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Link Details for: | Man |
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| Link ID# | 44 |
| Link URL | http:// |
| Submited By | paul larkin |
| Added On | Fri_Oct_17__2003 |
Description:
About 15 years ago I was in my early twenties and I had just moved into my own place. All throughout my childhood my family had never had any pets due to my brother's extreme allergy to them, and I had always wanted a dog. Thus one of the first things I did was to get one. I don’t go in for no fancy shit, so I went down to the local pound and asked to have a look around. A frumpy but clearly lovely old hag took me on a little tour of the cages and just told me to tell her which dog I liked and I could have it, free! I couldn’t believe it – so many dogs of such dramatically different shapes, colours and sizes, and all I had to do was pick the one I liked best and it was mine! I spent a good hour sizing them up. Some were too small, some too big, some too scary, some too smelly, some a bit weird looking and some, well, just too damn ugly. But there was such a cornucopia on offer I just knew there had to be one of the little tykes that was perfect for me. And boy, was I right. I first caught a glimpse of his perfectly formed little head about four cages before I got to him. I was sticking my fingers through the bars of a cage that housed a great big Irish Wolfhound type thing. There was no way I was interested in it, but I couldn’t resist sticking my fingers into its mouth a bit. Just for the rush that he might bite them off. You know what I’m talking about – like when you throw your house keys in the air over a drain. Anyway, as soon as I saw the occupant of pen 27 I pulled them out of there like his mouth was on fire and dashed over to examine what I felt was sure to be “the one”. I asked the hag to let me into the cage and once in I knelt down to say hello to my little fella. He was a little nervous at first, but as soon as I’d stroked him, let him lick my hand and playfully roughed him up he was all over me. Clearly this little pooch had a lot of love to give, and he liked me. The feeling was mutual – he was one of the best looking animals I’ve ever seen, to be honest. To this day I don’t know what he was. There was definitely some dachsund in him – you could tell from the finely wrought little head, plus he had slightly little legs. But as for the rest, I don’t know. He was a rich, dark brown colour with a smallish, lean but muscular body, and was one and a half years old when I got him. Apparently he had just come in about an hour before. I was sure that the first person to see him would have taken him, and I thanked the vague alien higher power that I entertain the idea of that I had been lucky enough to be that person. The hag had told me that it was OK to give him his own name as he hadn’t been called by anything in particular by whoever had him before (a crazy old farmer I believe), and I decided to call him Tucker, a name which had somehow popped into my head the moment I saw him. It seemed to sum him up – cute but tough, loyal but cheeky. A lovable scamp, basically. I went out and bought a load of books on how to look after dogs, and then went and bought all the necessary gear. My house was suddenly full with baskets, leads, biscuits, toys and the like. From day one we got on great. At the time I was working from home and so was able to play around with him as much as he wanted, and that was a lot! That little thing was so full of energy there was no stopping him. I would be sitting at my desk with a book in one hand and a rubber thing in the other, with him on the end of it going “grrrr-grrr” endlessly. Or I would tease him with it until he could stand it no more and he would jump up on the chair and attack me, frequently causing me to fall on the floor, whereupon he would try to lick my face and I’d try to fight him off, laughing. Life was great – for both of us. One of the books I had bought had a section on training, and we set to work. Within a couple of days I had taught him how to sit, stay, heel, all that stuff. Because of the bond between us it all came so easily. We soon moved onto advanced stuff like fetching, playing dead etc. I had never in my life owned a pair of slippers but I went out and bought some just so he could fetch them for me. I simply cannot find the words to describe the joy that it brought me to have him carry out this little act for me. He used to sleep on the floor in my bedroom and keep an eye out for when I was getting up. As soon as he saw me stirring he would pad off to wherever I had left my slippers, and come skipping back into the room and place them on the floor by the bed, the right way round and everything. Each day this genuinely moved me, and I would show my appreciation by squeezing his head and then roughing him up a bit, which he loved. To me there was nothing more beautiful than this simple interaction between man and beast. I loved him and he loved me. Simple as that. Well, this is the point in the story when things begin to go wrong. In the words of Axl Rose, “Nothing lasts forever”, and this story unfortunately doesn’t disprove that theory. I just thank the aliens that his illness was a long and drawn out one. “Callous words!” I hear you cry, but hang on a second. Tucker’s illness was