On not creating an international incident

 

I realise this is the second Pav the Heroine story in three days*, but sometimes it happens like that.  Also it’s to do with her age**:  she’s starting to become a little more reliable about stuff—a LITTLE—or a little more responsive to me as mistress of the known universe or at least the corner that concerns HER and so I’m . . . frelling risking it a little more because life is short and being in a constant state of readiness for the worst is time-consuming and dead boring—and expecting the worst eventually becomes depressing.  Six months ago I’d’ve probably gone back and picked her up and carried her past the World Order Threatening Grey Balloons because I wouldn’t have thought my chances of persuading her to come on her own recognizance were worth the time and the likelihood of failure.

When I’m letting her out the front door at the mews to have a pee I don’t bother to put her harness and lead on any more;  she likes indoors, indoors has hellhounds and fooooood and toys*** and she’s happy to come in again.  I do look around before I let her out, in case of innocent neighbours, exciting delivery vehicles, etc.

This afternoon I looked out.  Nothing.  I opened the door and a small furry torpedo shot past me . . .

At the moment that two large, off lead Labradors† wandered across the open archway into the mews.

AAAAAAAAAAUGH.††

Pav of course instantly set off toward the archway, head and tail up, at full prance.  I am not a fluent reader of dog body language, but I would have said she was not expecting trouble but was not going to cringe away from it if it addressed her.

And I’m out there in just my shirt and jeans, because we’re only out for a minute.  I carry a little plastic bag of emergency kibble and Thrilling Canine Treats††† in my raincoat [sic] pocket.  Not in my jeans.‡

Pav!  I call.  And I can hear the panic in my voice.  If I can, she can too.

One of the Labs notices us.  It stops.  It raises its tail to the ‘alert’ position.  Noooooooooo.

Pav! I shout.  Sit!  —All you dog people will know this.  You have a much greater chance of your escaping hellcritter sitting than turning around, away from the thing it is going toward, and coming back to you, if you foolhardily attempt a recall.  If it sits, you can saunter gently up to it, you hope, and GRAB IT.

Pav keeps going.  The Lab’s tail goes up another notch or two.  I’m already seeing the headlines in the local newspaper:  American Woman and Her Ten Stone‡‡ Rabid Pit Bull Attack Perfectly Behaved, Kind to Its Mother Local Labrador. ‡‡‡

PAV! I shriek for the third time.§  SIT!!!

And . . . she stops.  She looks over her shoulder at me.  She TURNS AROUND, trots back TOWARD ME and SITS.  Wagging her tail.

Gibble.  Gibble gibble gibble gibble gibble.

* * *

* It’s actually the third Pav the Heroine story in three days but I can’t think how to tell the third one on a public blog.  Let’s just say that she was uncharacteristically polite to someone it was extremely advisable, not to say critical, that she be polite to.

** Hellhounds were a little over a year old when I started this blog.  Gah.  How time flies whether you’re having fun or not, as a friend recently said.  However hellhounds have just eaten their dinner immediately and with no fuss at all so the world is bright for the next several hours till I have to feed them supper.  Sigh.  I’m sure some of my insomniac problems are a result of the throbbing blood-pressure headaches attendant on non-supper-eating hellhounds but I need that third meal for the opportunity to tamp a little more food into them and breakfast is spectacularly a lost cause.  I might never get out of bed at all if the prospect included feeding hellhounds breakfast.^  It’s funny, sort of, that they’re so jealous of anything the hellterror is getting that they think they aren’t getting—they don’t want to eat it, you understand, just that they don’t think she should be allowed to eat it either—except at breakfast.  At breakfast—and Pav roars out her crate I HAVEN’T EATEN ANYTHING IN OVER SIX HOURS.  I’M STARVING TO DEATH.  WHERE’S BREAKFAST?—you can see hellhounds turning away and delicately pressing metaphorical handkerchiefs to their noses in a gesture that would not disgrace the Duke of Avon.

^ Although since I take Astarte—with her Kindle app, and a live credit card registered on amazon—to bed with me, who needs to get up?

*** This category includes Peter

† Mrs Redboots

I think bulldozer-headed Labrafrellingdors are a Race Apart. Just not far enough.

Noooooooo – they’re LOVELY! Best dogs in the universe! Intelligent, obedient, loving…. what’s not to like?

Well, I’m not going to agree that they’re the best dogs in the universe, but you mistake me.  I’m not damning all Labs, just the huge stupid—um, bulldozer-headed—ones which invariably belong to people who don’t have a clue or they’d have bought a real Lab.  The old-fashioned working-style Labs are still around and while occasionally they too are rowdy fractious pains in the patootie, generally the old-fashioned ones have manners because they belong to people who teach their dogs manners.  I’ve even known one or two this-kind of Lab I’d have been happy to have stretched out on my sofa.

But I think it’s true I’m more drawn to the hard-graft dogs.  Neither sighthounds nor bull terriers are terribly interested in the finer points of the human ideas of training.  If I were going to get a super-trainable dog it would probably still be a border collie . . . because I like the manic.^  Gun dog breeds tend to be the exact opposite of manic.  You don’t see many Labs who’ve been taught to dance.  . . . Although Pav’s latest somewhat-on-command trick is standing on her hind legs and she’s good enough at it she could probably learn to dance if I put the time (and the fooooooood) into it.

^ Possibly not all border collies are manic.  All the ones I’ve known are, however, including the ones who can speak seven languages and have advanced degrees in quantum physics.

†† These dogs are a *&^%$£”!!!!! sore point.  They belong to regular visitors—a bit like me, then—and while they aren’t exactly thrown out and left to their own devices, their people don’t stand there and watch them the way I do mine.  And when there is unpicked up dog crap in the mews courtyard, it is not my dogs who are responsible.  Or I who am irresponsible.

††† None of which work on the hellhounds.  Just by the way.

‡ Clearly I should start carrying Emergency Hellterror Retrieval Rations in my jeans pocket too.

‡‡ A stone is fourteen pounds.  I have no idea why.  Pav, who is a mini bull terrier, not a pit bull, weighs a little over two stone.

‡‡‡ Who never ever craps in inappropriate places.  Its people are not included in the attack, by the way, because they are nowhere around.

§ ‘Never repeat a command.  You are teaching your dog to ignore you.’