In which I attempt not to bang on

I shall be trying very hard not to do with Stanley the Dog what I did with Red the Mare, which was to write of nothing else for the first three months. I still remember with smarting angst the moment a reader complained. I don’t know which was more disconcerting: being accused of dullness, or being called ‘woman’. (I’ve never understood that. As in: ‘come along, woman,’ or ‘get over it, woman,’ or, most horridly, ‘for God’s sake, woman’. I have never called anyone woman in my life. There’s absolutely no objective reason for there to be anything wrong with it, but it hits an odd, jarring note in my ear, as if there is something mildly patronising or even passive-aggressive about it.)

On the other hand, Stanley spreads before me a daily garden of delights, and some of them are too good not to tell.

The lovely rescue people at Many Tears said that his defining attribute, when he came to them, was sadness. I thought that there must be some lingering melancholy, some uncertainty, some trace of neurosis, but apart from a faint shadow of occasional anxiety in the eyes, I can find none.

Here, his default mode seems to be that of a very happy dog. He loves everyone, for a start. He has already enchanted The Mother, The Sister, and the lovely Stepfather. The World Traveller brought the middle great-niece down yesterday in the snow to meet him, and there was instant adoration on both sides.

This morning, at family breakfast, he was quite exuberant and excited, because there were so many new people for him to see. The Older Brother and his Beloved are here, and so it is a full house. Stanley bounced around, and I was a little worried for my mother’s china, so I said, very confidently and seriously: lie down on your bed. I was not even sure he really knew Lie Down; he has not so far responded to it. (He knows sit, and wait, and paw, but that’s as much as I have discovered.)

Bear in mind this was in my mother’s house, where he has only been once, and with people he has only just met. He looked at me and went and lay down politely, putting his front paws out neatly in front of him.

‘Did you see THAT???’ I yelled in excitement, almost causing my sister to choke on her egg.

‘I never had a dog that did that,’ said the Stepfather, admiringly.

Now, at home, when I say ‘on your bed’, he goes and settles on his bed. This morning, when we went down to the horses, he did not bark at them as he had on first meeting, but tipped up his nose and did an Eskimo kiss with Red the Mare, who lowered her head to him in gentle greeting.

He is learning so fast and settling so well and growing in sweetness so much that I feel as if the dog fates have gathered up all their blessings and hurled them down on me in a wild Christmas flurry of generosity. I don’t quite understand how I ended up with such a dear and delightful gentleman. I mean, of all the dogs in all the bars in all the world, I got Stanley.

One final bit of dearness. For the first time this morning, he rolled over on his back and gave me his stomach to rub. This is a huge act of trust and I took it as a fine compliment. He lay his head back and showed his tiny white teeth in a delicate lurcher smile.

I promise I shall not bang on and on. But I had so resigned myself to second best, after The Duchess and The Pigeon, been so convinced that no other canine could even get in the ball park, that this feels like a tremendous gift and revelation. It is a proper and good surprise, and I feel a bit breathless at my luck. There is Stanley the dog, galloping into the ball park, a bright flash of love and hope.

 

Today’s pictures:

Too gloomy outside today for pictures. The sky is filthy and the snow looks dirty and defeated. Here are a few from yesterday:

Some interior shots of Stanley. My camera is not that keen on the indoor light, and so they are not the best pictures ever, but he looks so sweet and good I wanted you to see:

That face is where one sees the flash of uncertainty, the you’re not going to bugger off and leave me look. Answer is a big fat NO, never, not on your life:

Main thing is he’s got his ball:

Elegant paws:

That is almost as fine as The Pigeon when she used to do her Grace Kelly impression:

My girls. This is almost good enough for a caption competition:

Today’s hill:

Meant to say, a wonderful thing happened this week. There are certain of the Dear Readers who have been here for a long time and who give me glimpses into their lives. I often fret if I have not heard from them for a while, and wonder what has become of them.

One such was perhaps my most distant reader, in terms of geography, Michelle in New Zealand, who sent heart-breaking reports after the Christchurch earthquake, and once wrote that her daughter loved the Pigeon’s face so much that her picture was printed out and stuck on the fridge door. I always remember that absolute wonder and delight I felt that my little Pidge should be sitting in a kitchen in New Zealand.

Not long ago I realised I had heard nothing from Michelle for some time, and thought of her in the southern hemisphere, and hoped that I might hear from her again some day.