mental, not physical, and he was happy as a pig in shit right up until the last. It was just the rest of us that suffered, as you will see. It was two years after I got him that things started to go wrong, and then, one crazy year later, he would be dead. Despite it all I am still thankful for that year. The first sign that there was anything wrong occurred whilst out for a walk one day. We had this little route that took us through the park so that I could try to chat up women, using Tucker as bait of course, and then past a nice pub where I would stop for a refresher and Tucker would get some water and a few cheeky pork scratchings (pork rinds to my US chums). I was sitting on a bench in the park just generally meditating on life and being happy, and Tucker was doing his thing in the park, which consisted of running around like mental for half an hour and then coming and hanging with me for five minutes before heading off. I suddenly realised that I had been sat there for 45 minutes and Tucker was nowhere to be seen. I had a casual stroll around the park and couldn’t see him anywhere. Fear began to creep in. I was just thinking “Please, don’t let someone have taken him, please”. It would have been too much to bear. I had been calling his name, but I now began shouting it at the top of my lungs. Some old geezer came up to me and asked what the dog I was calling looked like. I described him and the old fella said “You’d better come and take a look at this”. The look on his face told me that nothing awful had happened - unless he was the sort of person who would wear a quizzical, amused face when informing someone that they should come and take a look at their animal’s mangled body. I decided that if he was, and something terrible had happened, then it was safe to remain level-headed now, as any sudden emotional shock that I wouldn’t be prepared for if I gave this fucker the benefit of the doubt could be alleviated by smashing his fucking skull in. But it was OK. As he led me round the back of a building by the edge of the park I could hear Tucker’s growl. He was crouched in front of a tree, emitting a low, quiet growl. He would reach the end of his breath, breathe in, and repeat, seemingly endlessly. I approached him from the side and tried to get his attention, but he wasn’t having any of it. He seemed to be oblivious to everything but whatever it was that was freaking him out. The old guy and me were examining the tree for squirrels or some shit like that when Tucker suddenly stopped growling, stood up did a 360 degree turn, and resumed the growling action. “Okaaaaay…” I thought. The old guy and I just stood and chatted about stuff while he carried on doing this. After four turns he growled for a little bit longer, then stood up and came to see me as if nothing had happened. I thanked the old dude and Tucker and I headed off to the pub. It was while I was sitting and enjoying an ale that Tucker exhibited the next sign of his impending madness. I was going through the normal drill of chewing the fat with the locals, and then quite literally chewing the fat by eating a big bag of pork scratchings, occasionally slipping one to my faithful friend as he chilled by my feet. I didn’t notice anything was wrong until I was about to leave. I was plugging my headphones into my cd player and putting my gloves on when I noticed that there were some pork scratchings on the floor under the table. “Strange of Tucker not to eat every single fucking thing I give to the greedy bastard”, I thought, and then I realised that they had been arranged into a pattern. With some accuracy, Tucker had arranged four pork scratchings into a square! I was somewhat amazed and intrigued by this, but after a while I pretty much forgot about it, as you do. It was a few weeks before the next incident. I returned from my net-weaving class as usual, to find Tucker excited about something. I’d taught him this trick where he would go to the bathroom and get me some toilet roll when I needed it. It turned out to be quite useful at times. He went to the bathroom and returned with a strip of 4 sheets of paper, dropped it at my feet and continued barking like mad. “What the fuck is he on?”, I was thinking, then suddenly I realised. Four sheets of paper, four corners to a square, four turns in the park. It had something to do with the number four! Sensing that I was beginning to understand, Tucker calmed down a bit. I raised a hand in front of me and held up one finger, then two, then three, then.. he starts going mental again at four. I cracked open a can and sat down to ponder this. After much deliberation, I decided that perhaps it was something to do with the number of legs he has. But why would he be freaking about this? I guessed that maybe the fact that I walked on two legs and he on four was disconcerting him. Perhaps, because of our close relationship, he thought that we were equals and that we should be doing everything the same, and this discrepancy was bugging him. I didn’t point out to him that he didn’t drink beer from cans or play the guitar either, but you know – he was just a dog. Over the next few weeks his behaviour became more and more, well, annoying I guess, though it hurts me to say that. He was very difficult, constantly hassling me and doing all sorts of weird things. I decided to test out my little theory and one