Woof · 13 July 2002
Four more banal anecdotes about my dog:
ONE
Ukelele enthusiasts will be familiar with the tuning mnemonic ‘my dog has fleas’. Hereabouts – perhaps brought about by his perpetual doleful expression, perhaps by his various appetites – this has been modified to ‘my dog has needs’.
TWO
Given the choice, he will go for a dried pig ear over a dried cow ear every time; if however no pig ears are available, a cow ear will do. Additionally, he has attached special meaning to the word ‘pineapple’.
THREE
There’s a bit of training every day. We’re still working on a reliable heel, but for the most part he doesn’t pull, and he seems quite content in a sit or down. Sometimes, on a walk, he will suddenly buck and bray like a horse, jumping forward, back and to each side, before breaking into a run that requires me to make little quarter-turns as he wheels around at the end of the lead, circling like so many wagons. The appearance of the word ‘wagon’ inevitably puts me in mind of Wagon Wheels, a sort of chocolate-marshmallow-wafer thing my mother occasionally included in my school lunch, one that had a distinct sweet smell when you tore open the opaque plastic foil. Such potent olfactory memories can lead to other, larger, constructs of mind, as old Marcel P. liked to point out, but this one ends right there.
FOUR
He has a stalker.
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