Anyway, Michelle is back. She has had a blogging break, and now she has returned. There was sadness, because she came back to the melancholy news, but, for me, there is a most keen pleasure to find her here once more.

The internet is so strange; it is most peculiar that I should be worrying for a person so far away, whom I shall almost certainly never meet in life. But there is a humming sense of community here, which is the thing I always wanted, and has come to pass, and so this return feels a bit like a family reunion. Welcome back, Michelle; it’s so lovely to have you here again.

The story of Dog Island

A very long time ago and very far away, in another life and another world, I was not a Dog Person.

I shall pause, for you all to pick yourselves off the floor, where you have surely fallen, laughing.

I am ashamed to say I rather looked down my nose at the Dog People. I liked to think of myself as marvellously liberal and tolerant in those days, but in fact I was a bundle of horrid prejudices. I associated the Dog People with those kind of leathery, shouty ladies, who wear quilted waistcoats and have voices that can carry over three fields, and have never had a moment of self-doubt in their lives. Either that, or, even worse, the kind of pink fluffy creatures who make feminists want to cut their own heads off, who carry teeny tiny little toy dogs in their absurd handbags.

I was a late-night racketeer. I went on lost weekends to Dublin and flew to Manhattan on a whim. I could never quite decide if I wanted to be a character out of Scott Fitzgerald or something from the Algonquin Round Table, but those were the kind of ridiculously narcissistic ideas I had of myself. (I was young, and idiotic; what can I tell you?)

Then I left the dirty streets of Soho and my beloved tranny bars behind (best lipstick tips ever) and moved five hundred miles north. It still did not occur to me to get a dog. I might be living surrounded by mountains and sheep, but my amour propre insisted that I could create my own little Round Table in the privacy of my own head, and that would not include yelling HEEL at the top of my voice.

Then, very suddenly, my sister moved abroad and I took in her two sleek, black, lab-collie crosses. The family returned after a year, but the dogs stayed with me. I had fallen helplessly in love, with a crash that could be heard as far as Inverness, and The Younger Niece, then only nine, pulled on the wisdom of Solomon and decided the dogs should live with me.

I still remember what she said. ‘You have to get up at seven to take them for their walks,’ she told me, sagely. ‘And I can come round and give them hugs whenever I want.’

That was how I ended up stranded on Dog Island, with no chance of a ferry home.

I did travel a bit at the beginning, but in the end they went everywhere with me, which is when I started taking all my holidays in Blighty, so they could come with. We took the boat to Colonsay, where they ran on the white sands, and gambolled in sea as blue as the Caribbean. We roamed the Lake District and even once went to London, where they chased the squirrels in Hyde Park and took their ease by the Serpentine.

I lost the marvellous Duchess on the night of my father’s funeral, in the bright sunshine of last spring. The Pigeon mourned, but rallied, and stayed with me until that awful morning in November, when we ran out of road.

They were very, very special dogs. They were raving beauties, packed with character and intelligence. They were funny and affectionate and thoughtful. They were loyal and true. The thought of anything matching them was absurd.

There was a moment when I thought I could never get another dog because nothing could come close. My heart ached and cracked and split. The house was silent and filled with ghosts. In the empty evenings, I found myself blindly looking at the internet, where there were puppies for sale and lost canines begging for rescue.

I grew angry. Nothing could meet the gold standard of my glorious ladies. But then I saw the picture of Stanley the Lurcher. He was a dog who needed a new home. Through no fault of his own, it said, rather heartbreakingly.

There was something in his face. I kept coming back to him. The seed of another dog life planted itself. I looked at other pictures, I investigated canines closer to home. Somerset, where he lived, could not be farther from my front door if it tried. But in the end, it was Stanley or bust.

I just happened to be going south, and Stanley’s foster carer turned out to have a family connection to my father, which seemed improbable and curious and faintly portentous, and it was only a few miles and some petrol, so off I drove, on a sunny morning, the fields glittering with floods, to meet him.

After a few moments, he came over and rested his chin on my knee and gazed up at me. The fosterers gasped. I looked at them in enquiry.

‘He never does that,’ they said.

That was it, for Stanley and me. I applied officially; the good people at the excellent Many Tears Rescue organisation gave me a thorough vetting, and decided I would do. So I bundled him in the car and drove him to Scotland, just one step ahead of the snow, and now he is curled up by my side, listening to a nice bit of Mozart.

He has met the horses and met the family and been introduced to the sheep. He and I are slowly getting to know each other. Every day brings a new thing. I discovered this morning that he does special comedy chasing of his own tail, and then hurls himself onto his back with all four legs in the air. I am very glad of this; I would be sad to have a dog that did not make me laugh.

