Walking Ollie Read online

  Walking Ollie

  STEPHEN FOSTER

  For T.A.

  It was in the winter of 2003 that I became a dog owner. Though I had heard that animal psychologists exist, and no doubt thrive, on the West Coast of the United States and in Manhattan, I was not aware that they had arrived here, much less had I ever considered the idea that the holder of such a position would come to visit my home more than once.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PREFACE

  THE LURCHER BREEDER

  MINGUS

  ERNIE

  THE NOBLE LURCHER

  ANYTHING BUT ERNIE

  WALKING OLLIE

  MILLA

  CHARLIE AND LOUIS, AND OTHER FRIENDS

  WALKING HOME

  POSTSCRIPT TO THE FIRST EDITION

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PREFACE

  It’s an October evening, night is falling, it’s getting cold, colder than I’m dressed for, and I’m heading across parkland in the opposite direction to the way I intended to go.

  I continue in the wrong direction in the company of a stranger, and in the knowledge that by the time I get home I’ll have missed the kick-off of a televised football match that I mean to watch. The detour comes about because the stranger has a dog with him – a young whippet – and Ollie, the hero of this book, has introduced himself to the whippet by shooting off after her (against my instructions), and surprising her from behind. As I catch up the pair of them are circling and sniffing at each other’s private parts like nobody’s business.

  Ollie is at an advantage because the whippet is on a lead. She is on the lead because she and her owner are walking on a road which divides the parkland. There’s no traffic nearby, or even in the distance: it’s quiet enough that I can hear that this is the case. But still: it is a road. I halt Ollie in his circling and sniffing by putting him on his lead too, explaining to the man that I am vexed with the dog because some time ago he was knocked over, and I would prefer for this not to happen to him again. I do not shout at Ollie for his disobedience, though, or otherwise tell him off, because this only freaks him out. I just give him a stern look. The owner of the whippet takes an interest in the tale of the accident. It is, after all, a cautionary tale.

  ‘Is he okay now then?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes, more or less,’ I say. ‘He broke his leg, but that seems to be completely fixed (touch wood). It’s just the mental side that continues to give grief.’

  I could tap my finger to my temple here, to indicate that Ollie is a bit round the bend. He seems to learn nothing from experience. He would run into a car as soon as blink, though he will always jump out of harm’s way if a fearsome carrier bag blows by. A carrier bag has never hurt him, a car has put him into hospital. Nothing of this registers with Ollie, he makes no connection between cause and effect.

  By now, I am used to it, used to his ways, can anticipate some of them, and even find them endearing (which is why I don’t tap my finger to my temple), though at moments like this, when he disobeys me in a way that could get him killed, I suck in air and swear under my breath.

  The whippet owner looks at Ollie. ‘His coat is very shiny,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply, ‘I think it’s down to fish oil – he’s very partial to pilchards.’

  ‘Pilchards?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’ I reply. ‘In tomato sauce.’

  ‘Would they play, if we let them off?’ the whippet owner asks. He glances at Ollie once more. It’s clear from Ollie’s general attitude that this is a suggestion that he rates very highly. The owner looks at me. The look is a further question, one which says all of the following: it would be nice for them to have a run, but a lot of dog walkers I meet are reluctant for this to happen; is it because my dog is a whippet, because she is fast – or what?

  It might be because of her breed and speed, but it is more likely to be ‘or what’. Dog owners are weird, curious people, full of ‘or whats’. All people are weird and curious, I know that, but dog owners are top of the range in this respect. This is the conclusion I have arrived at since I joined their cult (and, as a consequence of joining, I have become a weirder and curiouser person too).

  Whether I care to admit it or not, I am now like them, spending much of my time absorbed and obsessed by the goings on in my pet’s life. I am to be found outdoors in all manner of foul weathers, walking in the opposite direction to the one which I intended, entirely for Ollie’s benefit. The reason, to answer the young whippet owner’s question, that some owners won’t let their dogs play, are plentiful and complex – because they are miserable sods, because they are fay, because their animal runs off and won’t come back, because they are filled with a proxy neurosis on Fido’s behalf: they don’t want the dog getting hurt, injured, lost, or bullied. I prefer this not to happen to my dog either, but the urge that Ollie needs to satisfy more than any other in his life is the freedom to let rip, so I see that he gets it, whatever the cost to me in terms of missed kick-offs, lost time, and walking in the wrong direction.

  I offer the benefit of my observations on why some won’t let their dogs play as I walk along with the whippet owner. His dog is only six months old; Ollie is about four years now: I am experienced at this game, a veteran.

  ‘Follow me,’ I say. ‘Round here through this copse of trees – just behind there’s a field where they can have a proper run.’

  Let loose, the pair of them perform loops round an imaginary greyhound track, using each other as the hare; finally they pause to catch breath, and while they rest they chew each other’s ears and play-fight until they appear to be beat; and then they do it all again, over-and-over, until they have run themselves into the ground and can barely stand. I find all this a thing of beauty, an aesthetic delight, a visceral therapy. I can watch it for a long time.

