Diary of a Dog-walker (13 page)

There is sorrow enough in the natural way

From men and women to fill our day;

But when we are certain of sorrow in store,

Why do we always arrange for more?

Brothers and sisters, I beg you beware

Of giving your heart to a dog to tear
.

Buy a pup and your money will buy

Love unflinching that cannot lie –

Perfect passion and worship fed

By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.

Nevertheless it is hardly fair

To risk your heart for a dog to tear
.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits

Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,

And the vet's unspoken prescription runs

To lethal chambers or loaded guns,

Then you'll find – it's your own affair

But … you've given your heart to a dog to tear
.

If Kudu makes it to twenty – Springers often live rather longer than Kipling's ‘fourteen years which nature permits' – I shall have got beyond my allotted three score years and ten before he goes and will be into extra time. So I have not worried too much about his death. But a surprising number of people have said to me that they will not get a dog because they know they will have to watch it die.

Grief for a dead dog is something that can only really be understood by other dog-owners – civilians, of course, will say how sorry they are but will not really understand. Two dogs I knew have died while I have been putting together this book. One was a Jack Russell called Button, who passed away peacefully in his sleep at boarding kennels while his owners were away; the other was a cheerful mongrel, one of the earliest friends Kudu made in the local park, who succumbed after an operation on her leg (she had been bitten by a brute during her afternoon walk). They came from very different backgrounds: Button's tycoon master buried him in a
grand cru
claret box in the pet cemetery in the grounds of his country pile, while the mongrel's owner – a freelance IT consultant in south London – retreated into his flat to mourn alone. But in their grief the two men were equals.

Dogs can make you healthier

29 May 2010

A dog-owning acquaintance was despatched to Battersea Park by his wife on a tummy-reducing mission – only to return home with a wifely secret unveiled. She had chivvied him with stories of health benefits from her walks with the family dog, so he took their terrier on his jog. When he opened the car door the dog sprinted to the park café and lay down, clearly expecting a prolonged coffee-and-gossip session.

I am ever more convinced that dogs are good for you. My sixteen-year-old stepdaughter is in the middle of her GCSEs; on revision days she insists – in a most un-teenage manner – on being woken for the morning Kudu walk, kick-starting body and brain for a day's hard slog with the textbooks. For good health we are all supposed to take at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week; Kudu would be delighted for me to hit the entire week's target in a pre-breakfast walk every day, and would cover double my distance without breaking his high-paced sniff-and-sprint.

Is there any hard evidence on the relationship between dogs and health? I asked a dog-owning GP, and was startled by the passion my question unleashed. So strongly does she feel that the health
benefits of dog-ownership are under-estimated that she is considering a letter-writing campaign to the newspapers (under the
nom de plume
Dr Kay Nein) and she keeps her Spaniel in her surgery during consultations to push the point with her patients.

Lower cholesterol and blood-pressure, a reduced chance of your child suffering from asthma, better recovery prospects after a heart attack, lower stress levels and a stronger immune system: all this and more can be yours if you own a dog.

The Dogs Trust has ordered these benefits into a Canine Charter for Human Health, and the body of research they quote as supporting evidence is huge; if you follow the footnote trail you can only admire the inventiveness and dedication of some scientists. Imagine devoting your best years to a dissertation on ‘Environmental influences on the expression of aggressive behaviour in the English Cocker Spaniel' (and who has ever heard of an aggressive Spaniel anyway?). And what can have inspired someone to investigate ‘Animal companions and one year survival of patients after discharge from a coronary care unit'?

The most intriguing research concerned whether dogs can sniff out cancer. A letter to the medical journal the
Lancet
in 2001 reported the curious case of a Labrador called Parker. His master, a man in his sixties, developed a nasty patch of eczema on his left
thigh, and Parker began to sniff at it obsessively. Eventually Parker's master took the hint and visited his doctor: analysis revealed that the lesion was in fact a basal cell carcinoma, and once it had been removed, Parker's interest in his master's left trouser-leg disappeared. (This story worried me a bit since Kudu has developed a habit of licking my legs after my bath, but since he does it to all of us, he may just like our soap.)

In 2004 a team of scientists in Buckinghamshire produced research to show that Parker was not a one-off. Over a period of seven months they trained six dogs to sniff for signs of bladder cancer in the urine of patients from their oncology department. At the end of the training period they were able to report that the dogs had managed a 41 per cent success rate in identifying urine from cancer patients, compared with the 14 per cent success rate that could have been expected by chance alone.

The scientists were very impressed by this but, based purely on Kudu's ferocious concentration when sniffing, I would have expected a better figure. As all owners know, dogs just love sniffing pee, and the scientists were offering this group ‘freshly defrosted liquid specimens', which sounds like a doggy version of a fine Burgundy. I suspect the dogs were simply faking their failures in the hope of keeping the experiment going.

One piece of research I found in the footnote trail suggests that dogs increase self-esteem. This may be a claim too far. When my wife returns home after a day in her office, Kudu puts on a most melodramatic performance, squeaking quite shamelessly in ecstasy. When I get back after long hours in the BBC news factory, I have to be satisfied with a sceptically raised eyebrow and a heavy sigh – small reward for organizing my working day around Kudu's walking needs, and not at all good for the self-esteem.

Forgive me if this last paragraph is strong meat, but I am assuming only hardened dog-owners will have made it this far. Kudu is generally discreet about doing his morning business, favouring the trunks of trees and the leafy covering of bushes. But last weekend he unloaded his waste in the most spectacular and defiant fashion in the middle of a large group doing Military Fitness on Clapham Common; a rude message to modern faddishness, I feel sure, from all those generations of his ancestors who have kept their owners in good shape down the centuries.