He has boundless lurcher energy outside, but is calm and restful in the house,  happy to doze and dream whilst I write a book. He does not vamp for love, but is quite self-contained. There is affection there but it is not needy.

He gives me the amber gaze every so often, as if to check I am there, and then settles himself back to sleep. The rescue people said he was immensely sad when he came to them; he is not sad now. It sounds fanciful to say, but it is as if he knows he has found his home.

‘Ah, Stanley,’ said the Landlord, who met him yesterday. ‘You have landed on your feet. You have no idea.’ (My dog devotion is the source of considerable amusement to the extended family.)

So, that is the story of Dog Island, and how it got another dog.

I am never quite sure exactly why I tell you all the things I do. This blog is, in many ways, a complete mystery to me, a place of odd imperatives and sudden revelations. Today, that was the tale I wanted to tell, and now it is told.

 

Today’s pictures:

The light was extraordinary this morning. It went from bright blue to dun pink; the sky was clear one moment and obscured with blizzard the next.

This is what I see on the walk down to the horses:

And there is the little herd, waiting for me, knowing I bring love and hay:

Lined up for breakfast time:

The new rug technology really is amazing. They are toasty warm under all that serious kit:

And here are the trees:

The beech avenue:

Meeting the sheep:

Rather a lot of sheep pictures. But I love them so. They always make me think of Jane Austen, for some reason. There is a timelessness to sheep.

Stanley gazes at them with hope in his heart. I impress upon him firmly that he may look but not chase:

The snow starts to fall again:

If you look very closely, you can just see the snowy outline of the hill:

From the archive -

My darling old girls adored the snow. It turned them to puppies again. They ate it and played in it and it became them:

Snowing again as I am about to press publish. Swirling blizzard. Oh, I hope the electricity holds out.

Two sweet things; or, a horse story and a dog story

Warning for length, horsiness, and dogginess.

 

The snow came again quite seriously, falling with intent all morning. I defy weather, and I had work to do, so out into the white I went, with my faithful fellow by my side.

The work was not with the mare, who has reached such a pitch of perfection that all I have to do is ten minutes of easy drill to keep her on an even keel. I had some thoughts of riding her over the winter, but the weather is too much; either thick snow like now, or hard frost, or bottomless mud. I love the groundwork so much that I don’t mind. I’m going to let her down, and get all the polo out of her system, and encourage all those hard muscles to relax, and then bring her back in the spring.

She thinks this is a tremendous plan, and is as happy and calm as I have ever seen her.

No, the work was not with my highly-bred duchess, but with the little Welsh mountain person. Myfanwy had apparently developed a princess complex whilst I was away, and was refusing to be caught. The Barefoot Trimmer came and could not even do her hooves, because she was romping round the field with her head in the air and that was that.

One of the things I am very firm on with my horses is manners, and biddability. I am gentle with them, but there are lines they may not cross. This makes them feel safe and secure, since, just like small children, they know where the boundaries lie; it also means they are a pleasure to work with. When the hoof goes over those lines, back to basics we go.

So, this morning, I decided to take the pony back to join-up. It’s quite hard doing this in a big field; generally it’s done in a small, round pen. When I first did it with the mare it took almost an hour, and I blessed every cussed bone in my body, the ones that do not allow me to give up. The little pony had got quite fat over the summer, and we had to put her on a regime, which is just now bearing fruit. Still, she is not exactly a greyhound. But as I sent her away, she raced over the snowy ground like a racehorse, belly to the ground, her little legs going like the clappers, her jaw set in a determined line.

This is really not going to work, said the defeatist voice in my head. Keep buggering on, said the stubborn voice, which will not be denied.

Off she went, off I stomped, keeping her moving, as if this was all my idea. After about twenty minutes, she was still full of running, and my dander was starting to droop. But then she did the thing of flicking her ear towards me, and she slowed down, and started looking at me, and I went very calm and still until she came to my side. And suddenly, there we were, together, and she was walking at my shoulder, turning in figures of eight, stopping when I stopped, connected, miraculously, by that invisible thread of communion. I had got her back.

I am not ashamed to say that I raised my arms in triumph like a boxer after an impossible bout. The pony, who loves it when she does a job well, looked inordinately pleased with herself. I covered her in congratulations. Red the Mare, watching, did a stately slow-motion buck, as if to say: hey, Spanish Riding School of Vienna over here, just in case you’re interested.

