DOG PEOPLE

OVER THE YEARS ROB INGRAM HAS OWNED A RESCUE FOXIE AND THE WORLD’S BEST DOG, LEARNING IN THE PROCESS THAT HIS MOTHER WAS RIGHT.

IN TERMS OF NOBILITY, LOYALTY AND AFFECTION, BARNEY WAS PRETTY MUCH THE TOTEM, AND I WAS HIS DEVOTED COMPANION.

IT’S NOT EASY being alone after sharing World No. 1 ranking in one of the great partnerships of our time. I feel a bit like Robin without Batman, Homer without Marge, Bert without Ernie, Simon without Garfunkel. All because these days I’m Rob without Barney.

Barney was the World’s Best Dog. Barney made Rin Tin Tin look tinny. He made Lassie sound like lassitude. He made Pavlov’s dogs seem as appealing as Parkinson’s disease.

Barney was a Newfoundland even if The Chosen One insisted he was a Shed Hair Terrier. We got him when he was the size of a shoe box and had him until he was the size of a shipping container. Barney achieved the highest destiny of dogs, which is bridging the gap between human and animal worlds and affirming the kinship of all living things.

There was nothing approximate about Barney’s loyalty. It could be counted on in good times and in bad. On those rare occasions of domestic discord, Barney and I would repair to the shed where I would ponder life being a bastard and Barney’s eyes would say “I know”.

Barney loved all things in nature. He would run errands for the cats like coming to tell me there was a cat at the door who wanted to come in. He was even a conservationist to the point where he would never urinate on a tree. He was not fearless. His greatest fear was that someone would see a rabbit and tell him to chase it. But he was unfailingly caring. If I was to wriggle under the car to remove the sump plug, Barney would have an anxiety attack and rescue me by the trouser cuffs in case the car slipped off the jack.

In terms of nobility, loyalty and affection, Barney was pretty much the totem, and I was his devoted companion. And when he left our lovely existence, I was as gutted as a Murray cod.

Dogs are people too. My mother told me that. I suppose it was age. My mother that is. Not the dog. Why else would she say such a damned fool thing. Then I remembered that she’d told me the same thing half a lifetime before.

When I was a kid, I told her that I wanted a dog. I’d found people pretty much disappointing. Other kids seemed bigger and more aggressive than I was. They bullied me and broke my glasses and called me names that weren’t even close to mine.

“Dogs are people too,” my mother told me… and I can still feel the stab of disappointment at hearing this awful news. I didn’t want a dog that was like people. I was rather hoping for one that, at a given secret signal, would lunge, foaming at the mouth, for the throats of bullies. Please allow that

I was impressionable at that early age and that, now, my paranoid vindictiveness is pretty much under control.

Now, mother was something of a siren. Not so much in that Rita Hayworth way… more like the air-raid warnings in wartime London. Mother’s role in life was to warn of impending danger and inevitable trauma. But other kids had a dog and I wanted one too.

“It’s not just a dog,” was her admonishment. “Dogs are people too. Dogs need to be fed, watered and bathed, and who’s going to do that? You are. Dogs have to be taken for a walk twice a day. Who’s going to do that? You are.”

As it was, I never knew a dog that I regarded as a chore. My first was a little brown and white fox terrier with three feet as a result of what looked like a rabbit trap encounter. He came from an animal rescue shelter. And mother was right. Despite teaching me everything I know about dogs, he was definitely a person. And despite being a person, he taught me a lifelong devotion to dogs.

Some women have developed a jealous dismissal of the special bond between man and dog. The Chosen One demanded to know what makes dogs so special. The only answers that immediately came to mind were that the later you get home, the happier the dog is to see you… and that dogs seldom care about previous dogs in your life.

We have a cat now. I find that cats are a constant source of inspiration. They inspire me to want another dog.