November 25th 06

These day with the dogs, usually I get no more than a few days before some incident frays my nerves all over again. Two weeks ago I had Holly in Coole Park enjoying the autumn colours and the silence of the woods. About to turn back so as not to overtire her, and trigger one of her dreadful fits, she suddenly veered to the right, off the main pathway and went at full throttle up a flight of really steep forest steps and not stopping there, headed off down another pathway. When I managed to curb her flight, I was gasping and having slowed her pace gradually turned on a route back to the car. When I pulled up in the driveway, not alone did she not get out of the car, she didn’t even raise her head. Didn’t move in fact from the same position, for 4 hours after which she moved from the back to the front seat, so she was at least still alive. A few days later on a ‘safer’ path, she headed for a stile – how she spotted it in the tangle of bushes I don’t know – perhaps years ago I took her along that route – on the perimeter of the estate, and over she went and straight down a private lane way at full speed with me tearing through the muck and waterlogged sludge, feet racing but not half as fast as my heart as I saw her disappear round a darkly forested bend. No point in calling as her hearing has gone. When I finally catch up and tell her what a great girl she is, only for there was a stout tree stump for me to lean against, they’d probably have found me three months, later head first in the mire.
Today,Sunday it was the beach. Huge tide, strong wind, tsunami like waves. Not a day to be outdoors with a 17 plus year old dog. She was at the surging waters edge before I had managed to extricate myself from the wind jammed door. I held my breath as I watched her rake at a bit of seaweed that held some culinary treasure for her no doubt, as a huge wave spied her. We both got to her together but she gives us both the slip and heads back, gushed by the wind over the hillocks of seaweed towards the land. So I’m holding it together just and we’re walking along a sandy path parallel to a field only yards from the sea, its broken wall laced by white strands of electric fencing. And blast if she isn’t over the wall and running in the opposite direction. Even if her hearing was good, the roar of the tide and the wind would have drowned out my voice, so I bulk my form as best I can and wait for her to she turns round. She sees me all right but stands rooted, the wind doing its best to pull her coat off. So I do my Marcel Marceau, gesticulate wildly with my arms to come back – There’s a strange looking man in a car watching me and I’m hoping he doesn’t think I’m calling him over – the beach is otherwise deserted apart from me and my soon to be naked dog if the wind has its way. Eventually after watching my gymnastics for 15 minutes she runs up to the wall but just as she about to jump over it, she changes direction and again heads off. By now the water is chomping at my already sodden ankles and just as a wave whacks my knees and almost floors me, I let out this banshee roar which stops her in her tracks and before she has time to recover, I’ve rolled under the electric fencing, lead her back over the wall and shuffle her back to the car. It took all of my will power not to to say as I passed, to the smirking individual in his warm car ‘And what the hell are you looking at’.
Back home I’m calm and reward us both for surviving the elements and she peacefully sleeping on the couch now before the fire. And of course I know this is what dogs are all about: they run off, they eat junk, they ping into electric fencing, they don’t come back when they’re called, even if they aren’t deaf, but since her fits started and considering her great age, I do worry greatly.