Small animal triumphs are keenly sweet to me. I felt as happy and fulfilled as if I had written a prize-winning book.

Still flushed with delight, I suddenly heard a wild shout. The kind Sister had taken Stanley the Lurcher for a short walk whilst I was working with the horses. We thought it a good idea for him to get to know the family. She was putting him back in the car, taking his lead off, when he suddenly leapt out and ran away. We are at least a quarter of a mile from a road, but even so. The strict lead on at all times rule is in force, because he is a rescue, and still does not know this place, and I’m not taking any chances. I do not know yet how good his recall is, or if he might get disoriented and not find his way back to me.

I ran, horrid imaginings chasing themselves through my head. All that trust the good rescue people had put in me, and look what had happened. I shouted and shouted his name, more in desperation than hope. And then, suddenly, there was a flash of red brindle against the snow, and there he was, galloping towards me at full pelt, his face filled with delight. He came back.

I cannot tell you how proud of him I was. He is number one top miracle dog and I cannot believe his goodness and cleverness.

Once we got over the shock, we worked out that he had been perhaps having a little separation anxiety, and was heading back to the house to try and find me. When he heard my voice, he dashed back the other way. There was a discernible look of flooding relief on his face when he saw me.

‘That is going to be a one-woman dog,’ said The Sister, in admiration.

Well, we learnt that lesson, and all contingencies are now in place. But oh, oh, my good, brilliant creatures. I could not be more impressed and proud.

Filled with joy, I went home and settled Stanley the Genius on his bed and wrote 967 words of book. So it really was a good day.

As I sat down to write this, a rather rarefied and elegant invitation dropped into my inbox. I don’t get that many invitations these days, but this one was a dilly. Metropolitan, and chic, and quite unexpected. I had to write with regret that I should not be getting out my best frock and putting on my party shoes, because I should be in the snowy north, stomping about a muddy field in my gumboots, with literal and metaphorical straw in my hair.

Instead of making cocktail conversation with The Interesting People I shall be going into transports over the antics of a small, woolly mountain pony, and a lost mutt of a dog. It’s funny how much my life has changed since those old urban days when the party shoes were on practically every night.

I would not swap one inch of it.

 

Today’s pictures:

Stanley the Lurcher, in action:

There is still a slightly questing, uncertain look in those lovely eyes. It will go, the surer he becomes of his new place and his new human:

With The Sister, in her very smart red boots:

The happy little herd, all rugged up against the snow:

The hill, lost in the snow:

We haven’t had the Pigeon for a couple of days. I always remember loving it when I took pictures of her in a low light, and her black fur turned dark blue. I miss that face very much still:

Snow

The snow comes blasting in from the north. It is not picturesque snow, but the dirty, messy, sloppy kind. Stanley the Lurcher finds the whole thing delirious. Not quite as delightful as my old girls did; they ate it in their mouths as if it were some kind of delicious ice-cream. But he thinks it vastly diverting and faintly comical.

I go back to familiar routines. The Sister and I walk and talk in the weather. The Horse Talker and I chat for hours about matters equine, leaning on the fence, watching the herd eat breakfast, so rapt in our special subject that we don’t even notice we are being snowed on quite hard. It is important in life to find someone who shares your obsession, so you don’t have to bore everyone else with it. I am aware that some curious people, amazingly, do not find horses quite as riveting as I do. Luckily, I have my kindred spirit in the field, and we can discuss hooves and rugging and different varieties of hay to our hearts’ content, and no one else needs lose the will to live.

Stanley the Lurcher proves immaculate, apart from a moment of wild barking at the equines. Clearly he imagines that I am about to be attacked by these huge red dogs and he must see them off. There is the occasional slight pulling at the lead, but aside from that he is a model dog.

How could he be so good? He has been from pillar to post and back again, he really does not know me from Adam, and yet he is settled in here, as calm and quiet as if he had lived in this house always. He even does that enchanting thing of rushing to the door when we get back from the horses, and putting his nose up to be let in, as if he knows this is his house, which rather tugs on my heartstrings.

He is beside me now, fast asleep, his nose tucked under his tail, exhausted from his snowy shenanigans. I look at him with love. It is a different love than that I had for my soft old girls. He is a different person. But it is love for all that, and I feel it grow in me like a sapling in springtime. Quite often I wonder at my luck. This is one of those times.

