ME AND MY BITCH
Fiona Fraser was slow to succumb to puppy love but, she writes, there was no escape
Fiona Fraser was slow to succumb to puppy love but, she writes, there was no escape
Until July 6, 2016, I was the only bitch in the house. Everyone knew it. I ruled the roost, made the rules, and revelled in being the only female in a household of men.
Then we met Ellie. She lived in a motel and pissed on the carpet in excitement when we turned up. “She’s actually really well housetrained”, Steve-from-themotel told us anxiously. He’d been looking for a new home for his puppy for a while. An energetic lab/border collie cross in a busy motel environment, with limited control of her bladder, wasn’t working out too well for him.
A cat person from birth, I’d never dreamed of a dog. I actually still think that cats’ paws are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. (I just re-read that sentence back, and yes, it’s weird.)
But my 8-year-old son Salvador had been imagining this day since the moment he’d first imagined things. At a second-hand bookstore in Napier, he’d spent a month’s pocket money on a colossal Encyclopaedia of Dogs and thumbed through it at every opportunity he could, making elaborate pros and cons lists of the various breeds. If a dog was imminent, I was shooting for something ankle-height and docile. A dog that would flop quietly at my feet. ‘What breed do you want, Mum?” “A corgi.” “Dad?” “A German shepherd.” Snigger. Salvador wanted a Bernese mountain dog. Or a boxer.
So, for obvious reasons, we settled on a labrador/ collie cross.
“He’s an only child — and an only child needs a
She seemed to really like me. I’d lie in bed at night googling ways I could train the adulation out of her, because I couldn’t stand it.
dog,” nodded various grandparents, approving of our parenting.
But from the moment she arrived in our home, I resented Ellie’s presence. All the leaping about, the smelly dog food, pooing on the lawn, straining on the lead, whining at the door to go out, whimpering at the door to come in. The hair got everywhere and I found myself doing something I’d never thought I would be capable of. Sweeping. Daily.
She seemed to really like me, though. I’d lie in bed at night googling ways I could train the adulation out of her, because I couldn’t stand it. Particularly the jumping up. Dirty paws on Ingrid Starnes. The more agitated I became, the more adoring she was.
My husband was the dog walker in the family — myself a grumpy bystander, despondently lobbing a ball into the middle distance for our springy, spirited, beaming canine. The Eliza McCartney of the animal world.
One morning, I sloshed some water into a bowl for her — apparently dogs need water because they perspire through their massive, sopping, soursmelling tongues. I was dressed up for work — this was maybe week two of dog ownership — and Ellie was so overjoyed I’d done something for her that she hurled her entire labrador form at me, and I ended up slipping on the wet tiles, in heels, and landing on my rear.
“THAT IS IT!” I howled. “She’s doing it on PURPOSE. She’s going to the SPCA.”
Salvador sobbed. “You don’t mean it, Mum, do you?” I’d broken my son. Terrible dog owner. Terrible mother. Terrible human being.
I remember thinking, “Okay, so this is my life now. Until the dog dies.”
Stuck. With a dog I loathed and a family that loved her more than they loved me. Or at least that’s what they kept telling me.
‘I love Ellie so much. More than anything. More than you, Mum.”
“Mum, have you smelled Ellie? It’s the most amazing smell in the whole world.”
(I mouthed, “Is he f***ing kidding?” at my husband). And speaking of husbands, he was no better. “You’re so pretty ... Who’s a pretty girl, eh?” Not me. And not nearly as shiny, either. Because: “Aren’t you shiny? The shiniest in the whole family ...”
I canvassed my doggie friends. “How long did it take you to — you know — like your dog?” I asked Vicky.
“But Fiona, what do you mean? I loved BillieJean from the moment I laid eyes on her!”
I cried myself to sleep that night. My husband reminded me to chill out and that Vicky is so attached to her cabralabraspoodledo, or whatever it is, that she hires a babysitter for Billie Jean if she’s going out for dinner.
Jane had more sympathy. “I think I hate the dog.” I texted.
“Oh honey ... I know ... a work in progress,” she texted back.
“Sonny is 10 and he’s so f***ing annoying he drives me crazy. Sometimes ... if I had a gun ... Michael says it’s just as well I don’t have a gun.”
The weeks went by. I got over myself — a bit — although I was still prone to the occasional outburst.
Something was changing, though. The anxious, panicky feeling I had been experiencing regarding dog ownership seemed to be alleviated by long walks in the fresh air, with a puffing canine at my heels.
When I saw her playing well with other dogs I FELT PROUD OF HER.
When she’d slink up the hallway at a quarter to seven to poke her head around the bedroom door, I’d smile and say, “Good morning, beautiful.”
That annoying thing that she did, without fail, at breakfast, where she shoved her wet snout into my right armpit, became endearing, somehow.
And the sound of our son giggling uncontrollably as he wrestled with her on the floor made my heart sing.
Who had I become? “Someone who is falling in love with her dog,” confirmed Beth, knowingly, as she buffed my nails. “I have three kids and getting up in the night to Rusty was worse than all of them put together. But we wouldn’t be without him now.”
Okay, so it’s still gross when she finds a mouse in the wood pile and beheads it, delighting in this surprising and crunchy little rodenty morsel. The energy is boundless. The appetite will never be satiated. And the farts are deadly.
But I love the way she mothers the chickens, and when we put the scraps out for them she tears up the fenceline at speed making sure the sheep don’t get to them first with her “WOR WOR WOR” Big Scary Bark.
The way she likes to help us collect pine cones and firewood. The softness of her ears. She hasn’t saved me when I’ve been trapped in the well, although I’m entirely convinced she’d be capable of it.
Me and my bitch, we’re tight.