Home Front

Alice Pitman

No one and nothing else matter to our Greek hound Destry more than hunting squirrels and deer.

Yet nobody thought to mention this when we bought him from an animalrescue charity two years ago. It’s like adopting a child in care without being told of his fire-starting habit.

The moment Destry gets a whiff of wildlife, he’s off. Loud, far-reaching whistles, delicious, home-baked sausages, even feta cheese… They are all useless when he is in the zone.

I’ve built up a network of kind dog-walkers in my neck of Surrey who all keep an eye out for him when he goes AWOL. Elderly women, mostly, who all seem to be called Sue. The Sue Crew all have my number, and phone whenever there is a sighting: ‘Sue here – Destry’s at the big pond.’

I think they go the extra mile for Destry because he is extremely handsome. He looks like a svelte Alsatian with floppy ears, his noble profile bringing to mind Hellenic ancestral hounds coursing after prey on ancient Greek friezes. He can be rude with us, but he greets every Sue and stranger alike with the unalloyed joy you see in viral videos of dogs greeting their soldier masters returning from the Middle East.

Recently, his hunting forays have ratcheted up a notch. He disappeared for two hours last month after scenting deer in the woods. I waited so long for him to return that I exhausted every lockdownsceptic podcast on my iphone and three Gilbert & Sullivan operas.

A full minute later, to the overture from Iolanthe, the mighty hunter appeared galumphing out of the woods, emitting yapping noises without his mouth moving. ‘Like a dog ventriloquist!’ Sue 2 said.

This pantomime continued at intervals until dusk when it suddenly fell eerily silent.

I phoned daughter Betty, who came to help. She suggested we try hugging to make him jealous (it had sometimes worked in the past). So we embraced until a sheepish Destry sloped out of the woods, through the gloaming, towards us.

In one of his diaries, James LeesMilne describes thrashing his dog as hard as he could with twigs after she bolted for an hour on a walk: ‘My remorse later took the form of almost passionate embraces and outpourings of love.’

I didn’t thrash Destry, but there were no outpourings of love from me that evening. I sent him to Coventry.

‘Don’t be childish,’ said Mr Home Front. ‘He doesn’t know why you’re ignoring him.’

‘Well, if he doesn’t know, he’s an idiot,’ I said.

The Greek boy’s next trick was to bolt as usual but only in short bursts, meeting me minutes later at strategic landmarks around the common.

A reasonable compromise. Sometimes he was a bit late arriving, but it felt like a minor breakthrough.

‘It’s just like telepathy,’ I enthused to Betty as we stopped by the second meeting post – an oak tree by the pond.

‘He knows just where to find me. You just watch – he’ll appear any minute now…’

Forty minutes later, we were still waiting. I headed for the car park, where unmistakable yaps rang out interspersed with piercing, ungodly screams. While

Betty stayed back, I followed the horrific noises to a residential side street.

A friendly man outside his house informed me that a dog matching Destry’s description had just disturbed a foxes’ den in the scrubland opposite his house, while pursuing a deer. ‘Would you like to see if we can find him in my car?’ ‘Could you?’ He put on a mask and we set off in his Land Rover. ‘Has he done this before?’

‘Yes, but never away from the common – and he never catches them.’

‘Would he respond if you called out of the window?’

‘No, the only thing that sometimes works is if someone hugs me.’

He glanced at me, eyes startled above the mask.

We eventually found Destry sitting at the end of a cul-de-sac, tongue lolling, exhausted and shamefaced.

As I put him on the lead, eyewitnesses appeared. ‘Your dog caught a deer!’ one said. ‘He threw it to the ground!’ said another. ‘He cried like a baby,’ said a third. Had the deer been bitten? They thought not. Was there blood? No. And Betty later confirmed that the deer had returned to the common unscathed.

But it was the last mortifying straw. He’s been on a ten-yard retractable lead ever since.

‘I followed the horrific, piercing, ungodly screams to a residential side street’