Dog Club

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First rule of Dog Club: Don’t talk about Dog Club.

Monday, 24 April 2006

labrador_retriever By Dr Frigmund Pseud

It doesn’t exist, anyway. Not officially. Depends what time you go. The park is empty by nine in the morning, but at seven thirty it was teeming, and it will be again at six in the evening. Twice a day, keeps yard-guilt at bay.

The hounds run around, circling the motley pack of humans, some of whom chat aimlessly, in fragments. It’s okay to stand in silence, watching the animals play. It’s okay not to make eye contact, to come and go without a greeting.

You learn their names after a while. The dogs, that is. The owner would be that person calling out the name, trying to sound casual, while the hound in question humps the wrong end of an oblivious Labradoodle.

‘It’s alright,’ laughs another human. ‘He’s already fucked in the head.’

Only owners are allowed to say things like that.

Second rule of Dog Club: It’s not Human Club.

No names are used. That’s Molly’s dad over there, and picking up her poo with a grimace and a council doggie bag is Molly’s…other dad.

The park has at least two Sams, Harries and Maxes, and three Mollies at last count. The lady with the funny-coloured hair who seems to own only one tracksuit, is Big Max’s Mum. Little Max doesn’t seem to have a Mum. Perhaps his Dad is on the lookout for one. Maybe if he and one of the single-looking women (there are several) struck up a deep enough rapport discussing supermarket vs pet shop kibble (liquid gold! But the cheap stuff gives him gas), they could exchange first names.

Then they would have to live double lives, in one murmuring dog-relatedly among the pack in keeping with the Rules, and in the other meeting surreptitiously plus-or-minus hounds, to delight in the use of names. It could even be somewhere without grass.

Third rule of dog club: Owners do not have lives. They have dogs.For all I know, dog club could be composed of national radio personalities, underworld kingpins and wives of Balkan war criminals. It’s not always the breed match you’d think, either. I’ve seen the psychopathic Rottie tied up outside the library. And then there’s the brick-shithouse tattooed skinhead bloke with the Italian Greyhound that looks like it has to sleep under the doona or it would die of cold and terror. He’ll be your landscape architect, I expect.

Point is, nobody mentions their extra-parkal lives. Oh, you might get ‘the days are getting shorter, time to get out his glow-in-the-dark ankle bands’, or ‘are they ever going to finish that hideous block of flats? What? It is finished?’

But nothing too personal, like, what you actually do with your life. I have imagined ‘fessing up to the group:

‘My name is Frigmund, and I’m a trainee psychiatrist.’

Silence. Nearby, two mice are watching.

‘Did he say he was a shrink?’

‘Never mind that, what have you been eating, you dirty bugger?’

‘Sorry.’

‘You could have gone downwind and done that.’

He hates, in ascending order:

Bowlby worships the tennis ball. He would chase one under a bus, off a cliff, across hot coals, whatever. Wave one around and he gets this crazed look like the homeless man near the station, that he loves to get a good sniff of.

But he doesn’t fetch. He’s supposed to be a retriever of some sort, but Labrador Golden Expert Negotiator Cross is probably more appropriate. You chuck the ball, he gets it, and pops down on his haunches, doesn’t budge.

‘Good boy, Bowls**, now bring it back.’

‘Sod off’, say his big brown eyes, like he’s some cocky fat inspector on a British cop show.

Now I have tried many tactics here, drawing on all my reading in behaviourist intervention, transactional analysis, and See Spot Run (Pup psychology, I know, but the pictures are cute). There is a hierarchy, listed above, in which Tennis Balls are number one. If Bowlby has a stick, he will let go of it if you are about to throw a Frisbee. But if he has a soccer ball in his mouth (no, we didn’t think he’d be able to do that either. It’s quite impressive.) then you can wave the Frisbee around like a dickhead until people point and laugh and mothers lead their children away. And he’ll be, like, ‘you must be joking.’

So it’s ‘Sod off’ until, magically, you produce a second tennis ball from your pocket. Then it’s ‘Aah, now we’re talking.’ And he bounds over to you and sits at your feet, looking up at the other tennis ball, tongue lolling, eyes twinkling, mesmerised.

‘What about your other ball?’

‘What? Which one?’

‘The one you left over there.’

‘Oh, that one. I don’t want that one. I’ve moved on.’

‘Go and get that one.’

‘Sod off.’

Fourth rule of Dog Club: Ask, and advice shall be given. Don’t ask, and it shall be given anyway.

‘Won’t fetch? You know what that is?’

‘Slobrador bloody-mindedness,’ I say.

‘No, it’s like that dog psychiatrist woman says-’

‘Psychologist’

‘Whatever. Pack instinct, isn’t it? Who’s the alpha male?’

‘What?’

‘Don’t you watch her? She’s great. She says you have to get inside their minds’

‘Right, I- oh, wait a sec, excuse me. Bowlby! Bowlby you bugger! Walk away from the goat! Walk away from the- that’s better, come here. Good boy. Lead time.’

His ears go back in submission as the anti-lead-pulling muzzle strap goes on. Before we turn for home, I bob down and whisper into one contrite furry lughole:

‘You are so precious to me it’s quite pathological, I’m sure.’

I suppose it’s a good thing they don’t know what I do for a job.

*not his real name

Dr Frigmund Pseud