  When they are exhausted and all that’s left of them are their vapours, the whippet owner goes on his way, and Ollie and I head off across the dark fields, back towards my car. As we do so, another dog emerges from nowhere, a bouncing Labrador, and Ollie, finding his seventh second wind, starts the chase all over again. A girl appears out of the gloom, shouting at the Labrador and apologising for the interruption.

  ‘He’s always running off,’ she says.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say, ‘Ollie was like that, when he was young.’ (This last is a lie, one of the stories I tell; he still behaves in this way, of course, and often enough – we have seen it once already and we’re only in the preface.)

  ‘How long did it go on for?’ she asks.

  I know this question, from other encounters, and I understand that it doubles as a probe for further enlightenment; might I be able to advise her when, exactly, the bad behaviour in her own pet will cease? Will this naughty Labrador ever become well-behaved, like Ollie?

  ‘How old is yours?’ I ask.

  ‘Nine months,’ she replies.

  They are the second young-dog-and-new-owner combination in a row. I make a short statement as if I know what I’m talking about, offering reassurance with all the authority of a provincial solicitor.

  ‘It took Ollie about a year to get there, so probably not long for you to go now. It’s just the exuberance of youth, you know, they’re like badly behaved kids for a while, it’s totally natural. I’m sure yours will settle down soon.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘Good, there’s hope for us yet.’

  As I come out with my patter Ollie starts to mount the Labrador, apparently having sex with it from behind (Labradors are to Ollie what French women are to some men – a breed that unfailingly arouse his amour). She looks at Ollie and his erotic intent t
owards her dog (who is also male), and she looks back to me, for my explanation. After all, I seem to know what I’m talking about.

  ‘It’s just a dominance game, that,’ I say dismissively, ‘It doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘Right,’ she says.

  ***

  Ollie was nearer to two years old before he was anything like ‘settled down’, and he still turns the deaf ear whenever he sights a matter in the distance that requires his urgent attention – like a whippet on the road ahead. He always looks back to check before he sets off, so that I can tell him ‘No!’ and he can safely ignore my command. I mention nothing of this to the Labrador owner as we take our leave. But Ollie decides to follow me at heel, as it happens, suddenly pretending to be the well-trained animal I make him out to be.

  It’s our first dark walk of the approaching winter. Ollie trots alongside and slightly ahead, like a gymkhana horse, keeping close, as though he’s looking out for me, as though he knows that humans are retarded when it comes to night-vision, as though he’s actually performing the role of guide, being a help. It’s not like him, and yet, a little bit, it is like him too. We have our moments when we are man and dog, at one with each other, and at one with that other weird and curious thing: nature. But it has not always been this way, nowhere near.

  Ollie is a rescue dog. Worse than that, he is a rescue lurcher, and worse than that he is a rescue lurcher with Saluki in him. If this last is meaningless to you, not to worry; it was meaningless to me too, when, one snowy winter afternoon, Ollie was introduced to us: a deceptively cheerful sliver of pup looking for somewhere to call home.

  THE LURCHER BREEDER

  A lurcher is defined as follows: half-greyhound, half something else. The something else is most frequently a collie-type scruffy-coated dog, so the classic lurcher look inclines to the great unwashed. Lurchers are grunge. If you pause to notice you’ll see that they are the typical companions of street dwellers, who will often have one curled up next to the begging bowl. This tells you something about street dwellers – lurchers tend to take at least as much from their surroundings in the way of heat as they give out. But then they do have a specific talent which will be helpful if you are hungry and homeless: they are the poacher’s dog of choice. The combined speeding instinct of the greyhound coupled with the intelligent herding gene of the collie scruff produces a very fast animal that is agile, sharp, and expert at quick turns, and so is ideally suited to sighting and picking up rabbits. They are often bred by itinerants for the activities of hare-coursing and baiting, and for lamping (chasing rabbits and game at night, using lamplight.)

  Beside the more common collie-type, there are other many other lurcher matings; Ollie’s non-greyhound side is Saluki. The pure Saluki, I discover, is of Arabic origin, by all accounts notoriously aloof, stand-offish and superior. The Saluki-greyhound, as it turns out, is a particularly specialised and perverse version of a lurcher.

  But not only had I never heard of a Saluki when we picked Ollie up, neither did I know he had such a side; at that point he was just the aforementioned sliver of pup.

  ***

  About a year after Ollie had arrived, I found myself being driven from Knock Airport in County Mayo down to Galway City, a taxi ride lasting the better part of two hours.

  The driver, a stocky man called Shay, was a comic. As he took our bags, he warmed up with a spiel about the use of the word ‘International’ on the airport exterior, developed a routine centred on the quality of the coffee available to the waiting cabbie inside the terminal building, and hit his stride as he gave his opinion on the newly established ban on smoking in public environments that some idiots had introduced – in Ireland of all the feckin’ places – a law which meant he’d had to leave the International Airport building in order to drink the cup of anaemic piss while he lit a fag as he awaited the late arrival of our flight.