morning, upon rising, I casually headed to the bathroom on all fours and continued to move around in this way all day. It was a resounding success – he instantly returned to his normal self and it was just like the old days. We horsed around, played with rubber toys, all that shit. I was really pleased, but obviously this presented a problem. As soon as I resumed my standing position he reverted back to his previous behaviour. “Well, I’ll just have to put up with him going apeshit the whole time”, I thought. “There’s no way I’m going to live my life on all fours”. At least that’s what I thought at the time, but after a while I began to do spells on all fours, just to get a break from the madness. Gradually however, I was spending more and more time this way, and though it shames me to admit it, I was soon living like this 24/7. The keener readers out there may have already spotted a potential problem – dogs need to be taken for walks. Unfortunately, Tucker’s bad behaviour didn’t stop when we left the house if anything it got worse. I would take him out for short walks but it was a complete nightmare, and I soon resorted to taking him out late at night with, you guessed it, me scampering along on my hands and knees (or hands and feet for extra speed or when negotiating rough terrain). I was getting quite good at it by then and could build up quite a bit of speed if I tried, except occasionally I would trip and smash my face in. I was worried about people seeing, but the few we did come across gave us a pretty wide berth, unsurprisingly. And so this continued for a while. It’s funny how quickly we get used to stuff. When I had to pop out without Tucker to see some friends or to the shops or something, it took me a few moments to adjust to walking upright again, and sometimes I would inadvertently go into the crawling position at the most embarassing moments. One time I was sitting on the underground, and when it got to my station I bounded off the train, and was on the escalator before I realised what the hell I was doing. Luckily, in a big city like London there are so many nutters that it’s quite easy to get away with something weird like that, though it did raise a few eyebrows. Another time I was at a party with all my old university friends and was sitting cross-legged on the floor. The doorbell went and I raced to answer it all fours. That was without a doubt the most embarrassing moment of my life up to that point. I'll never forget the stunned silence and the looks. And so the situation continued in this fashion. I had compromised my behaviour to modulate Tucker’s, and things were fine, I suppose. As I say, it’s amazing what humans can get used to, and after about three months of spending most of my time on all fours I was completely used to it. I would shower this way, cook food, do housework (for which it helped a bit, to be honest), watch TV – everything. One fine spring day, however, the equilibrium began to fall apart. I had cooked myself a meal of spaghetti bolognese, dished up a can of Pal for Tucker, and we took our places to eat. His bowl was in the front room, and I usually ate on the sofa with the plate on my lap. He was normally fine with this, but on this day he started doing all his usual old crazy stuff, trying to stop me from eating. I tried moving down to the floor and eating but this still wasn’t enough. After a bit of experimentation I discovered that the only thing that would appease him is if I would discard the cutlery, crouch in front of the plate and eat without my hands. I liked the way he chose the day that I make spag bol to do this – meatballs might have been a bit easier. Thanks for that, Tucker. I got my face stuck in there, and to my surprise I actually quite enjoyed it. It was kind of liberating in a way. You know how sometimes it’s nice to take the day off work, walk around the house in your underwear drinking whiskey, eating chicken legs, grunting at fit women on TV and generally acting like a neanderthal? It was nice to take a break from civilized behaviour and get back to basics. You can imagine the state of my face, and the floor, afterwards. I learned a lesson from this, and from then on I ate food which was easy to pick up with my mouth. Fish fingers, sausages, chips, onion bhajis, olives etc. I didn’t try going back to eating on my lap. I recognised that obstinate look on my nutty dog’s face. I wish that things had stabilised there, but unfortunately they didn’t. Any discrepancy between my lifestyle and Tucker’s seemed to eventually set him off. He would become impossible, and I would adapt just to shut him the fuck up. One Sunday morning whilst getting ready for hot air ballooning class, I was lapping some coffee out of a bowl, making a cursory attempt at licking my entire body clean (I was now taking proper showers at a friend’s house), and Tucker was giving me grief about getting his slippers for him (this had taken some figuring out, but I had deduced that he wanted me to fetch slippers for him and so bought him two pairs of baby’s slippers, which I would put on him and he would wear!), and I had a sudden urge to end it all – to have him put down and stop this fiasco once and for all. But I knew that I couldn’t do it. I loved him so much, and it wasn’t his fault he was so bonkers. I left the house (the porch had now become my dressing room – he wouldn’t allow me to wear anything), got in my car and just cried. At least I knew it couldn’t get any worse. Every possible aspect of my life with Tucker had been adjusted to fit in with his. There was nothing else I could think of that I would be required to do. And I could just about cope with things as they were. The licking, the sniffing, the scratching – it was all worth it just to be in the company of this wonderful animal. I mean, that’s life right? Accepting the way things are, realising what you have, and trying to enjoy it the best you can. And so things continued for six months or so. Looking back on it now it seems absolutely insane, but at the time it seemed fine, comfortable, normal even. We played, we ate, we ran. We slept, we fought. We were both happy. The only thing that was making it slightly difficult was that I still had to work, so I would pretend to sleep, wait until Tucker had dozed off, and then pull my laptop up in front of my basket and tap away. Sometimes Tucker would wake and begin to freak out, but I could usually convince him that I was playing with the thing by grabbing the edge of the screen in my teeth and growling. Of course, he would grab the other side and join in. The people down at Dell were beginning to get pretty pissed off with me, but I had taken out one of those really expensive protection policies so each time they reluctantly repaired it. Actually, the screen was only damaged twice. After that I would just stand up and put it on the table, much to Tucker’s angst. An act like this could take weeks for Tucker to completely get over though, so I tried pretty hard to keep him sweet. I was resigned to living like this for the rest of Tucker’s natural life, but fate was to pull a string that would turn both of our worlds upside down. It was late summer and we had had a wonderful day. Tucker had been lazing in the sun while I had been inside pretending to sleep but actually getting a big chunk of work done. I felt very pleased with myself and prepared both of us a lovely meal, poured myself a bowl of lager, and went to join Tucker in the sun. My garden was very secluded. I had quite a large, detached house, and I had put up very high fences and hedges so that no-one could see in. And so both of us stretched out in the sun, me with my avocados, olives, houmous and chopped up pitta bread, and Tucker with his big bowl of Pal and side dish of Bonios. The dappled sunlight dancing on Tucker’s glossy coat, and my bare ass. We fell asleep and awoke just before dusk, the conditions still pleasantly warm. We chilled for a bit, doing a little bit of grooming, and I was just thinking about heading back inside when Tucker suddenly shot up and darted across the lawn. I saw something moving right up the end of the garden and spotted a smallish black cat. Tucker was onto him like a rash and they began tearing round the garden. The cat had come into the garden by the house, but now that he was down the end, couldn’t get up over the fence. Tucker was doing a good job keeping him trapped, and I watched in amusement as he tormented the thing. Eventually the cat made a break for it and headed up towards the house. He was heading straight for me, and Tucker stopped chasing him and looked at me as if to say “Go on then, stop him”. I hesitated for a moment, thinking that I have to draw the line somewhere, but my sense of adventure got the better of me and I bounded over to a blocking position and began barking (which I was getting pretty good at by now). I scared him back down into Tucker’s zone and the two of us chased him, trapped him, let him escape and then did it all over again. I have to admit that it was a lot of fun, but after half an hour or so it suddenly went wrong. A booming female voice suddenly cried out “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”. It was my neighbour, a sour old bitch if ever there was one. She had climbed up onto an external wall to look in, apparently alerted by all the barking and screeching. The cat had been making quite a bit of noise as well as us, and it transpired that it belonged to her friend. Thinking quickly, I adopted an aggressive tone: “How about a bit of freaking help here? This animal has trespassed on my property, made my dog crazy, and I’m trying to save it’s bloody life?”. She was taken aback, but she wasn’t buying it. “Mr Trevelyan, can you explain why you are naked, and why you were barking like a dog?”. I explained that I was barking to try and scare the cat into a place where I could trap it, and nonchalantly I told her that the whole fiasco had kicked off while I was in the shower, and wasn’t the whole thing terribly amusing? She countered with “Why didn’t you take your dog inside rather than attempt to catch the cat?”