It’s a dog’s life and that’s a positive thing
TO EXPERIENCE life properly, you need to be a dog. Pickle, my Yorkshire terrier, is a true earth creature; she digs the dirt in the park and rummages behind trees and shrubs which yield smells and tastes beyond the sensibilities of any human nose or tastebuds. She raises her little face to the sky and sniffs the air, the blossom in the spring, the mulberry tree.
It is a revelation to watch a dog forage the earth and nose the sky. Heaven knows what she finds there, but trying to wrench a dugup chicken bone from her mouth, to save her from choking on it, will definitely end up with my finger replacing her chicken bone. And there are more unpleasant things she could locate, which we could not print in a family paper.
Because we have musicians in the family, we named her Piccolo, but she is female, so this changed into Piccola, Italian for small, and finally Pickle, because she is always in one.
Walking her in the park is nearly as much an experience for me as for her. True, I do not burrow in the mud or claw the earth for some elusive bone, but through her I have met many doggy people, some of whom have become good friends.
There is Sienna, an elegant Staffiecross and Pickle’s adored mate, whom she considers her mother and licks to death whenever they meet. When they were puppies, Sienna demonstrated maternal love by trying to take Pickle in her mouth. Some primordial memory excited in Pickle the desire to return to that state of pure puppy love — and even now Sienna will indulge her antics with barely a growl.
Then there is Neddie the dachshund, who maintains his aloof composure. Or the piquant mini pugs, Dolly and Lola. Without being too anthropomorphic, all these animals display interesting characters of their own; Dolly likes to dawdle to express her annoyance at being upstaged by the more exuberant Lola, who joined the family later. But it is not all a walk in the park for our local canine community. A few years ago, Sienna was hit by a car and her foreleg was amputated. The same thing happened to my daughter Daliah’s foster dog, Billy, a white lurcher who once featured in the JC after winning a beauty prize, but who sadly developed bone cancer. And yet these brave beings carry on with true grit, accepting it as a life challenge, while we grieve over their misfortune.
Daliah found Billy through borrowmy-doggy.com and she walks him at weekends where, with great fortitude but little success, he will crouch and watch his prey, forgetting — sadly for
him but happily for the squirrel — that his guerrilla-style manoeuvres are no longer up to the job.
Pickle’s greatest love is to sprawl on my bed, unwind and consider the poetry in her soul. When she thinks I might be about to go out, her big ears prick up and her expressive brown eyes fix me with a “don’t leave me” stare.
We can learn so much from the way a dog watches and observes and says nothing — apart from the odd bark. Just think how much you would understand if you only had time to stand and stare, as William Henry Davis put it — and perhaps occasionally to pounce. What psychic energy, what enlightenment would be revealed.
As a puppy, Pickle could run with the best of them and everyone laughed and admired this pea-sized Olympian. And picnickers in the park still risk losing their chicken sandwiches if she is on target.
But time moves on and Pickle will be 12 this summer. I see signs of ageing — a touch of arthritis has set in and she has difficulty jumping down from the bed or the sofa. But, like a human being in denial of incipient frailty, she shrinks from help.
I remember a sign I once saw at the vet’s, which said animals live in the same space as we do, but on a different frequency. It urged humans to respect this. Dearest Pickle, my earthling friend, in whatever space you find yourself — just stick around.
We can learn so much from the ways of a dog’