Man's best friend

A good friend’s dog has just died. A sweet dog, acquired when full grown and pretty amazing in the shooting field. This wiry English Springer bitch whilst retaining all the bouncy enthusiasm of the breed, was just so biddable. She had a good nose. When it was down you knew she was really working assiduously, much better than many larger dogs. She adored her owner who clearly was also very fond of her. He was pretty cut up to see her go, struck down by some ghastly auto-immune disease at just eight. 

Even if they live their full term, good dogs never last long enough and bad dogs seem to go on forever. In reality there are no such things as bad dogs, only bad owners. I must be one of them. Our dog, Arthur, (see HC despatches past) has had a chequered career. Of course, he’s a Flat-Coated Retriever which, for those who claim to be in the know, says it all. They’re notorious for being difficult dogs to train. 

Compared to Labradors they never seem to get out of their teenage years. Fathoming them out is something I have singularly failed to do. Arthur is our third Flat Coat so you might justifiably say we never learn. True, Arthur’s predecessors were more useful in the field and his immediate predecessor, Bertie, had a nose for an errant game on a par with a Master of Wine. Many the time at the end of a shooting day would he disappear into the growing gloom as we were walking away from the last drive. I often thought I’d lost him for good but he never failed, albeit up to twenty minutes later, to turn up with a wounded bird that had been overlooked by other dogs. 

Arthur, it seems, is a different dog. I still cannot work out whether he is incredibly stupid or really clever. I suspect it’s the latter for he certainly runs rings around me. I often joke that the secret to training Flatties is to coincide any command to what the dog happens to be doing at the time. That way you can still look vaguely in charge even if your command has to be, “Yes, that’s right. Run away! No, even further!” It’s the only way of maintaining some vestige of dignity.

I was privileged to know a much decorated, Hampshire based, retired Field Marshal - sadly now no longer with us. He fancied himself as something of a picker-up. Sadly, his dog had other ideas, running in at the drop of the first bird of the day and then proceeding to eat it in full view of guns and beaters. To compound matters the dog appeared deaf to the Field Marshal’s commands including, “Come here!” bellowed in a tone to rattle a Regimental Sergeant Major. My friend had once been Chief of the General Staff so it was hard to comprehend that he had once had command of all of our armed service people. 

Thus can dogs make chumps of us all. They do though have their saving graces. They are loyal and stoic. Unlike wives, they are still excited by your return home with chums at midnight for a final drink to round off an evening. They ask little of us in return; a little food, somewhere reasonably warm to lay their heads. It’s hard to fathom what they are thinking in their tiny brains, or indeed if they think at all. Unlike cats, of whom it is said they are simply working out ways to kill you, dogs seem genuinely to want to please. Unless of course, they’re Arthur who blows hot and cold in the pleasing-the-master stakes.

My chum’s dog was different. She was a pleaser. Her brown eyes said it all. So raise a glass to dear Ivy - gone too soon but remembered with fondness.