. She had me here, and my mind raced to come up with an answer as I stood there, my sac gently contracting in the cooling air. I rolled my eyes, trying to look like I wish I’d thought of that. “I wish I’d thought of that” I gushed, attempting to charm her. She looked unimpressed. At that point the cat slipped past Tucker and made it out of the garden. He immediately rushed over to me to complain about my standing up, and so I began to head inside with him, all the time apologizing to my bitch neighbour and trying to laugh the incident off. I had a bowl of whisky to calm myself down, and reflecting on the incident, I thought that maybe she would just think I was a bit of a nutcase and forget the whole thing. This is England, after all. But it wasn’t to be so. Mid-morning the next day the doorbell rang. I shut Tucker in the kitchen, put my dressing gown on and went to answer it, preparing myself to deal with her. As I approached to door though, I could see a white shape on the drive, and there were two figures dressed in black, with black hats on. “Don’t tell me she’s called the fucking rozzers!” I thought, but just then I heard the tell-tale crackle of a radio. I edged back into the kitchen but they had seen me through the glass. They called out for me to answer the door, but there was way too much evidence of my unusual lifestyle scattered about the house for me to consider letting them if. I was pretty sure I hadn’t broken any laws but there was no way I could face the embarrassment. I would rather be done for refusing to co-operate or some such shit. I went into the kitchen, hitting all fours to shut Tucker up and cowered in the corner trying to come up with a plan. I was pretty sure the cops wouldn’t break in, but if they did I wanted to be out of there. I decided to try to make it to my local pub and sit it out there. I put some clothes on and sneaked out the back door, intending to leave Tucker in the kitchen, but the fucker slipped past me into the back garden and looked like he was about to freak out, so I had no choice but to hit the ground and run after him. Luckily he headed for the back gate, and we went through it and out into the little lane at the back of my house. Thankfully it was deserted so we both ran down it towards a shortcut to the pub across some fields. I adopted the hands and feet position to give me extra speed so that I could overtake Tucker and lead the way. We were approaching the pub and I was beginning to feel relief washing over me when I heard a voice call my name. It was one of the fucking cops, and she was climbing over the stile at the beginning of the field. That meant we couldn’t go into the pub as she would have seen us, so I led us onto the road that leads to the high street, not really sure of what to do when we got there. The high street was packed, and this immediately caused problems. Tucker hadn’t been out in the daytime for so long that the number of people seemed to mess with his head a bit. I obviously had to resume my erect position, and this didn’t help, but he was even worse than usual. Instead of just barking he bolted across the street, weaving in between people and traffic and making a lot of noise. I followed but he was too quick. I could just about keep up but was making no ground on him. He reached a bigger road that had quite a lot of traffic and not so many people and began to slow his pace, evidently less troubled because of the drop in people. He eventually stopped right in the middle of a main road and turned to face me. The next ten seconds seemed to elapse very slowly. Tucker was in the path of a double-decker bus which was just pulling away from a stop. I could see that the driver had his head turned towards a passenger, collecting a fare. I guess he was using his peripheral vision to watch the road and a little dog was too small to register. Tucker just looked at me, doing his usual freak out that I was standing up. “Move, boy!” I willed him, but he wouldn’t. I needed him to run towards me, but how? I dropped to all fours, hoping that this would work but no. Desperately, I stripped off in a matter of seconds and began bounding towards him. Still nothing. I inhaled a huge breath, ready to launch into a series of barks in a last ditch attempt to get him to come towards me. But it was too late. The wheel of the bus slowly rolled over him, crushing him more completely than I would have thought possible. I saw the bones crunch, the blood spurt and the organs pop, and as his perfectly formed little head went under my vocal cords began to form the bark that I had been hoping would have saved his life. But the sound never made it as far as a bark. I pointed my face up to the sky, gave in to the whirlwind of emotions that was ripping through my entire body, and let out a mighty howl of pure sadness. I walked slowly back through the town wearing nothing but two steady streams of tears. I suspect I may have raised a few eyebrows but I didn’t care – I was lost in a world of sadness. I got back home and collapsed on the floor, where I remained for God knows how long. A day or two I guess. Very slowly I managed to pull myself back together. I escaped any charges – it turns out the police were just making some routine enquiries about something else! I look back on everything with a heavy heart, but ultimately a joyous heart. That little animal enriched my life in more ways than I could ever describe, and I thank the aliens for that. I felt guilty about enjoying the return to normal life at first, but I suspect it’s what Tucker would have wanted (either that or he’d be spinning in his grave, the fucker!). But every year, on the day that I picked Tucker up from the pound, I get out my basket, bowls and toys, strip off and spend the day doing whatever the fuck I want. Sometimes I have a bowl of gin and go out looking for Mrs Coopers’ friend’s cat. Rest in peace, Tucker. |
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