*

When this column came out my dog-loving doctor friend telephoned me to say that she no longer keeps her dog in the consulting room. She had been forced to abandon the arrangement after an unfortunate incident during a cervical smear.

She had, as she delicately put it, just ‘introduced the
speculum' when the dog, which had been snoozing quietly in its corner, had a rabbit-chasing dream and suddenly emitted a prolonged slobbery snuffle. ‘Who have you got hiding in here?' shrieked the patient as she tried to jam her legs shut – tricky, since my doctor friend was, of course, standing between them at this stage. There was much laughter and no harm done, but since then the dog takes its naps elsewhere in the surgery.

7

Dog Love

DURING AN EMAIL
exchange with a BBC colleague I enquired after the health of his Schnauzer, and received the following reply: ‘Dog fine, thanks. She owes me £611 for dental maintenance and removal of a (benign) cyst. Nowadays I brush her teeth with a poultry-flavoured enzyme toothpaste. It has come to this. But I tell all my dog acquaintances to do the same or face large bills …'

The colleague in question is a contemporary; dog-owning definitely takes on a different character when you are middle-aged and your children have turned into young adults. We who have survived the soggy tests of nappy-changing and baby-feeding are more accepting of this kind of humiliation, and probably, though we do not admit it to ourselves, we miss the dependence of small children … and indulge our dogs to fill the void.

There is a revolting newly coined term to describe a dog that performs the role of child substitute: a ‘furkid'. It is usually applied to the sort of miniature, shivering, over-bred and over-dressed toys that super-models and celebrities of the Paris Hilton variety carry about in their handbags – although for some of these types the line between dog as child-substitute and dog as fashion accessory has clearly become dangerously blurred.

One radio presenter – with a regular dog slot in her show – put out a press release to announce the Christmas list she was planning for her Bulldog:

• Handmade dog biscuits (£??)
  
• Tuffie Toys – strong enough to withstand a Bulldog's jaws (£60)
  
• Solid silver ID tag (£25)
  
• A designer collar from Holly & Lil (from £100)
  
• A luxurious new bed from Creature Clothes (£70)
  
• A selection of winter clothes including an Equafleece jumper, tweed coat from Holly & Lil and a hand-knitted pink sweater from New York (£200)
  
• A special festive afternoon tea at the very dog-friendly Milestone Hotel in London with her best friend the Miniature Bull Terrier (£50)
  
• One-on-one training sessions to teach her how to skate-board (£25 per session)
  

There is alleged to be some science to explain the development
of the furkid phenomenon: apparently stroking a dog can provoke women to produce oxytocin, the same ‘happy hormone' that is released by breast-feeding. Obviously this kind of frivolous tosh is a million miles from the sort of manly, unsentimental and outdoorsy relationship that my BBC colleague and I enjoy with our dogs, and I utterly repudiate any suggestion that Kudu is a furkid.

It is not just children who stir feelings of parental pride

12 June 2010

A neighbour who has recently joined the local dog-walking circle (with a very bouncy young Lab) has been commissioned to make a public sculpture of a Spaniel, and she approached me in the park to ask whether she could sketch some studies of Kudu as her model. This made me feel rather as I imagine Kate Moss's mum must have felt when she was told that her daughter would be on the cover of
Vogue
for the first time. I swelled with pride at the thought of the Dog's fine profile being immortalized in bronze.

Two days later I fell into an ambling conversation with a woman exercising her Jack Russell-Shih Tzu cross on Clapham Common. We spent a bit of time on the fun to be had in naming this surprisingly successful genetic experiment (a Jackshit?) and she
then remarked – I am sure without malice – that Kudu's markings made him look like a cow. Shameful to confess, but I boiled with silent fury.

Quite why one should take pride in one's dog's looks I am not sure – it is not as if one can claim any genetic credit, as one can with children. But it is a widespread weakness.

The great Venetian painter Veronese suffered from it so badly that it got him into trouble with the Inquisition. In 1573 he was hauled up to account for certain ‘oddities' in his vast painting
The Supper at the House of Levi
: he had slipped his dog into the centre of the canvas, where it gazes admiringly at a self-portrait the artist had also smuggled into the scene. Veronese explained that once he was satisfied that he had told his main narrative in a painting he liked to add ‘figures according to my invention', if there was any room left, and he compared this to Michelangelo's use of nude figures in his religious paintings.

‘In Michelangelo,' came the stern rebuke, ‘thou dost not observe aught but the spiritual, and there are no drunkards, nor dogs, nor arms, nor any such buffooneries.' Leaving aside what this meant for Veronese (running foul of the Inquisition was a bad move, in those days), it seems rather rough on the dog to be bracketed with drunks and other ‘buffooneries'.

I strive for honesty in evaluating Kudu's looks. He is a little short in the leg and, although certainly not flabby, a tad on the stout side. If he goes for too long without grooming the big brown marking along his back is bleached to what I am afraid is a gingerish tinge. But when properly looked after he is a mix of solid chocolate and milky white, and he is decorative around the house. I have acquired a few nice carpets in the course of my work in the Middle East, and he looks terrific stretched across the deep blues and reds of a Tabriz or a Hamadan rug.

Perhaps it was this happy doggy facility of harmonizing with gorgeous colours that inspired Veronese and several other Venetian painters to use so much dog imagery. The pictures of Veronese's contemporary Titian are absolutely stuffed with canine cameos.