Tea and Dog Biscuits (16 page)

Two's company, but three's a pack,' was Dorothy's opinion. ‘And however would you get three dogs in your sidecar?'

Roomy comfort in the sidecar was of major importance since George and Cliff had taken their previous dog with them everywhere.

‘We go hiking a lot of weekends and we always took Lisa with us,' said Cliff, the one with the beard.

At the mention of their former pet's name I turned to look at George. Melissa had told me it was best to steer the conversation away from their old dog as George could get very upset. They had spent £6,000 on Lisa's veterinary care since her diagnosis a few months ago.

‘She had a problem with her tummy,' Cliff said, ‘and Melissa suggested fresh chicken might help her and I think it did but George and I are vegetarians and cutting it up turned my stomach. The things you do for your dog!'

I nodded in complete understanding.

‘We had her cremated when we finally lost her,' said Cliff. ‘We've got her in a casket beside the bed.'

George, who Melissa told me was known locally as Big George, got up suddenly and left the room.

It was a few minutes before he felt able to rejoin us. ‘Sorry about that,' he said.

‘No problem,' I replied.

Perhaps it was Big George having to leave us to wipe his eyes, or perhaps it was that they were vegetarians, or perhaps it was because their dog was still with them beside their bed, or perhaps it was because they arranged their shifts so that she was never left alone. Whatever was the reason, Dorothy and I both felt drawn to these guys. So much so that I felt able to tell George that after my Elsa died I had fallen onto my knees with grief.

They were torn between Claude on the one hand and Wilma and Rob on the other. They came back the following day, Sunday afternoon, to tell us their decision.

‘We figure it would be more difficult for you to home a pair,' said Cliff, ‘and so if you will trust us with them we would dearly love to give a home to Wilma and Rob.'

‘And you've done so brilliantly with Claude,' added George, ‘that we know you won't find it difficult to home him now.'

I was sitting on the kitchen floor, propped up against a cupboard, with Claude on his haunches beside me, pressing up against me. I turned to look at him and realised that, as on that day when I had met him in the living room at Ms Jackman's house, I was again face to face with him. But he wasn't barking this time.

Just then he pushed so hard against me I toppled over sideways like a ragdoll and he put his front feet on my chest and licked my ear. I cried out in mock horror and covered the ear.

Yeah, I thought, perhaps I haven't done so badly with this dog since we've had him.

That Sunday night I had a phone call from Tim, the young policeman who had adopted our lovely white Pearl. A dog had been abandoned on a bypass and as it was a German Shepherd he wanted to know if I would take it. It looked to him to be quite elderly, a gentle female. A young guy with a ponytail had been seen to stop his car, open the passenger door and push the dog out, then drive off.

After I put down the phone I must have stood staring at it for two or three minutes. Then I went into the kitchen to find Claude. I knelt down beside him.

‘If I'm going to do this rescue work, I think I'm going to be OK now dealing with you lot… but I don't know if I'll be able to deal with some of my fellow human beings.'

I put my arms round him.

The Honorary Chairwoman eased herself to her feet.

‘Ladies, our speaker this evening is Mr Barney Hawkins, who is going to talk about the work he and his wife do rescuing dogs, large ones.'

Barney? Should I interrupt to correct her? I was seated beside her at the table, so I could touch her arm to get her attention. But could I correct the Chairwoman in front of sixty members of the Ladies' Circle? I had butterflies in my tummy and just wanted to get this over with.

It was yet another wholly unexpected aspect of the work we were doing which I hadn't considered when Dorothy and I decided to set up our tiny sanctuary, and again it was the result of a surprising phone call.

One of the members had heard about the work we were doing, the Events Secretary had said when she rang. Next week's speaker had flu and they needed someone to step into the breach.

As a college tutor I was accustomed to public speaking but my teaching was mostly to small groups and to students I knew well. But we might get a home for one of our orphans from it, Dorothy pointed out. And it could have an educational slant, alerting people to what they should consider before getting a dog, she added enthusiastically. So here I was.

Winter had set in and dark nights with it. It had been misty on those fen roads, and this wasn't a town I was familiar with. When I had arrived there were no lights on in the community hall, the place in darkness – had I got the wrong night? I parked and sat in the solitary silent dark for several minutes. I was glad to see a man in overalls coming across the car park. He tapped on my window. ‘You can't park there – that's for loading.' He went off to unlock the hall.

The Honorary Chairwoman concluded an announcement about the arrangements for a forthcoming coach trip to the Hanging Gardens and sat down. Dorothy had suggested that instead of writing out the things I wanted to say I should just write a list of
key words
on some cards. These would be memory joggers and it would make my talk more natural for the audience than my just reading from a prepared script. She had cut up some sheets of coloured card for me. I picked them up. The Chairwoman stood up again.

‘There will be the usual tea and biscuits at the end of Mr Barney Hawkins' talk and he has kindly agreed to take questions after that.'

Had I? She sat down and this time stayed down. It must be my turn at last.

I don't remember exactly what I said in that first talk I gave. I remember that Dorothy suggested I put in some humorous bits and that those carefully prepared stories raised a small titter. And I remember that quite a lot of the other matters I recounted provoked completely unexpected guffaws of laughter.

