – we were four floors up above Wardour Street and I figured it wouldn’t do much harm. One night we were packing up to go home and I did my usual flinging out of the window, within three minutes a panting red-faced man arrived at our door, obviously having flown up the many flights of stairs to our lofty abode. 

“Did someone from in here just throw some water out of the window
?” he asked angrily. Everyone looked nervously between the open window and the empty dog bowl on my desk.

“No”
I lied
. “Why?”

He turned around – his leather jacket was covered in it, as was the back of his head.

“
Some has just landed on me, I was standing directly outside your building and it obviously came from above
”

He was getting redder and redder.

“Oh no, what a shame
” I was all concern. “
What are you going to do?”

“Well, I’m a policeman and I am going to find those who did it”
he vowed.

Leaving his card he suggested we get in touch if we found anything out and we nodded mutely. He raced off to check with every other office in the building and we hastily shut up the office and bundled Basil off into the early evening air.

Basil became part of our working life and everyone got used to finding dog treats in the biscuit barrel or their lunch missing. The office smelt of dried liver chunks and we became quite adept at explaining to phoning clients what that barking was in the background.  He ended up having his own Facebook and MySpace pages and even his own office email address. He was close to going on the payroll.

Chapter 6: THE TRICK WITH TRAINING

Housetraining a dog is a difficult process, I don’t care how many trainers or well-meaning owners tell you otherwise. Everyone has a theory or a method and let me tell you they are all rubbish, especially if your dog has other ideas.  There are no quick ways of doing it, it’s all trial and error and time! We tried the carefully laid out bits of newspaper, the clicker commands, the designated wee spot etc etc but Basil ploughed his own furrow and weed wherever he liked. He hated newspaper.

The challenge was to get him to use the dog flap Patrick had installed in the back door and do his business outside in our small garden. But the flap was scary, it made a clapping noise and rattled in the wind. Basil was suspicious. And I was getting bored of mopping up wee and picking up poo.

I can’t even begin to remember the amount of times I sat crouched on the floor cooing at a shivering Basil who obviously desperate for a wee would run away and hide rather than go through the charade of me trying to tempt him outside with a treat while holding the flap open.  Eventually we started following him around the house and every time he started to go we would pick him up and push him through the flap. He would indignantly stand there looking at us through the glass door, his flow completely stopped, and wait for us to let him back in again so he could finish off what he had started indoors.

He just loved doing his business in the house. Even when we took him for a walk he would wait until the second we were back in the front door before going. We could stay out for hours and we did sometimes just desperate for him to go outside so that we could praise his behaviour and show him that that was where you were meant to go. But, oh no, he could hold it in for ages if it meant he could have a wee or poo in the safety of his own home. When he finally did pluck up enough courage to ‘go’ outside of the house, he still had to kind of be ‘indoors’ and so ended up weeing on the bus, in the pub, in the car, on neighbour’s doorsteps and once memorably on Patrick’s head as he was lifting him up.

Eventually the message started getting through. And after a lot of trial and error Basil started hesitantly sniffing the flap to the garden, gingerly poking his nose through it, followed by his head, Patrick and I hovered in the background trying not to make a sound or a fuss. But we nearly exploded with joy the first time he hopped through the flap and triumphantly had a wee outside without our help. He didn’t even seem to mind the flaps clapping noise.

The sound of the dog flap is a welcome one in our house. At night we still listen out as soon as Basil starts making his way downstairs, the tension is palpable. Will he use it? Will he go outside? Will there be a little poo present waiting for us in the lounge in the morning? Ah, and there goes the clapping sound, success! Good boy.

But getting the dog house trained is not the end of the wee story I’m afraid! Yes Basil did learn to wee outside and we were all grateful but our fight continues – not over where he does it but how he does it. We were and still are desperate for him to cock his leg properly like a boy dog, however, because we had him castrated before he learnt there is a danger he might never get to grips with the ‘proper’ way to wee. 

He doesn’t even squat like a girl so we can pretend he’s a bitch, it’s more of a stretch forward, the angle of which means he invariably ends up weeing on his front paws. In the early days, when he was a lot shorter, one of his white socks went a bit yellow. We call these PeePaws – it’s how you can tell Basil has had a wee, either by a trail of fetching little paw prints on the pavement or a damp paw in your lap! It’s a lottery if you go to hold him by the paws if you are going to get a wet one or not. And never stand downwind of him if he is having a little tinkle as you’ll end up with a spray all over your legs, so aimless is his direction.

He does sniff the right kind of things before weeing, like telegraph poles and the like, but still doesn’t naturally make the leap to actually lifting his leg. I used to creep up behind him while he was weeing and try and lift his leg up for him with my foot hoping he would get the idea. After about the tenth time of him running off without finishing his wee and starting to look warily at me every time he wanted to go I realised I might be giving him a complex and stopped.

Sometimes a natural instinct takes over and he does cock his leg – there is no rhyme or reason for this and is usually a cause for great celebration and congratulations, much to Basil’s bemusement. I remember the first time his lovely dog walker witnessed such an event and sent me the following text: ‘
Great day - this is the first time I have seen Basil do a big dog wee!’

I always used to say in a sing-song type voice ‘
Wee Wee’
whenever he went, to try and give the action some kind of command as I heard it helped with toilet training.  I still used to do it almost out of habit, until recently, when Basil looked at me witheringly as if to say
‘I’m not a puppy’
.