Close encounters of the canine kind

ALWAYS search for a silver lining: that has been one of my more useful habits during a lifetime of failure and disappointment – and it is proving useful now.

Indeed, if you can take your mind away from the horror and multitudinous downsides of the pandemic, the big silver lining offered by the lockdown is the opportunity it allows us to better ourselves.

Take relationships, for example. Suddenly there is time to analyse the way in which you really feel about someone, or something. I wonder, for example, how many divorces will result from the claustrophobic intensity of the lockdown?

“Darling, I really did love and admire you 25 years ago when you were young and beautiful/handsome – but you have grown witheringly boring – and because I’ve been working so hard, raising the children, etc, I’d failed to notice it.”

But that is not exactly looking at a silver lining. The relationship I prefer to observe is the one I have with my dog. I haven’t really ever taken that much notice of Finn before – not like I did with old Monty, whose amusing epigrams used to occasionally bless this column.

Finn, if the truth be known, is a bear of very little brain – to quote a comment made by Monty Don about the passing of his beloved Nigel.

I have always regarded Finn as some sort of young surfer dude. If he could speak he’d sprinkle the word “man” liberally across his sentences. For example, I like to make wise and profound comments to my dogs – and Monty would regard me with an expression that would say: “Yes, old boy. I know exactly what you mean…”

But Finn will give me a glimpse of his beady eye, mutter something like “Cool, Man…” before grabbing his metaphorical surfboard on his way to an imaginary beach.

Or that is what I used to think. But now, thanks to countless hours of close coronavirus-lockdown observation, I realise there is a lot more to Finn than I’d thought. This diminutive, will-of-the-wisp, lurcher is a lot deeper and more complex than I’d realised.

Take, for instance, the subject of murder. Finn is a serial killer. A mass murderer. He assassinates rabbits. Which is no bad thing in this valley as we are overrun with them. Badly overrun. Ask my vegetables, or what remains of them.

Anyway, what I notice about this loony lurcher is that he reacts in two very different ways in the immediate aftermath of a killing. This week he caught a very large bunny up at the top of the garden and brought its body down for us to see. But, having almost reached the place where we were sipping wine in the sunshine, he suddenly seemed to think better of showing off his kill and ducked behind a bush where he dropped the rabbit’s body out of sight.

For the rest of the evening Finn kept returning to the bush where he’d sit, gazing forlornly and guiltily at the corpse. If I went over to take a look he would assume the most hangdog expression I’ve ever seen. One that seemed to say: “I know it was wrong, Man. I am feeling very very bad about this. I need help, Man, I really do! Before I do it again.”

Next evening he killed another rabbit. It was when we were out on our walk, and he was so proud of his big-game prize, he carried it all the way home. I have seen photos of fat American businessmen standing above lions they’ve shot looking less proud and pleased with themselves than Finn did with that damned rabbit.

It was only after a physical set-to with my wife that he was persuaded not to bring the wretched thing into the house. And that was a gruesome tug-of-war I never want to witness again. But why does Finn have two such opposing reactions or attitudes to the same single action? Are there such things as dog-psychiatrists? If there is such a person and they happen to be reading this, I’d love an explanation.

I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned from my canines, though. Lurchers are masters at dog-yoga. My daughter’s big Exmoor lurcher is the same – but large thin lurchers like Tadgh and the late Monty both practise it in a different way to Finn.

What they do is roll onto their back and splay their legs at a most dramatic angle imaginable – as if they’ve been zapped by some freeze-frame laser while leaping over a ditch. They will lie motionless in this stretched-out upside-down dead position for an hour or more.

Finn doesn’t bother with that dramatic I’ve-been-shot look. He just lies. Really, really motionless. I wouldn’t normally notice, but because of the endless hours of the lockdown I’ve been able to study this incredible ability to play dead more closely. With Monty, you’d eventually see him taking little, almost imperceptible, breaths. But I’ve watched Finn through a microscope and swear I’ve counted half an hour between inhalations.

Now, that is what I call yoga. The ultimate in meditation. Zen and the art of coronavirus lockdown. I tried it and, alas, keeled over. But you see what I mean about learning from relationships…

My lurcher Finn is a serial killer. A mass murderer. He assassinates rabbits