Too tired for more; these long journeys take it out of me. Just a few rather bad pictures; the light was going, but I did want you to see the winter field:

They really are rotten. But I suppose it is important in life to allow imperfection, from time to time. Better tomorrow.

Home

Left Cumbria at half-past seven, with the mercury hovering at minus six. It was the bluest, clearest morning I ever saw.

For miles, I saw hardly another car on the road. The sun rose with a fierce red clarity, turning the hills a deep pink. Somewhere south of Douglas, with the land the colour of roses, and Alan Bennett reading his diaries on the stereo, talking of Christopher Logue and Princess Margaret and Kenneth Tynan, I found myself trying to sketch the landscape in words. Must write it down, write it down, said the authorial voice; must tell the Dear Readers. Then, another voice said: can you not just look at the beauty? It does not always have to be recorded. It can just be.

Then I switched to the radio, and there was some classical loveliness, and I wept fiercely and unexpectedly for my lost dog. That too could just be, yet I cannot help recording it. It was one of those waves that comes and knocks me flat to the floor. It was that I was going home, I think, on that familiar journey north, for the first time without her.

But I had a living fellow in the back, who turns out to be the best traveller ever, and when I turned left onto the hills of the Stonehaven road, dusted with snow, with the high white mountains between me and my house, he sat up in the back seat and gazed about with excited amber eyes, as if to say: I too am coming home.

‘You’re in Scotland now,’ I told him, with portent.

At least half the family was gathered when I got back. Everyone loved the dog; the dog loved everyone. My mare fell in love at first glance, dipping her beautiful head low to the ground to greet this new arrival. Stanley the Lurcher was mildly freaked out and jumped and barked a bit, as if alarmed by what he must see as an enormous red dog.

‘It’s a horse,’ I told him sternly.

The mare can be spooky and jumpy herself, but she did not flinch at the antic fellow, just blinked at him gently with her liquid eyes. They shall be friends, all right.

As I write this now, my dear, rescued gentleman comes and settles himself on the absurd collection of sheepskins and blankets beside my desk. He curls himself up into an elegant comma, and sighs, and looks at me out of one eye, and then falls at once to sleep.

‘You are home,’ I tell him.

No pictures today. Too tired. 280 miles in the frost and snow have finished me off.

But I am back. There is no beautiful black shadow, only the memory of her, but there is a living, breathing, brindle fellow, all the way from Somerset. There is, once again, a dog in the house.

Journey, in brief

Left the south in the blue dark, with a silver moon sailing full over the cedar trees. The forecast was for freezing fog, but, apart from a small patch near Nailsworth, there was none, only a rosy, violet dawn, and one of the prettiest mornings I ever saw.

At Stafford there was a a rainbow; at Stoke the rain felt in pelts. By Cumbria the light was amber and thick as honey.

Stanley slept most of the way, occasionally raising his head to examine me gravely in the rear view mirror. He turns out to be a miracle dog in the car.

We stopped for breakfast at Kirkby Lonsdale. It was the first time I had been there without either of the old dogs; there was an ache about that. But I felt glad I had my handsome lurcher to show the place.

‘You are in Lancashire now,’ I said to him. ‘Have you ever been to Lancashire before?’

I showed him Ruskin’s view and the lovely old churchyard and he was very calm and interested. It was their Christmas fair, so the small market town was packed with people. I had wondered if that might make the poor rescued fellow nervous, but not a bit of it. We went to Plato’s, my favourite place, for breakfast (a three-sausage sandwich and two lattes for under a tenner), and Stanley settled down on my coat, which made a remarkably good bed, as I read the Racing Post and ate. I was really quite surprised. I thought he might be restless or twitchy or nervy, but he acted as if he had always been coming to this elegant place for morning sausages.

To Tebay in time to watch the racing. Poor Stanley now has to understand that there will, on occasion, be shouting, especially as I had backed Bobs Worth in the Hennessy and the lovely fellow won.

‘This is your life now,’ I told the dog, seriously. ‘These are your Saturday afternoons; me, yelling Come on my son at the television.’ He looked mildly surprised.

There was so much else about the journey I wanted to say but 240 miles has taken it out of me and there is no more. Eyes are squinting; fingers slowing to a crawl. But that really was one very, very good dog. He was so amazingly well- behaved, polite and biddable and willing, that I felt stupidly proud.

 

Quick pictures:

Some Cumbrian hills:

A Very Good Dog:

So sorry. Too tired to read this through. Am keenly aware it is almost certainly disfigured with errors, but can’t squint any more.