  Before we left the International Airport carpark – where parking prices were absurd, a pure joke – Shay mentioned that his own place of work, as it happened, was an exemption to the laughable new smoking law, if that was okay. As he drove and smoked, he told lurid tales about the night girls of Galway City and other associated matters; Knock airport might not be so ‘International’, for instance, but it was this very aspect that made it such a convenient hub for the trading of narcotics.

  As if to prove his point, two Garda roadblocks had been set up, at each of which it was established that there were no drug mules travelling in his car. Neither of these encounters with the coppers had any effect on Shay’s flouting of the smoking law.

  As we moved south and the scenery became more verdant, I spotted some horses in a field. Shay had quit the drinking, and also, it emerged, the gambling, so the talk about the horses was brief and bitter but it led on to a conversation about dogs. This was happier territory. Shay told me that he was a lurcher breeder.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I’ve got one of those.’

  ‘What cross?’ he asked, the insider’s question. When I said Saluki-greyhound, he rolled his enormous eyes, snorted, and began to tell me how he’d once been good enough to offer such an animal an opportunity to prove itself, but that the damn thing was so hopeless, troublesome and unsatisfactory in so many different ways that, after giving it more last chances than it deserved, he had been forced to take it down to the garden and shoot it.

  About a year earlier I may have regarded this as a callous act of brutality; in the light of my recent experiences I could see his point only too well.

  ‘What do you do with yours, then?’ he asked, meaning, I imagined, was there any slight chance that Ollie was remotely adept at picking up rabbits and coursing for hares?

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘Mostly he sits on his sofa in his sleeping bag, while I tickle him behind his ears and tell him that he’s a good boy.’

  Shay was delighted with this. He laughed long and hard at the amateur concept of wasting your time by introducing fairy-tale ideas into the mind of a creature who deserves nothing better than what he’s got coming to him. As we parted company Shay gave me his number. One day I’m to phone him and he’ll teach me how to train a lurcher properly, in order that it can be useful and earn its keep. And one day I really do intend to make that call.

  In the meantime:

  MINGUS

  The idea of acquiring a dog at all began with Mingus. Mingus is a Dalmatian. He is the former pet of my partner, Trezza. Mingus lives in Derby with Trezza’s ex, but he comes to stop with us in Norwich sometimes for the occasional custody visit. In the days and weeks after Mingus has left to return to his Master you will find Trezza in melancholy mood.

  Mingus is the first dog I’ve ever had in my home. He is nice to look at, but it’s more or less downhill from there. Here is an animal who will eat anything, who will display interest in any item that could possibly be comestible, with the sole exception of oranges. Drool falls in thick spools from his jowls as he sits in the kitchen keeping me under surveillance whenever I’m cooking, whatever I’m cooking, whatever I’m assembling; he does not even rule out Cornflakes. I find it hard work to conceal my distaste at the drool, though I try, for his sake. He has a deep soulful look and I don’t want to offend him, I do not want to precipitate the sadness that comes so quickly to a dog’s eyes by having him notice that I’m disgusted by a habit that he cannot help.

  He has other habits I could live without too, like coming up to our bedroom at five in the morning to check we are still alive by licking our faces. It’s considerate of him, but it’s a kindness I would pass on, were it possible. We could close the bedroom door, but he would just scratch his way through it; persistence is one of his main characteristics.

  His surprisingly sharp and tenacious white hairs, which attach themselves to any fabric and to every other surface as well, are dismaying. For me, it would be better if his spots moulted instead as a good part of my wardrobe, about which I am touchy, is in the dark-to-black end of the colour spectrum. Prior to Mingus’s visits I
hide my regular clothes away, and for the duration of his stay I wear items that I normally reserve for decorating. I am touchy about the interior cleanliness of my car, too. So when we make a journey with Mingus I pre-drape the rear seats and headrests using the dust sheets that go with the decorating outfit. This protects against the drool, which is chemical in its power to decompose upholstery, but as for the hairs – which multiply faster than frogspawn and generate enough static to light a Christmas tree – there’s nothing to be done. I am still finding them months later.

  I could easily get by without any of this, and most of the time, of course, I do.

  But.

  (But is often a doleful conjunctive, but not in this case, where it is active and crucial):

  But I am fond of Mingus. It is not actually all downhill. He is a charming and endearing presence. When you walk with him you find that family groups will approach you expectantly and you are able to say, in a proprietorial manner, ‘Yes he is very friendly – go ahead, stroke him if you like.’ And so they do, and he takes it in his stride. Mingus is a natural celebrity who recognises his obligation to his public, and who deals with it professionally. He goes for the regal approach – his equivalent of Her Majesty’s restrained wave is the half-nod of acknowledgement, delivered with a self-assurance that derives from being so well-bred and so handsome. It goes without saying that his public reception has a great deal to do with the received image and status that his breed enjoys as a consequence of the 101 Dalmatians books and films, which, as you’d expect from cartoon fantasies, are not big on the downside of doggyness. But still, as I watch him being stroked, and I see the happiness it brings, it’s easy to forget about the drool, and the hairs, and the other matters – most specifically the crap – and at these moments I pretend to be Mingus’s real owner.