By that stage we were a bit more professional in what we were doing. It wasn't taking us so long to find homes now, for example. Melissa finding a home with clients for brother and sister Rob and Wilma had given us a boost. Dorothy said she realised now we should be advertising in veterinary surgeries, so we sent a poster to every vet in our local Yellow Pages. That had brought us homes for young Sam, our glamorous Sabrina and Jess, who wasn't supposed to be still on this earth.

Sabrina, I was able to tell the audience, had been homed on a farm near the village. Her new owner reported that she liked to play in the muddy farmyard. As a dog with a flowing long coat this necessitated regular and frequent visits to the grooming parlour – where she loved all the admiring attention.

Sam had gone to live at the seaside and every Christmas while we shivered in the winter cold Mr and Mrs Deering would send us a photo of Sam on the beach, always against a background of blue sky and sun.

I took along a photograph of our new accommodation arrangements for the audience to see, although as soon as I held up my 6” x 4” photo to the audience I realised I needed a bigger one. And I lost the thread of what I was saying whenever the passing of the photo among the audience for them to see better distracted me, especially when it was dropped on the floor or somebody had to find their spectacles.

The photo depicted a purpose-built kennel with 30-foot run attached. I knew it would be a surprise to the audience when I told them it was donated to us by an American. It was Bob Kerry's way of saying thank you for taking his Rob and Wilma and getting the police off his tail.

‘I think I know where I can get you a kennel and run,' he had said. It was something to do with the housing for the security dogs at his base being replaced every so many years. He said he'd get us the best one and he'd talk his mate into reassembling it for us.

As Bob had bolted it together Dorothy and I had grown more and more amazed. Now we had somewhere roomy, secure and comfortable for a guest. And it was free – and no, he wouldn't take anything for petrol for delivering it or for his time in putting it up.

The Honorary Chairwoman clinked her teaspoon against her cup to get the attention of the audience, who were still enjoying tea and biscuits in their break. ‘Can we resume, please, for our usual question and answer session,' she called out.

As the audience came back, I noticed that the man I assumed to be the caretaker reappeared with them, although to begin with he was preoccupied with noisily folding up trestle tables, rather than listening in to the question and answer session.

The Honorary Chairwoman called for the first question and a woman in the front row set the ball rolling. I was pleasantly surprised when soon there must have been five or six hands up.

I suppose I should have expected to be asked questions. Fortunately, those asked by the members of the Ladies' Circle were easy enough for me to answer. At one point Dorothy and I had half a dozen dogs and they had wanted to know how we had coped with walking and feeding so many.

I was able to tell them I had soon learnt a lesson that might be worth bearing in mind if ever they were thinking of having more than one dog: that two dogs are more than twice the work, three dogs are more than three times the work, and so on.

‘Take feeding time, for example,' I said. ‘If you have two dogs it's not simply a question of putting down two bowls of food. You may have to feed them in separate rooms.' This is in case one is a faster eater than the other and having finished first then wants to go and raid his companion's bowl. I could have added, but didn't, that had happened to me a few times in the early days. The fast eater then developed their waistline – until I introduced the two rooms solution.

Some dogs were what could be fairly termed ‘messy eaters'. They liked to take the food out of the bowl and spread it around the floor, seemingly prioritising which parts of the meal they would consume first. When I complained about the mess and the additional cleaning up, Dorothy pointed out that it was only what I often did with my dinner, eating the chips first and leaving my greens to the end.

And then, of course, many of these dogs for rehoming had a history that affected their everyday actions, such as their table manners. Orphan Number One, for example, Monty, who had come to us with his ribs showing, was obviously a dog who loved his food but was also a dog who had an insufficient amount to eat in the past. The consequence of this was that bringing his food bowl out of the cupboard caused an eruption of whining, barking and leaping into the air. The process of getting the food into the food bowl and then mixing it up was fraught with danger. While other dogs frequently managed to knock the bowl out of my hand, sending the contents scattering across the floor, Monty preferred me to wear the contents of the food bowl. I had soon learned to raise my arm above my head and hold the bowl up as high as I could. But this had the effect of exciting Monty even more. One day he sprang off his back feet and head-butted the bottom of the bowl like a footballer heading the ball. The big metal bowl shot up into the air, hit the ceiling with force and dropped down to crash-land on my head, emptying most of the contents across my hair, the remainder coming to rest on my shoulders and neck. It was a bowl of tinned tripe and Dorothy says she can still smell it on me.

I had two questions that night about the complications involved in walking a group of dogs. The first questioner seemed to assume that we walked all the dogs together and I had this vision of me attempting to hold four or five dog leads all at once, each with a large – or very large – dog at the end of the lead.

But even off-lead Dorothy and I could each only take two dogs in case it became necessary during the walk to put the leads on. Experience taught us that with a big dog straining at the end of the lead, we could only hold one lead in each hand. And it was surprising how often we had to call the dogs and put the lead on, to prevent them running up to other people we met on a walk and frightening them, or frightening their little dog, or frightening their little child. And it was astonishing, if you had a big dog with you who did like to rush up to strangers, how many people you could suddenly encounter in an isolated field in the depths of the country: ramblers, people with metal detectors, game-keepers, people out shooting, farmers, farm workers, photographers, birdwatchers, people with buckets out blackberrying, horse riders and picnic parties. I have had walks in the country where by the time I got home I was convinced I would have met fewer people at the January sales.

There were still a couple of arms going up when the Chairwoman announced that the clock was against us and we would have to stop.

‘Well I must say,' she said turning to me, ‘how nice it is to have had so many questions. There's probably time for just one more.'