The Visitor

We have a house guest. A dog. Which is staying with us for ten days. As I write, we have her for another three days, seven hours and 34 minutes.

We like dogs, we had a dog, we loved that dog, on the whole, but she left us after 14 years and now resides on Rainbow Bridge. Ever since, we have been thinking about getting another, but the commitment; being dragged down the road for the early morning walk in the lashing rain, scrubbing fox poo off her neck having rolled in a pile, picking up her turds in a plastic bag, coaxing her out of the under-stair cupboard after bonfire night. But we loved that dog and when we took her, for the final time, to the vets in Airvault we wept like school girls.

It's been four years since she went...we found her passport in a drawer the other day and remembered the happy times. She was a Labrador and would hurl herself into any puddle of stagnant water she could find; she even dragged my dad into the canal one time...happy memories.

But I think with dogs you only really like your own; like children, you pretend to like other people's, but really, you don't.

For the purpose of this article I shall call her Betty. Betty is like a small beagle, crossed with something. She is a lovely dog: she doesn't pull when on the lead, she doesn't bark, sleeps through the night, but she's not ours.

I have no sense of smell but Anna, my wife, has an advanced olfactory system similar to the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I only have to walk through the house with a pot of paint and she swoons). So she is struggling with the smell of wet dog. Like Howard Hughes, she is constantly washing her hands.

Betty's only failing is she jumps up onto sofas and refuses to move, which does not go down well with Anna, whose hobby is upholstering chairs and sofas in expensive material; our living room is like DFS. With the result, Betty lives in the kitchen and all the chairs are covered with towels and blankets.

'The kitchen! That's a bit mean.' I hear you cry...but the other complication is we have a cat, which we befriended from the wild. We love that cat and don't want her to run off like our first feral cat did, leaving us bereft. “The dog is okay with cats” we were told... it's not the dog we were worried about! And so it came to pass on their first meeting: the dog went for the cat, the cat shat herself, started hissing like an anaconda and couldn't get out of the house quick enough, it was like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Calm has been restored and the cat lives upstairs and the dog in the kitchen with the door firmly shut and never the twain shall meet. Slightly irritating when carrying our tea through to the lounge, where we now eat, because in the kitchen Betty raises herself up onto her back legs and hops round the table like a kangaroo trying to grab something from an unattended plate.

After only a week with Betty I feel much fitter; giving her three walks a day. She walks to heel, unlike our untrained Lab who pulled us down the road, especially if she knew a river, lake, canal or puddle was coming up (we had one of those extendable leads and would resemble water skiers as we were dragged along). “Keep Betty on the lead at all times, or she'll run off”, we were told. Anna being Anna put this to the test on the first day and the dog ran off. Our garden is not 'secure' (we don't even bother shutting the gates, evidenced by the herd of cows that regularly escape their field and can be found in our garden), so when we are in the garden she is tethered by a long bit of rope which we feel bad about, but when in Rome...

Betty has two cups of dried food a day. Jeez, what a life! I felt a bit sorry for her, so gave her some chicken skin from the Sunday roast, her eyes rolled back in her head as she devoured the fatty flap. The next morning, I discovered Betty had had diarrhoea all over the kitchen rug. Anna nearly passed out as her nostrils were filled with the smell on entering the kitchen. As I was partly to blame I cleaned up the mess as Anna stood outside gagging with dog. You would be forgiven for thinking we were moving house if you entered our kitchen with all the furniture covered with sheets and towels and the rugs rolled up in the corner.

But, dear reader, we're not going anywhere, just entering our winter hibernation. So, batten down the hatches, stoke the log burner and fire up the electric blanket. I wish you and yours a wonderful Yuletide and will see you on the other side in '25.