Idlebones

Big Dog

I didn’t think I’d see them today, F and her little dog, Ellie, but the afternoon was far too nice and I was far too fed up sitting in traffic that I went straight past the junction to the office on my way back from Dublin and headed for home. I’ve just been tying up loose ends really this week, while I wait for the thought bubble above my bosses’ head to burst and he finally puts pen to paper and officially, finally, changes my role.
We decided to take her dog for a walk down by the river for a few miles, and take some sandwiches with us, while the sun still had some heat in it. It was a perfect afternoon for walking the towpath of the old canal that runs along side the river, so we brought a ball and followed the black mop of a dog as it chased flies and snuffled out insects in the long grass.
Very soon I decided that this was becoming a bit too much like an Enid Blyton story, so I belted the ball into the canal and chucked the dog in after it shouting “fetch” to see what would happen. Of course the little beggar completely ignored the ball, swam round for a bit like a hairy otter, the scrambled up the bank and taking one look up at me, shook every bit of stagnant canal water over my trousers, before trotting off with a self satisfied waggle of her butt. Smartarse.
Down the towpath, coming towards us, was a man-shaped tattoo with a dog-shaped monster on a leash, who couldn’t have missed our dog’s human-handling skills. 10 metres from us he stopped, bent down and uncoupled the black beast from it’s harness. As he stood up he tossed the sorry looking semi-deflated football he had been holding in his hand into the canal and barked an order to the dog. The dog, without a second glance, recoiled momentarily on to its hind legs, and then flung it’s bulk over the rushes and weeds of the raised canal bank and pounded itself into the canal, momentarily creating such a crater he must have landed on all fours at the bottom, before disapearing under the upswelling water. Two seconds later he burst up from under the ball, clamping it flat between massive jaws, before pummiling his way back to the bank. The images of David Attenboroughs’ killer whales catching Seals on Patagonian beaches came to mind as he hauled himself back up to the pathway, dropping the ball victoriously at his masters feet. I looked down at little Ellie, busying herself with untangling her shaggy nose from some brambles by pushing it further into them, arse wagging vigourously in the air and thought, “I’ll get it myself, then shall I?”